A comment of either the "You are the locus of all wonderfulness" or the "Why do you hate America (and Fr. Corapi), Mark Shea?"...varieties simply doesn't do this justice. We who are about to rise salute you.

Enjoyed this post. I've been working with research clients doing genomics and proteomics work for years, but - until now - haven't really read a good redux of the intellectual property issues (to say nothing of the ethical ones) underlying gene patents.

Designer BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes? Small potatoes. After all, in a world where Amazon.com can assert a business-process patent on "one click" e-commerce, anything's fair game. Seriously, is there any reason to believe some enterprising entity wouldn't apply for a patent on, say, "carbon based life forms?"

(Is your employer one of the co-plaintiffs challenging the legality of genetic patents?)

Thanks. You've inspired me to do some further reading/research on McLuhan, who was extraordinarily insightful and on-target in his time. (As a Canadian, you knew that, of course.)

Rather, my point was that there's still a fundamental misapprehension in some quarters of what social media's all about. You see this when legacy organizations decide to "do one of those blog things," or when elected officials make risible public statements about Internet "tubes," and the like.

Re TV advertising: Attention is the new ROI. I'll be watching for trends with this year's crop of Superbowl commercials. Of course, being a Pennsylvanian, I'll be watching I'll be watching the game, as well. ;^/

Thanks, Fred. Sounds like a great VC investment opportunity to me. Likewise agree that getting the S/N ratio in line is essential to deriving value from these exchanges. Tools that help find the right conversations will help make usage of (all forms of) social media even more ubiquitious, and that much more valuable. (That might seem like a paradox, but isn't.) Emerging semantic approaches may be the key here, I think.

Scott, I think you've nailed it. To paraphrase Clay Shirky, the impact of communications doesn't get socially interesting until the underlying technology gets boring ...and everybody's got it -- i.e., the ubiquity you describe. For now, I think we're still waiting for the novelty of much this stuff to wear off. I, for one, admit I'm enjoying the wait

Ari, thanks. I say "the message is the medium" precisely because social media is - or certainly should be - about ideas rather than the stuff used to convey them. I ask (rhetorically) if that isn't blindingly obvious, but I'm honestly not certain that it is for many people - not because they aren't smart - they are. They're just approaching the question from a different mindset, I think.

Simply put, "the message is the medium" is the reverse of the tail-wagging-the-dog model McLuhan (accurately, I think) described in the 60's. Fortunately, now isn't then, and we're no longer living in the interruption-based, one-to-many communications world of Mad Men. (We sure like watching them on TV, though.)

Re the "One note" idea, I'm tempted to do a follow-up post on what Peter Kim wittily dubbed the "lazysphere" - i.e., otherwise bright, capable folks all talking to one another about the same stuff in the same way. I think that's what probably inspired Hubspot's hilarious "Social Media Marketing Madness" cartoon. http://tr.im/btlb

Shel, thanks. That was a actually a very useful summary of the geography and "language" barriers between Twitterville and Outer Facebookia.

Hmm. If we could just take that fabled "bridge to nowhere," and use it to connect these two communities... but I digress.

Lisa, wonderful post.

I'm continually intrigued by how frequently the intuitive, common-sensical things we do to build (or at least *try* to build) healthy, mutually-beneficial relationships in "real" life become counter-intuitive and uncommon once we hit the login button.

People of Earth (i.e., Note to Self): Behind that goofy manga avatar is another real, flesh and blood human being with gifts, gaps and insecurities. Basically, the same stuff that alienates or endears in real life goes double in Twitterville, Facebookia and wherever else. Did I just type "Facebookia?"...dear Lord. (Shel Israel, I'm OK with the Twittervile thing, though.)

So much good stuff here. For now, I'll go with #2 and #7. Social media's all about the social, not the media. Properly used, it's a beautiful complement to our face-to-face relationships with other human beings, and a wonderful way to learn, grow and meet amazing new ones, mostof whom don't bite.

Oh, and the patience and the sometimes hard, awkward, relationship-building parts? Again, think real life: clarifications, apologies/admissions of error where warranted; openness to taking *contructive* criticism like a man (whichever gender you may be), mutual respect, humility, and most of all, humor.

Actually, I think this just became a comment about *character.*

Easy to type, hard to do.

That is all.

Alan, thanks for contributing. You've done an outstanding job of aggregating a ton of useful info at the You2Gov.org site. Looking forward to learning more. As you note, 3rd party groups need to be the real catalysts for positive change.

Ian, thanks for your thoughtful and articulate response.

Although Intense Debate (ID) is nominally still in beta, pending a wider release, as Automattic scales up its resources and infrastructure, my intuition at this point is to wait to receive one of those much-coveted ID invitation codes, as opposed to rushing in now with Disqus, just to have an enhanced comment system that can be deployed immediately, today.

I'd also agree from my (albeit limited) hands-on experience with ID that there's a certain elegant intuitiveness and seamlessness to it that slightly edges out DISQUS, as fine a system as that appears to be. As a human factors/UID/UIX specialist, I suspect you know well how challenging that is to achieve, and how deceptively simple it appears to be when you've succeeded.

(Cool Twitter page, BTW. Looking at your follow through, I'd guess that was a good 275 -plus yard drive straight down the fairway!)