Dude, you cut the page to early. It continues:

"The odd thing about Dodgeball is that it makes you realize you don't actually want to meet most FOAFs, and the awkward, vaguely opportunistic air that pervades every introduction until the other person realizes you won't be providing useful social capital and they stop talking to you makes you stay away from any location from which a number of DBers are checking in?"
99 (Emeritus) | Homepage | 03.05.08 - 11:10 am | #

I'm pretty sure I said it would be like this [YM]

Michael Wolff was talking to lefty media blogger Rory O'Connor at the bar.

We asked him if he'd been asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement for Newser.

He laughed. "Never! No NDAs, never," he said. "That's the rule of the road."

So there might very well be a tell-all in his future. Rory laughed and said, "It's inevitable!"

Wolff agreed: "Inevitable."

"It could be called, "I can't believe those idiots gave me money to do it all again!" Rory said.

We asked Wolff about the algorithm that is Newser's kind of main claim to fame. Users can move an indicator on a continuum that runs from hard to soft news. "I have no idea how it works," Wolff said. "The tech guys explained it to me but I zoned out halfway through. Go ask that guy," he said pointing into a web of white-haired bespectacled men. "The one with white hair and the glasses."

Later, Caroline Miller was lingering by the door, ready to escape. Man, why didn't she get an NDA out of Wolff? "Because I'm feckless!" she said. Nice.

"Michael doesn't even have a contract," she said. "This whole thing is all on a handshake."

So what exactly does Wolff do for Newser? Here's what he does not do: "He's not allowed to talk to anyone on the inside," Miller said. "He's not allowed to manage anybody. What he discovered a long time ago about himself is that he likes to fire people. He has the ideas but I make them happen."

So he has ideas. And did he bring the money? No. "It's all Pat's money anyway!" That would be Patrick Spain, the CEO of HighBeam and soon to be the main character of a really harsh book about how the internet sucks.

But users also include publicists and party promoters who use the site as a personal database. In theory, they are just a few clicks away from [Harvey] Weinstein, a member, or boldface names like Naomi Campbell, Quentin Tarantino and Frédéric Fekkai. (Sycophants beware: members who engage in cyber-social climbing may find themselves exiled to the chilly Siberia of a Big World, aSmallWorld's less-exclusive sister site.)

A Small World, the private and by invite only is notorious for hookers. 80% of their members [are] men from the Middle East. They were blocked in Dubai and set up a mirror site to continue with this practice.

A Facebook for the Few [NYT]

According to the site's most recent annual report, filed at the end of June, Salon is planning an initiative called "OpenSalon," which will be "a new service for its users allowing them to post user profiles; contribute blogs and other content; and collecting all their contributions to Salon, including Letters to the Editor, in one place." We're envisioning something like Facebook plus that failed Assignment Zero site, plus the LA Times' recent attempt to get people to contribute for free. So basically, Salon is looking for a way to monetize its most self-absorbed readers' contributions to the site. (Wait, isn't that why they hired Brazil-loving liberal scold Glenn Greenwald?)

Except, Salon already has a virtual community—or at least, they did. And they were never able to monetize or popularize it. So what makes them think they'll be able to do it now?

In April of 1999, Salon bought a property called The Well, one of the original online communities (started in 1985). By the time Salon bought it, it had been built into a healthy amalgam of e-mail services, personal web pages, message boards, and the like. In 1995, it had 10,000 members, and endless online-wonk cred. But what happened? It has become almost an afterthought on Salon's website, and according to its SEC filing, The Well currently only has 2,700 paying members.

Salon generally doesn't have a great track record when it comes to meshing with online trends—some of that is no fault of their own, except for bad tea leaf reading. The magazine got caught up in the IPO fever of the late 1990s and went public near the height of the hysteria, in June 1999. But even then, investors were cool to Salon's IPO, and the stock's price never really went anywhere. Then, in one of the most colossally misguided decisions the magazine would make, it decided to launch Salon Premium in April 2001—just as the stock market was going into freefall. But even at its height (the 2004 elections), Salon Premium had fewer than 90,000 subscribers. Today, the magazine acknowledges that it needs to emphasize getting ads over getting Salon Premium memberships; obviously, if more people visit the site, or at least the right sort of people, they can charge more for ads. (Update: A good point has been made to us—that Salon wouldn't have weathered that crash without the infusion of cash from subscribers, which they recruited with ardor. That does make sense as well.)

