DISQUS

It's not a people power fight, but if the people understand how to lobby relative to their Congressperson's soft spots it could make a difference. For instance, I live in Silicon Valley, where tech businesses are the bread and butter of our economy. Pandora shutting down or other streaming music services being compromised due to the lack of time necessary for negotiating more fair fees, could impact our local economy and wellbeing. I posed this message to Rep. Mike Honda in an email and voicemail last night -- and heard back today. My message was received. How will he vote? I don't know if I can influence that. But I got his attention. Sending the message to people that only a big-time lobbyist can be heard is akin to saying "only one vote doesn't count." That breeds apathy. Passion can win; self-defeat only breeds loss.

I'm going to go with Google Reader as well, for the conversational element. I am not interested in getting my blogs Dugg but I am interested in having them start thought-provoking conversations. I'd rather 10 people share my stuff than 50 people Digg it.

That's the thing with blogging. There's a rumor, do you want to be the idiot who jumps on the bandwagon or the first to confirm it? It's a tough balance since the rules of journalistic research sometimes don't apply (whether they should or not is an entirely different conversation).

When I was contemplating writing my blog about the topic this morning for ZDNet, I considered a lot of those factors. So I took a different approach, even though Om Malik had already allegedly confirmed the news. I posed everything as speculation and never claimed it to be fact, and what would happen "if" this goes through. That gives good market commentary without having to eat crow later. I've seen a lot of bloggers today and yesterday who will need to eat crow in one way or another. While I'm all for taking a stand, I would never do so based on just a rumor.