• 1/24 last time Tom Anderson, former MySpace President, logged into his MySpace account
• 12/25 last time Tom updated his status, to wish us all a happy holiday; it’s Valentine’s day
• no Tom isn’t your first friend if you join MySpace anymore; “MySpace Today” now is source

• before A while back, our boy Robert Gibbs admitted in an interview that he wasn’t able to use Twitter from the White House, which hurts Obama’s until-then-solid Web 2.0 cred.
• now Gibbs joined Twitter today as the account @PressSec, and his handle of the service is a little suspect. He called it “the Twitter.” He’s a PR person. Yikes. source

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• We’ve been playing with Google Buzz since last night, and we see a lot of potential here. It builds on some already solid foundations, and does things that prior players in this field – specifically FriendFeed – couldn’t do because of lack of scale. That said, we think Google has PR problems that Buzz largely amplifies. Here are our thoughts:

Google’s Good Buzz

• It has users! Google handled Buzz’s launch better. Wave introduced its platform without users, so while it was technically adept, it gave users no incentive to join. Buzz solves that problem by plugging into Gmail’s wide usership.
• It’s easy-to-use Another big problem with Wave is that while it was technically executed well, it was so complex to use that Gmail users couldn’t grasp it easily. Buzz’s interface is simple by design. There are options, but they’re fairly simple.
• It notifies! Perhaps the biggest mistake that Wave made was that it had no built-in notify feature via e-mail; it was designed to replace it, really. You had to check it to see if people were bugging you. Buzz is tied directly to e-mail.

Google’s Bad Buzz

• Do we need another? If Google had created Buzz three years ago, it would have seemed revolutionary. Now it just seems like Google’s trying to catch up. Facebook has this market cornered; why spend time focusing on this specific angle?
• It eats wave’s lunch Even with all the differences, most users will compare Buzz to Wave. Many people already see Wave as a failure because it never answered a simple question: Why? Buzz is closer to that answer, but the effect is that it neuters Wave.
• Can’t make up its mind The biggest problem Google faces is one due to its size. Google is so big that they try get involved in everything. Apple is successful right now because their decisions are deliberate. Google’s aren’t, and they seem indecisive. source

• This has been going on for more than four days now. I contacted my internet provider and they said it is out of their control.
• An anonymous Iranian whose internet is getting gummed up • Regarding his frustration with the Web. Iran has already shut down Gmail permanently – we blame Buzz – and has only been allowing limited access to the Web in the wake of the anniversary of the 1979 Iranian revolution. Google confirmed that they’ve had a sharp drop in traffic from Iran this week. “Whenever we encounter blocks in our services we try to resolve them as quickly as possibly because we strongly believe that people everywhere should have the ability to communicate freely online,” Google wrote. “Sadly, sometimes it is not within our control.” source

• It’s not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, ‘Oh my God, Microsoft didn’t aim high enough.’ It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’
• Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates • Regarding his take on the iPad versus the iPhone. In his opinion, Apple didn’t knock it out of the park. Keep in mind, though, that Gates has been wrong before – he said something similar (in fact, about the same) about the iPod before MS came out with the Zune a few years later. source

• Well, this seems like a rejected app waiting to happen. Opera, the creators of a not-terrible also-ran Web browser, have created a version of the app for the iPhone which makes Web sites load really fast due to compression technology. Problem is, Apple has notoriously blocked apps that duplicate the phone’s basic functionality. This oughta be fun to watch. source

• 3 major publishers are opting out of Kindle’s $9.99 pricing scheme source

• The background In 2006, a video of a child with Down’s syndrome getting attacked showed up on YouTube. Italy has gone after Google for the video big time, suing major executives and arguing that they should screen their content. Google argues this is a bad idea because it’s impossible.
• The changes Now, Italy is considering taking the policy a step further. They want to force user-generated content sites like YouTube to be liable for what it posts by screening all the content that goes through and getting licenses to distribute the content online. Gah. What a bad idea.
• The motives? Who’s the Prime Minister? Oh yeah, Silvio Berlusconi. Anyway, some suggest the government’s putting the hammer down due to Berlusconi trying to protect the content of his total-conflict-of-interest media and entertainment companies. Tinfoil hat time. source

• Is this innovation, or is it overly complicated? SeededBuzz, which is in super-early beta, promises bloggers an opportunity to do mutual promotion of blog articles with other sites, all in the hopes of stirring up some viral traffic for your site. Oh, and it costs money outside of beta, but if it works, it should give your revenue model a shot in the arm. We smell something cooking here, but none of the articles we saw on the site looked like they were really worth blogging about. In this case, the early adopters have nothing to grab onto. If we were them, we’d cut some deals with notable bloggers (blogs-about-blogging CopyBlogger and ProBlogger come to mind) and get them to use the service. Then it might be worthwhile. source