Back from London...

Allow me to (uninvited) clarify a piece of Tom's thesis.

Conversations are interactive for the participants, and are held solely for the participants.

A conversation that is held for the benefit of a non-participating audience becomes *something else*. People don't talk with each other in front of an audience the same way they would if they were alone.

Yes, you can change the video size to whatever you'd like. Just take a look at the embedd code.

I think I would pass almost all of them, but how do you resize a youtube or other embedded video to fit a web page's size?

I know you have to keep the dimensions proportional, but can you just change the height and width, or is there something else you have to follow?

There is no place like the West Coast for innovation

David: I don't think the problem is finding a new term for a stilted conversation, but that 'conversation' is misleading when applied to social media because it's about something that is much more exciting and amazing. Conversation is a red herring when it comes to understanding this next phase of the Internet...

I beleive that the nomenclatures may be what's failing us.

None of our current lexicon really fits exactly:

A CONVERSATION is really an exchange of ideas, with each response being dependant on the other and with the overall context...

A DISCOURSE is more of a formal debate.

I agree with your bounds on what constitutes non-conversation, but somewhere in between is conversation. Ten to fifteen comments is often quite interactive. There are also side conversations that can happen in those large comment streams you mention. I've particularly seen this in some buzz threads.

Personally, I think "conversation" works quite nicely, but I'd guess I'd define "conversation" more expansively than you do. Actually, I kind of like the WordNet definition: "the use of speech for informal exchange of views or ideas or information etc." (http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=conversation), which fits what we're doing on/with social media.

I love the McLuhan quote.

If you read the comment streams on blogs, it's usually not a conversation.

It's usually what an old boss of mine used to call "parallel independent conversations" which is very much in line with the notion of two-way publishing.

Question for me is: is it sufficient and to the greatest benefit for legal frameworks to simply consider social media as publishing, or should they adapt to consider a new category - something like a 'permanent conversation'?

The Microsoft deal with Facebook included an advertising deal--the $240M was for a share of the company and for the ad deal.

Thus, saying they bought at a valuation of $15B is significantly inaccurate.

George, sarcasm sometimes gets lost in translation, my apologies.

The Chinese governement has this stigma attached to it, basically don't mess with them. If google is mad enough to take them on, I wouldn't put it past them buying google and sacking the moron who made the decision.

And that significant lead will result from...adding something Apple has already added?
And that make sense to you?

Eric, What's wrong with making a reasonable profit as a news organization? I agree with you that there is a race to the bottom going on because the econopmics of online news continue to worsen.

Gabe: You should get a press pass and if you don't, you should ban SXSW stories from Techmeme. (SXSW gets very noisy, you'd be doing us all a big favor :)

Money is neither noble or ignoble. It is value-neutral.

Danny: I agree... But press passes aren't free this year. They cost $299. Gabe can afford $299.

Eric: What's so noble about a non-profit status in regards to news organizations? What's so noble about relying on handouts from billionaires to produce local news?

If we can develop profitable news business models then we will have competition, and that is good for news, good for everyone.

While I'm no fan of the way the BANP has acquitted itself thus far, your comment that "There's plenty of 'non-profit' media businesses around, the largest local one is the San Francisco Chronicle." is glib to the point of meaninglessness.

Free the Gabe 1! The Techmeme 1?

Seriously, if there are any TV editors getting passes, then Gabe should. Press isn't just defined by writing stories.

It is "underground" now because the consultants are pretending Social Media is a big "secret" worth $22K/ day (see my post on this - Is Chris Brogan Worth $22K?http://micurl.com/wpFeo)