The New York Times explores the problem: Free websites like MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook easily find followings overseas, but advertisers don't want those users. About half the world's Internet users are too poor to draw commercial interest.

Meanwhile, those users cost the same amount of money to serve as more lucrative targets in developed economies. The Times argues, incorrectly, that they cost more to serve. The real problem is that it's not worth it for companies to build datacenters close to their overseas users — so they leave them with balky videos and slow-loading photographs. MySpace is even trialing a low-bandwidth version of its profile pages in India. Veoh, an online-video startup, has gone as far as cutting off its site to users in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Digg is rethinking plans to acquire foreign knockoffs of its site. Analysts believe Google's YouTube is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, in part because it's serving up worthless lip-synch videos to worthless audiences around the world.

The irony here: The same financiers who are balking at paying for third-worlders' bandwidth bills encouraged this international growth. News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch famously pushed Chris DeWolfe, MySpace's recently fired CEO, to expand the site to 15 countries a year after buying it. Venture capitalists encouraged startups to grow all over the world, lest overseas copycats get entrenched in their home markets.

Only now are the moneymen realizing that not all eyeballs are created equal, at least when they're in advertisers' sights. In the meantime, the global village had one hell of a show. We hope they enjoyed the kitty pictures while they lasted.

(Photo via SAEP)

What is the Semantic Web? Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, came up with the notion in 2001 as a followup to his hypertext creation. After "Web 2.0" became synonymous with cool kids hanging out at Mission Wi-Fi cafes putting rounded corners on websites, people adopted "Web 3.0" as a name for the Semantic Web movement. Business 2.0 attempted an explanation a few years ago:

[The Web is] basically a compendium of billions of text documents designed to be read by humans. You can search it for keywords, but the results aren't much use until you sort through them to find the page that has the info you want.

To take the Web to the next level — to move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 — the information in those documents will have to be turned into data that a machine can read and evaluate on its own. Only then will computers be able to take over tasks we now do by hand: find the nearest restaurant, book the best flight, buy the cheapest CD.

What does this have to do with Alan Meckler, you ask? Absolutely nothing! But we're sure he will come up with some cheaply produced website staffed by talentless hacks to write drivel about it.

(Video still via Beet.tv)

A study in Biologist, a science journal, concludes that the less we talk to our families, the more likely we are to die young. Psychologist Aric Sigman writes that lack of social contact actually interferes with our blood chemistry and immune system and could lead to "cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia," according to a British tabloid's summary. And Internet usage lowers social contact. Ergo, Facebook gives you cancer.

Yes, but what does that have to do with today's Internet, a Guardian blogger asks. The study Sigman cites dates back to 1998 — before Wi-Fi, before pervasive social networking sites, before cheap laptops, before iPhones. The phenomenon of an Internet-obsessed dad avoiding his family in the basement doesn't reflect how people use the Internet now. If anything, the contemporary Web affords an excess of social contact.

So, is it dangerous to use the Web? Yes, if you're doing it inside. A recent study finds that access to nature improves health in all kinds of ways. Trees can even improve the symptoms of ADHD. And treeless urban environments increase aggression.

There's an obvious conclusion: Blog if you must, but do it outdoors. And whatever you do, don't be that guy reading FriendFeed at a bar instead of talking to your drinking companions.

(Photo via Outdoorblogging)

Almost every American in the upper income brackets uses a computer to access the Internet and has a cell phone or other mobile device. Among the six-figure income set, time spent on the Internet now leads all sectors of media consumption, including television. They spend over 23 hours online a week, with the wealthiest spending the most time online and watching the least television.

Only 40 percent use a mobile device to access the Internet. The number goes up to 57 percent when you reach households earning over $250,000. On average, the wealthy connect to the Internet 26 times per week via a computer and nearly 18 times a week on a mobile device, making a total of around ten purchases a week online.

What are they buying? Plane tickets, hotel reservations and event bookings, followed by women's wear, books and menswear. Only 10 percent of mobile Internet users make purchases with handhelds, mostly placing orders for takeout from restaurants.

Email, maps, weather and news are the primary online activities, with Google topping the list of preferred search engines. Watching video, publishing online or reading RSS feeds aren't very popular, with only 12 percent watching television online and 9 percent keeping a blog. Nearly 30 percent, however, read a blog, and 72 percent share photos.

So for advertisers and entrepreneurs looking to tap into a demographic with disposable income, you'd be correct in looking online instead of on television or radio. But instead of getting fancy with iPhone apps, try finding something real-world to sell them.

