Best of the Watcher this week:

If the Internet is a disruptive technology where is the disruption?

-Essay on the disruptive media technology.

The Weekend Wrap starts here...

One more Gonzo tribute…

Thank you, Hunter S. Thompson, for pushing the boundaries of what was considered journalism, and for your passion, honesty and downright fun!

You pioneered a new journalism that inspires us blogger journalists to do the same: to challenge accepted formats, to rail against anything that rails us, and to have the courage to expose ourselves as individuals with faults, warts, and the occasional divine inspiration.

If the Blogosphere had patron saints, I would propose Hunter for canonization.

Wired Rave Awards at the Fillmore

Tom Abate and I popped in. Not much there there. Lots of interesting people but no awards ceremony! Even a ten-minute thing of sorts would have been better than none, and better than long. As it was, it was more like going to The Fillmore to see a gig. Chris Anderson was there of course, fresh in from NYC (where I hear he’d been Gawking around.)

Stand alone TV Blogger

When I recently ran into assistant trainee hedge fund manager Cory Johnson, I said I wanted to pitch him through my blog on becoming a “TV blogger.” Here’s the pitch:

"You’d be the first to do it: a stand alone TV business news broadcaster --a la Al Franken on Saturday Night Live-- but without a satellite dish on your head. Wandering Silicon Valley with a hand-held wireless video camera interviewing people, covering events and making news broadcasts: “Silicon Valley Closed Circuit Cory.” It’ll be virtually real-time, except we’ll have a 30-minute cache to beep out the boring bits and add some data before broadcast."

Things you probably didn’t know about the GOOG

Google keeps track of the performance and reliability of every type of disk drive it uses in its massive, distributed, PC-based supercomputer, right down to the individual factory that produces it. This is important in calculating the failure rates of the huge numbers of computer components it uses.

What drove Become.com co-founder to start the business?

“My wife told me I had to go get a job. I’d been at home for six months between ventures,” says Michael Yang, CEO of the recently-launched beta shopping search site Become.com.

Peggy Noonan now knows the Watcher…

Dan Farber recently pointed out a very good column on blogging by book author Peggy Noonan in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. In it she mentions that it’s only a matter of time before a journalist at Newsweek or some other top tier news publication leaves to become a full time blogger and be supported by the sponsorship of one or more companies.

I dropped a note to Ms. Noonan complimenting her on the column, and mentioned that SiliconValleyWatcher had already fulfilled her prophecy! Before she'd even made it —-that’s how far ahead of the game SiliconValleyWatcher is :-)

Here is Ms. Noonan’s extremely prompt and gracious reply:

Tom, thanks -- I didn't know. I'll go to your site. Great good fortune
to you.
Peggy Noonan

MySpace thrives and survives—but how long Friendster?

A note from Hitwise the hits tracker:

While many have questioned the sustainability of social networking sites, one has figured a way to build traffic levels exponentially higher than any other and keep users coming back for more. According to Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, the market share of U.S. Internet visits to social-networking Web site MySpace (www.myspace.com) skyrocketed 1,252 percent the week ending Feb. 19, 2005 versus the same week last year (ending Feb. 21, 2004). MySpace is currently the 12th most visited Web site, and its traffic share is more than 12 times greater than other popular services, including its next closest competitor, Friendster (www.friendster.com).

The world’s only blogging anesthesiologist writes:

Dear Tom,
I read your FT piece in today's paper with much interest.
Apart from Jurek Martin, who not coincidentally is based in the U.S., no one on the FT seems to have a clue about what's about to happen re: blogs.
Still pounding away in their barn on those horseshoes, while the early cars sputter by.
In fairness, though, the New York Times and Washington Post are equally bewildered: they write a bit more about the phenomenon, but don't understand that they must change or die — or at least, wither dreadfully.
I hope you continue to write a piece for the FT every now and then, if not regularly: let the Brits know what's happening.

Best,

Joe Stirt, M.D.

http://www.bookofjoe.com

'world's only blogging anesthesiologist'

USA Today 'Hot Site' -LINK-

John Thompson, CEO of Symantec tells critics of his Veritas acquisition deal that they know nothing about software strategy.

In the latest Red Herring magazine, article John Thompson lambasts critics of the merger (I was literally the first, two hours after it was first announced --Wall Street followed a few weeks later.)

I guess the knows-nothing comment would also apply to the Silicon Valley head of a v. large company who recently told me, “That deal makes no sense whatsoever; and I’m a good friend of John’s.”

BTW, did we know that the plans for the merged company will retire the Veritas brand in favor of Symantec? Does an anti-virus brand have the heft to make it as a heavy-duty enterprise IT systems brand?

cd1824

rk