There was a certain raffish charm in Google's "beta" fetish. Six months ago, nearly half of its products carried the geeky monicker, meaning "not ready for prime time." Google was charging real money for premium versions of some of the products, but most people didn't pay. So whenever the system went down, the company could shrug its shoulders and effectively say, "things happen."

Now Google will have to issue slightly more abject non-apologies. On the bright side, all of those people who have been waiting to adopt GMail once its out of beta can now sign up. Get ready to finally see some "@gmail.com" addresses in your inbox! (Ahem.)

Tapping several sweet spots in web development, Wave aggregates real-time Twitter-esque instant messaging with email, wiki-based collaboration features and social networking.

OK!



(Pic by Niall Kennedy)

The phrase Vesting in Peace, which means you work for stable company increasing in value, and you’re doing as little as possible until your stock options are worth something — just enough to be perceived as functional, but never to the point of exertion.

Klein gets this mostly right, though he fails to note where it most frequently happens: At startups after they're acquired. Most of the original YouTubers, for example, are only at Google because they're still vesting in peace.

(Photo by sfllaw)

Decker is hoping, in other words, that advertisers will simply hand Yahoo their online-advertising budgets and trust it to place ads. Google already does this with its auction-sold search ads — and advertisers are furious about how their ads get placed willy-nilly by the hubristic search engine's secret algorithms. Here's how to use the word in cocktail-party chatter: "Yahoo's advertising strategy is nonguaranteed to succeed." (Photo by John Battelle)

Dickerson, his successor, was a solid if stolid executive best known for greasing the sticky wheels of Yahoo's bureaucracy. He has been replaced by someone even more unremarkable. Brickhouse was Yahoo's corporate version of an attention whore, an object we pay attention to because it demands we pay attention to it. I wouldn't be surprised if it's shuttered soon. If it is, will we even notice? (Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Last year, the lexicographers at dictionary maker Merriam-Webster proclaimed w00t its Word of the Year. For 2008, they've added fanboy, webinar, netroots, and pretexting to the lexicon. Who cares? I do, because I find Merriam's online dictionary, more consistent, more focused, and better written than its wikified open dictionary or the Google results for define:pretexting. There'll be 100 or so new words in the Merriam-Webster's 2008 edition, due September 1. Meanwhile, I called the company and got the 25 most populist of the new entries as a teaser:

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition
2008 Copyright

New Entries

1. air quotes n pl (1989) : a gesture made by raising and flexing the index and middle fingers of both hands that is used to call attention to a spoken word or expression

2. dark energy n (1998) : a hypothetical form of energy that produces a force that opposes gravity and is thought to be the cause of the accelerating expansion of the universe

3. dirty bomb n (1956) : a bomb designed to release radioactive material

4. dwarf planet n (1993) : a celestial body that orbits the sun and has a spherical shape but is too small to disturb other objects from its orbit

5. edamame n (1951) : immature green soybeans usu. in the pod

6. fanboy n (1919) : a boy who is an enthusiastic devotee (as of comics or movies)

7. infinity pool n (1992) : an outdoor swimming pool having an edge over which water flows into a trough but seems to flow into the horizon

8. jukebox musical n (1993) : a musical that features popular songs from the past

9. kiteboarding n (1996) : the sport of riding on a small surfboard that is propelled across water by a large kite to which the rider is harnessed

10. malware n (1990) : software designed to interfere with a computer’s normal functioning

11. mental health day n (1971) : a day that an employee takes off from work in order to relieve stress or renew vitality

12. mondegreen n [fr. the mishearing in a Scottish ballad of “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen”] (1954) : a word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung

13. netroots n pl (2003) : the grassroots political activists who communicate via the Internet esp. by blogs

14. norovirus n (2002) : any of a genus of small round single-stranded RNA viruses; specif: Norwalk Virus

15. pescatarian n (1993) : a vegetarian whose diet includes fish

16. phytonutrient n (1994) : a bioactive plant-derived compound (as resveratrol) associated with positive health effects

17. pretexting n (1992) : the practice of presenting oneself as someone else in order to obtain private information

18. prosecco n (1881) : a dry Italian sparkling wine

19. racino n (1995) : a racetrack at which slot machines are available for gamblers

20. soju n (1978) : Korean vodka distilled from rice

21. subprime adj (1995) 1: having or being an interest rate that is higher than a prime rate and is extended esp. to low-income borrowers 2: extending or obtaining a subprime loan

22. supercross n (1983) : a motorcycle race held in a stadium on a dirt track having hairpin turns and high jumps

23. Texas Hold ’em n (1995) : poker in which each player is dealt two cards facedown and all players share five cards dealt faceup

24. webinar n (1998) : a live online educational presentation during which participating viewers can submit questions and comments

25. wing nut n (ca. 1900) 3 slang : one who advocates extreme measures or changes : radical

This is my first afternoon back at the 'Wag, so I've got nothing to report that pint-sized supersleuth Kara Swisher hasn't already posted. (Note to Swisher: Great job! Now please stop patting yourself on the back, it's embarrassing.)

The only other journo as obsessed with Yahoo is Valleywag's editor-on-vacation Owen Thomas. I thumb-typed Owen to deliver Valleywag's official analysis from fog-free Florida. "I don't think of this reorg as a layoff," Owen replied. "I think this is more about promoting those who don't have enough sense to leave. I mean, the more power Sue Decker has, the worse Yahoo gets. Why is she still there?"

Metcalfe's Law, first forumlated by Robert Metcalfe, states that "the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system." The problem is, that as actual humans connect, the number of people you can connect to instantly swells far past Dunbar's Number, or "The Rule of 150," another popular concept among social network theorists, which Robin Dunbar uses to describe the typical amount of other people a person can realistic communicate, connect and relate to.

Hence, I'd like to propose a synthesis of the two, which you're welcome to call West's Corollary. To whit:

As the number of users on an online social network grows, your perception of the ratio of idiots to otherwise will approach infinity.

Where "idiots" is intentionally subjective, because of course one person's idiot is another's comic genius. Ultimately, only 150 people you interact with will be not-idiots, a number that will quickly be dwarfed as everyone else on the planet signs up.

After a strong resurgence in 2005 and showing strong staying power through 2007, lately most of the people I've seen use it fit into two categories: 1) people over 40 who have finally had the word passed down the cool chain from their younger friends and coworkers. 2) the "douches" originally being described themselves.

• Web 2.0.This marketing term was old when Time magazine made "You" the person of the year in 2006. CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy might have just killed it for good.
• Bubble. We can't be in a recession and a bubble at the same time, people. Pick just one economic theory to overhype, please.
• Influencers. This term is on the tip of every social media marketer's tongue as they look to find that one Facebook user who will spark a forest fire for the clients' brands. Problem is: Uncountable variables set the conditions for a forest fire. The spark is just the most visible. And research shows influencers aren't the real firestarters.
• MicroHoo. Microsoft-Yahoo is what, seven characters longer? This word is only OK if Jerry Yang and Steve Ballmer both become Jeves Bang or Stevey Yallmer. Which I don't think is going to happen. Unless more weed is involved.
• Dead simple. From now on, this phrase should only be used ironically. As in: "IsMikeArringtonADick.com makes it dead simple to find out if Mike Arrington is a dick."