After years of turmoil, Salon might be getting its act together. The magazine is actually starting to turn a profit, and its stock today was trading at $1.35—up from a low of $.05 in the dark, dark days of 2003. But is social networking the right choice for their financial future?

Manager, Social Networking Site at Salon.com [Gawker Jobs]
Salon Annual Report [SEC]

1. Bloggers cover stories that interest them, not all the news that's fit to print.
Guess what, we don't care about Darfur! I mean, sure, we care in the sense that human suffering on a mass scale is a terrible thing to have to hear about at dinner parties, but if it's not about vagina pictures or poetesses like Meghan O'Rourke (or, ideally, a combination thereof), we can't do anything with it. It's great that you want to save the environment and everything, but our Joel Stein jokes aren't going to write themselves, unlike Joel's. Just send us the stuff we can use.

2. Bloggers are lone individuals with limited amounts of time rather than large institutions with a space quota to fill.
This is decidedly not the case for us. Sure, we're lone individuals (for good antisocial reason), but we have MASSIVE quotas. We need whatever we can get. Except crap about Darfur or the environment that isn't about lady-flowers.

3. Bloggers write about topics in their areas of interest from a particular point of view.
Absolutely. Here's a handy guide to who is interested in what and how they'll write it. Emily likes stuff about how the ladies are oppressed by the patriarchy. Also feline friends. She will write with strident wit. Doree is interested in media shenanigans and anything that makes kids at Columbia look stupid. She will drill down. Josh is all about restaurants and real estate. He will use many words which you will have to look up in the dictionary, and might have sex with your girlfriend. Balk tosses off whatever falls out of his brain, often without regard to spelling or logical conclusions. He is also interested in finding a new job, one that involves getting or dispensing alcohol. Choire is a master at examining the intersection of class and culture in New York. Expect many exclamation marks. Also at this point, he will basically do anything to get with any kind of man. Particularly one with a big neck and a beard, maybe a little bit dumpy, 38-44, under 240 pounds, tall is good but short works, preferably with a six-figure salary. He is both desperate and serious.

4. Bloggers need material for posts rather than quotes from both sides.
Yep. We don't even give a shit if it doesn't even have one side!

5. Consider giving exclusives, especially to more prominent bloggers.
Again, yes. Who's more prominent than us? Maybe the panda chick from Gothamist. Or 874 other weblogs. Even so, we love exclusives. They make our owner happy, which keeps him off our backs for a little while. (Ten or so minutes, but you have no idea how valuable, and soothing, those ten minutes are. It's like right after you put the lotion on but before you put it back in the basket.) Also, we are total whores for exclusives. We will so quid whatever your quo is.

6. Bloggers aren't party operatives.
This is true on across the board. Don't assume that because we've said something nice about you once we'll always follow your lead. We make our own decisions and call things as we see them. Unless you've got an exclusive, in which case we'll say whatever you want, and trash our mothers in the process.

7. Less is more.
Right. Guess what happens the third time we hear about your amazing product/brilliant blog/penis-erecting pill in a single day? It goes into the trash folder alongside all the e-mails from Choire telling us "PLEASE TO USE, PROPER PUNCTUATION, YOU COMMA, SPLICERS." Sure, sometimes we forget about things, but if you've e-mailed us something five times in two hours and we haven't done anything about it, there's a reason: We don't give a shit. And you're pissing us off.

Simple enough, right? Keep those cards and letters coming! And those sweet exclusives. Our goal is to get to the point where we don't have to produce an original material at all, except all of your original material, of course. Won't you help us make that dream a reality?

Netiquette: How to befriend a blogger [The Politico]

Rocketboom present (Andrew Baron) and past (Amanda Congdon) were there, as were Kent Nichols and Doug Sarine, creators of Ask A Ninja. I also got fleeting glimpses of Cali Lewis from GeekBrief.TV and Alex Lindsay of Pixel Corps and This Week in Tech fame.
I say again. Where were the audio people?

Blogger & Podcaster