(Image from Ipsos Mendelsohn)

Incidentally, the site's branding was outed by Tina's friend, octogenarian gossip columnist Liz Smith. Having been burned by the backlash against Talk magazine—the glossy backed by Harvey Weinstein which Tina Brown launched with massive hype and one of the most lavish parties in magazine history—Manhattan's "queen of buzz" has been more discreet in the preparation of her first web venture. One assumes that Liz Smith forgot the sneak peek of the website was supposed to be for her eyes only—though Tina Brown can hardly complain about Smith's discretion, having pressured the ancient New York Post gossip writer to come out as a lesbian for an early issue of Talk.

No doubt The Daily Beast will invite comparisons to the newspaper of Waugh's novel; already Liz Smith compares the IAC mogul backing Tina Brown to a character in Scoop, proprietor Lord Copper; and there will be easy jokes to make whenever Brown's news site makes an error or hypes a story.

But I was reminded more of the scene in Scoop in which the hapless hero goes on an extravagant shopping trip before heading to Africa to cover the war, buying six linen suits, surgical instruments and a portable humidor. Waugh, himself a foreign correspondent during the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, once said: "There are few pleasures more complete, or to me more rare, than that of shopping extravagantly at someone else's expense."

That quote could serve as a statement of editorial principles for the notoriously profligate Tina Brown, who happily doubled writers' contracts to lure them to Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. The Daily Beast has already run through a series of expensive design consultants and employs about half-a-dozen staff its office in IAC's Gehry-designed office palace. During her magazine career, Tina Brown shopped at the expense of Conde Nast's Si Newhouse; reinvented as an internet entrepreneur backed by Barry Diller, she's still spending other people's money.

Bob Pittman's claims to have founded MTV were overstated, but he was closely associated with the cable music channel's gigantic success in the 1980s. It was said of his wife Sandy, who later attempted to conquer Everest, that she gave a new meaning to the term "social climber." And Pittman himself was equally ambitious on the Manhattan circuit, though he scaled the social and business heights with a good deal of charm and grace.

The one-eyed mogul, now 54 years old, came tumbling down after he took over management of revenue-inflating AOL during the bubble. The online access service cashed in on the funds being invested in late 1990s dotcoms, much of which was spent on advertising partnerships which gave the startup brands a place on AOL pages.

The Dulles-based online service was never going to survive unscathed a downturn and the erosion of the dial-up market, and Pittman's reputation would have suffered anyway. But the infamous 2000 merger between AOL and media giant Time Warner ensured he would not merely be despised by investors who bought into AOL at its revenue-inflated peak; he personified to Time Warner veterans the arrogance and empty rhetoric of the AOL upstarts. Pittman managed to sell $94m in stock in the aftermath of the merger, but the dilution of Time Warner shareholders ensured the hatred of a large part of Manhattan's media establishment.

Pittman's contribution to Daily Candy has been more constructive. His salesmanship transformed Dany Levy's cute little newsletter into a marketing machine for fashion and retail brands. Pittman's reputation as a canny internet investor is made by this transaction, by some measure the best return of his fund. To be sure, the web may eclipse email as the preferred online medium for advertisers, and Comcast may have bought a property that's past its peak. But the cable company's bosses are in Philadelphia, a city that Pittman can easily avoid. In terms of Manhattan media, the former wonderboy is back.

[T]he government is unable to offer Cubans comprehensive Internet for their new Pcs because the American embargo prevents it from getting service directly from the United States nearby through underwater cables.

Currently, the island nation uses satellite connections with friendly countries like Canada, which means little upstream bandwidth and lots of latency. Of course, just last May, Moreno declared: "Cuba is not concerned with the individual connection of its citizens to the Internet." So not exactly a win for the proletariat, but it means easier Flickr uploads for turistas with hard currency like euros. The contract diplomatically calls for the backbone link to make landfall on Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad as well. (Photo by David Shankbone)

Back when Calacanis' Weblogs Inc was competing for traffic and attention with Gawker Media, Jason basically led to the creation of Gawker Comments. Our publisher, Nick Denton, never cared for comments. Too much noise. Too many amateurs. Spam. But Calacanis' Engadget had comments, and they helped that site's traffic. "A blog is not a blog without comments," Jason used to say. Now, though?

Why should we all build our homes and give residence to the trolls under them? Comments on blogs inevitably implode, and we all accept it under the belief that "open is better!" Open is not better. Running a blog is like letting a virtuoso play for 90 minutes are Carnegie Hall, and then seconds after their performance you run to the back Alley and grab the most inebriated homeless person drag them on stage and ask them what they think of the performance they overheard in the Alley. They then take a piss on the stage and say "F-you" to the people who just had a wonderful experience for 90 or 92 minutes. That's openness for you... my how far we've come! We've put the wisdom of the deranged on the same level as the wisdom of the wise.

