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Susan Mernit's Blog

Thoughts on community, local, product development,the social graph, social media, OpenID, Web 2.0, participatory media, citizen journalism, funnel management & conversion, monetization, blogging, feminism, and tech geek life in the Bay area from a former Yahoo exec,blogger, product developer and troublemaker. Make contact at smernit@gmail.com.


Bartleby: "The Top Ten Reasons Why *I* Will Not Follow You In Return On Twitter"Today
Speeding back into old skool linking, I have to say not only is this piece by Atherton Bartelby on Mashable a delight, his own blog, Curious Affairs, looks like another find. (God, it is such a pleasure to read someone who can actually write!!)

Bartelby posits that the "follow fail" happens when someone follows you whom you would never follow back cause they're boring, or callow or NOC.  "This is the person whose follow on Twitter," he says, " you simply cannot bring yourself to return."

So what are the gaffes that make someone not want to follow you back? Read the whole thing here--but here's a prized quote (I prize it):

"For me, Twitter is not a shallow popularity contest, it is about forging interesting connections and conversations with other people. My Twitter followers are far more to me than a simple follower count: they are friends, they are colleagues, they are collaborators, they are peers, and they are sources. To follow someone in return whose only intent is clearly to acquire more followers would be to devalue the esteem with which I hold my other followers."











Links for 2009-01-05 [del.icio.us]Yesterday
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Links for 2009-01-03 [del.icio.us]January 4
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Links for 2009-01-02 [del.icio.us]January 3
  • Leah Koenig- She is What She Eats - in The Jewish Week
    nice piece on a young Jewish foodie, merging environmentalism, religious observance and farm to table sustrainabilty--she edits a blog called the jew and the carrot.
  • Crosscurrents - Public Radio news magazine
    Since we began the project, much has changed in the media landscape: local outlets such as the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News and CBS local news have suffered drastic cutbacks. These cuts signal that the commercial model for journalism is in crisis. We believe that public interest, non-profit media is one way to begin to fill that void, and that doing so is critical to public understanding and engagement.
  • Sociali networking changes this - From geek to online guru
    Financial times story that underscores how social media and ecommerce power people's success in working for themselves at things they love.
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The Ultra-Mega 2009 conference list--80+ events to noteJanuary 2
I decided to be systematic this year and compile a list of conferences that interested me ahead of time, so I could better know what I was missing, where I might speak, and most importantly, how  might plan my time so I could go to the conferences that would be the most enjoyable for me (sharing knowledge, learning things, talking with people, cool travel).

Here's that list.  It's heavy on feminist and media conferences, along with the more usual Web 2.0, tech. social media and venture/start-up events. I've excluded cool events, meet-ups and so on, just to try to kee it manageable (it's not).

The key: bold means I am going; bold ital, I am speaking.

Okay, here goes:

January
February
  • 2, Fem2pt0, George Washington University, DC, www.fem2pt0.com/
  • 2-4,