DISQUS

This really bugs me. It's a cheap ploy by FriendFeed to promote their service, but it's really sloppily done. All it's doing is taking the number of friends that you have on the FF account that you're piping your RSS feed into and adding that to the subscriber numbers.

The theory is that this is how many people are seeing your feed, but that's what Feedburner's "reach" stat is for. Kim Kardashian and Robert Scoble are both "following" my FriendFeed, but no way they're seeing my blog posts. In fact, referrals to my site from FriendFeed are zero.

The subscribers stat in Feedburner should measure (as accurately as possible) the number of people who actively subscribed to that one feed. Sure, they may not ever open their reader again, but it at least suggests a level of interactivity. Meanwhile, on FriendFeed, there's plenty of people just padding their follow numbers.

So I'd be fine with the subscribers stat counting FriendFeed as one subscriber or user of the feed, but taking the people following me and calling them "subscribers" is ridiculous. It just seems like a desperate move on FriendFeed's part to exaggerate their relevance.

What kinds of things can we do to make sure that the sites we're entering our username and password into are legit?

If the Juan MacLean album is even half as good as "Happy House" (which is included on it), then it'll be one of the best records of the year. That's this week's release that I can't wait for.

I'll definitely be picking up the Department of Eagles record. It's beautiful. Streamable here:

http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/luisterpaal/40117589

The feeling of entitlement for free is going to go away when companies who charge for services figure out how to make their products easier to purchase. I don't mind getting out the credit card for a good service, but with so many products, it's much more difficult to buy a service--and deal with the hassle of verification codes and other steps that are put in place to fight piracy--and so people just stop dealing with it altogether.

As DRM goes away from music, it's become much more attractive to go back to buying music. You know you're going to get a good product, and when you buy it, it's yours with no questions asked. The more companies just charge for it and relax about piracy (which is going to happen anyway), then the more people will be will to pay for services.

It's a tough question. On one hand, I don't really feel as though I have anything to hide, but on the other hand, I don't know how other people (read: potential employers) would react to things that I think are pretty benign. The worst thing that my blog and Facebook page say about me are that I swear a lot and drink more than I should. No big deal to me, but it may be to someone else.

For the most part, I tend to accept that it's just part of our new world. I think it may eventually make people a little more careful of what they do and say when someone has a camera out or what they put online, but I also think that, because of less privacy, we're becoming better able to shrug the personal choices that people make that don't affect us.

I couldn't agree more. Social media stuff is wonderful, but it's far too easy to forget how much time it actually takes, and for those people who are interested but for whom social media is not a life priority (read: almost everyone), it becomes overwhelming pretty fast.

Put another way: it's like juggling. If you're a professional juggler and you're juggling three balls, it's not really that big a deal if someone throws in a bowling pin and a chainsaw. It's a fun challenge. But for someone who only has the time and experience (and desire!) to juggle three balls and then you throw in a fourth, the result is usually that they'll drop them all.

Okay, maybe not the best analogy, but there it is. ;-)