Hah. An about-face! Look what YOU ANIMALS did to him! Jason Calacanis is gone off the net, like so many others before him, because commenters are mean. And also homeless and drunk. From the wisdom of crowds to, as Jason later says: "For the record, crowds are really frackin' stupid and to put your stock in crowds is about as bright as putting your faith in a dictator." Harsh! But definitely in tune with the current internet zeitgeist.

Because he's not the only one! Emily Gould shut off comments! Most Tumblrs are comment-free!

But the personal blog comment-retreat comes too late, as most professional outlets, like print magazines and newspapers, now allow comments everywhere. And they're nearly all terrible! Even when they're heavily moderated, as they are at the New York Times, the signal-to-noise ratio seems to get worse every day. What the hell is to be done? Some Gawker Media editors semi-regularly express their barely hidden desire to BAN EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU and go back to the glorious olde days of undemocratic blogging-as-broadcasting, not as conversation. We're sure that sentiment exists at every media outlet that currently hosts the unhinged rantings of conspiracists and cranks.

But the genie's out of the bottle. Commenters are here. And the internet does seem, these days, to belong to them. Treat her kindly. We'll just keep posting funny pictures for you to riff on.

I closed my blog on June 26, 2008. I could no longer handle the relentless, vicious, public attacks from a digital lynch mob towards the personality traits I have no intention of changing, such as my curiosity and my self-confidence.

The humility here is staggering in its profoundity.

I may be a millionaire but I this sort of thing still hurts... You may conceptualize the Unites States as a great nation. But it’s also a big tribe, with its own irrational taboos. One of them is: don’t talk proudly about your achievements.

We feel for young Lodwick, we really do: it's just so hard at the top taking risks when at any moment you have the choice to live comfortably, unlike 99.9 percent of society.(Photo by Nick Gray)

Nick Douglas
Jason Calacanis
Jackson West
Anil Dash
Allison Mooney
Lockhart Steele
Scott Kidder
Caroline McCarthy
Kelly Reeves
Jason Kottke
Peter Rojas
Lindsay Robertson
Julia Allison
Anthony Volodkin
Choire Sicha
Nicholas Carlson
Alisa Leonard
Jaclyn Johnson
Ana Marie Cox
Heather Snodgrass
Jessica Coen
Alex Blagg
Rex Sorgatz

Don't Shoot the Canary [YM]

The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the cost of products falling fast.

The last debates over free versus pay online are ending. New York Times. Casual games. Google.

Two trends: 1. Extension of cross-subsidy to more industries. 2. Anything that touches digital networks feels the effect of falling costs. Transistors, storage, or bandwidth: at a certain point, they're cheap enough to be safely disregarded.

From the consumer's perspective, there is a huge difference between cheap and free. The gap is why Google doesn't show up on your credit card.

Free doesn't mean that someone isn't making money. The monetary benefits of Craigslist are distributed among its users.

The priceless economy's six categories:

• Freemium (tiers or a pro version, one percent of users support the rest)
• Advertising
• Cross-subsidies
• Zero marginal cost (online music)
• Labor exchange (Yahoo Answers)
• Gift economy (Wikipedia)

Manufacturing and distribution? Reputation and attention are the new scarcities.

Digital technologies have become too cheap to meter.

"We're filling that black box of uncertainty — 'Has my pizza been forgotten?' — with information and entertainment," says Chris McGlothlin, technology chief at Domino's.

The system goes up Wednesday at 3,400 Domino's outlets and will be in all stores by June 30, he says. It even gives folks the first names of the workers who take their phone order and deliver their pizza — and asks customers to rate them.

Any customer comments about inappropriate behavior by order takers or delivery staff will be investigated, spokesman Tim McIntyre says.

Pizza Tracker
Where's your Domino's pizza? Track it online [USAToday]

For example, last week a 25-year-old Pennsylvanian filed a lawsuit against Google because his social security number spells a scrambled version of "Google" when turned upside down, and consequently his safety is in jeopardy. He's asking for $5 billion in damages. His handwritten complaint also states quite clearly that not only is his right to privacy being violated, but that "Plaintiff and defendant(s) have a responsibility to fight the War on Terrorism."

Or here's another example: sue Google and Yahoo for stealing their names from your grandparents, who hailed from the Gogo and Yao tribes of Tanzania, like someone in Texas did last week.

See? It's easy. Here are some more ideas to help get you started:

• I thought Google was a palindrome but it turns out it isn't (this one smells like class-action).
• Google's ads are not always for products or services I am interested in.
• Google is a euphemism for my genitalia, and therefore has caused me millions of dollars worth of humiliation.
• Google gave me diabetes.