MediaEater said so, but he got scooped by some dude with 3 readers.

I suppose it was just easier to buy it out than to distract themselves with their attempts to fix their scaling issues by building something new.

Plus, I imagine it came pretty reasonably, because at the end of the day, they could just decide to shut off the API for Summize and then where would the company be? 

Updated thought:   Who the hell is Josh "3 readers" Chandler and how'd he get this scoop?

Fred brought up the issue of deceptive statistics today--RSS readers, Facebook app installs, Twitter or Friendfeed followers, etc.  I'll add one to the mix.  Registered users.  You name the social network and chances are I'm a registered user on it.  Check to see what I've actually logged in to in the last month--very very different numbers there.

So what are we really talking about?  People who are concerned with such numbers are usually trying to figure out and compare influence and perhaps maybe engagement.  If the people reading aren't doing anything, either passing your message on or responding, what's the point of having readers?

That made me think about my readership.  What do all the numbers mean?  Do I really have 2600 readers?  How many of them are really paying attention?  What about twitter followers?  LinkedIn, AIM, etc?  How big an impact could one really make?

So, I've decided to make this post an experiment.  I'm asking you to please link to this post, digg it, tag it in del.icio.us, Tweet it, retweet it, triple tweet it, Stumble on it....whatever.   And please comment the hell out of it, too.  Blog about the idea on your own blog...  blog about the concept of influence... just make sure you post a link.

In fact, if you read this post, please leave a comment on it and tell me how you found it.  Were you reading anyway or did you see it somewhere else?  Where?  If you're new here, did you know how I was or am I new to you?

What I want to do is see where people wind up coming from, how many links in I can get to it, and where the engagement (if any) comes from.  I'll post as much as I can learn from all the linking and traffic after a couple of days--like who drove the most traffic (with links back, of course), what service drove the most traffic, etc.

Can I just will myself up to the top of Techmeme?   (Or will you to get me there, rather?)   del.icio.us popular?  Digg popular?  How much does it take?

Ok, ready, go...  Swarm!  Swarm!

When I have a softball game in the city, and we're the home team, it is our (my) responsibility to bring the bases. I can't bike into the city with the bases on my bike because there's nowhere to put this unwieldy base bag. So, I usually bring the car in and put it in a garage. Sixteen bucks and wasted gas all to get a bag of bases to a softball game.

This morning, I gassed up, but had second thoughts because of the price of gas. I turned around and tooked the silly bag out of my trunk and lugged it to the subway. It's not heavy... just sort of awkward.

What I really need to do is to get a little luggage thing for the side or back of my bike. Then, I'd never have to bring the car in and I could maybe bring my favorite bat in as well.

I like the fact that I've been avoiding using the car lately. I'm going down to Philly on Thursday and might try to grab the train there, too.

Does anyone have any recommendations for good quality racks for carrying things on their bikes?

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

I'm involved in more groups than you can shake a stick at--in a leadership capacity in most of them.  Being a web guy, I've always been struck with how poor the offerings are for managing groups--particularly within other social networks.  LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook groups do little to encourage engagement within the application beyond the join.  Most are pretty inactive--a lot of missed potential if you ask me. 

Why, though?  Why is it that no one's been able to come out with really great group software?

Thinking about the groups I'm in gives me an answer. 

Let's start with nextNY.  For one, we wanted a strong brand identity, which meant the ability to control look and feel, and live at our own domain.  That's pretty much why we didn't go with a Meetup group.  On top of that, when we first started, we also wanted both a website and a listserv, and no site actually offered that functionality.  Now, Meetup does, which is great.  Still, Meetup doesn't offer the ability to post blogs from the group, which nextNY didn't even want at first.  Then we realized what we really wanted wasn't just a blog, but a way to aggregate the blog posts of our members that were already being posted.  Perhaps its better that Meetup didn't offer that, because offering a full fledged blogging platform when others exists seems like a waste of resources--especially to a bunch of geeks who were bent on using Wordpress anyway.  Perhaps that would make more sense for a Grandmothers Meetup group in Des Moines.

We thought we wanted several types of aggregation--to aggregate events, Flickr photos, Twitter messages, links, etc.  Then, we realized that the group had gotten so big that some of those things weren't as relevant.  Just because someone is in the group of 1700+, doesn't necessarily mean I want their del.icio.us links or to see their Tweets.  What if they're a hardcore C++ programmer?  That's not so interesting to me.  Well, so maybe we don't want that much aggregation.

You seeing a pattern yet?  Different groups want different things.

The group of Downtown Boathouse volunteers I belong to does not want or need a discussion listserv.  Most of the members already belong to paddling listservs elsewhere--no need to reinvent the wheel. 

At the same time, my sports teams--also groups--need some really kick ass scheduling tools, with smart RSVPs to tell everyone when a critical mass of people has not been achieved for a game.

My group at work uses Chatterous.  We love it.  It's a really simple way of doing group chat where each person can have their own input mechanism.  I can text from my phone or e-mail while others use Jabber--kind of like how Twitter works, but closed for a group.  Does my ZogSports softball team need that, not at all?

There's a company called Wild Apricot that has a cool web service for associations and professional societies--and yet even with a targeted audience, the entrepreneur behind it told me that they have a feature request list as long as your arm.

The point is, every group is different, so the idea of one particular group software solving everyone's problem is never going to work.  However, I do think there are a few things that most groups would want out of a web service:

1. A customizable site to call their own, even if it just has information as to what the group does and how to sign up.
2. A way to communicate internally, via a one-way or two-way listserv, depending on the group.
3. A way to do RSVPs for events.

Right now, only Meetup has all those features for general kinds of groups.  Sportsvite has that for sports teams.  However, I'll tell you that most groups do just fine by using Eventbrite to do RSVPs and a combo of a blog or site for their group and a Google Groups or Yahoo Groups listserv for communication.  It's not that hard, and besides, it's the web.  Your users are going to use lots of different tools for lots of different tasks--you can't solve all of their problems, nor should you attempt to.

Still, it is sort of bewildering that functionality in Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn groups is so lacking.  If any one of those companies improved their group tools, I think that could be very powerful, because they already have the networks built in.

Queens girl Debi Mazar is one of my favorite actresses.  I just flipped on the TV while I was eating breakfast and caught some Jackie Chan movie she was in and got sort of curious about what she was up to.  Wikipedia pointed me to Under the Tuscan Gun, which is the video blog about cooking her and her husband have. 

It's pretty cool to see someone you've only seen in movies in their home, unscripted, just being themselves with their loved one.  What I really liked was that, in their recent episode, they had to start at close to midnight after they put the kids to bed.  Still, they got all dressed up and had a little cooking date at home.  How cute are these two?  Now if only Gabriele learned the difference between a peach and a nectarine...

This makes me think of the random Christopher Walken cooking at home video.  Are there any other celebrity cooking blogs out there? 

The web:  Where regular people can be celebrities and celebrities are regular people.

Who else would you like to see at home making a meal?

Here's my top five:

1. Barack & Michelle Obama
2. Robert DeNiro
3. David Byrne
4. Marilyn Manson
5. Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale