But I keep finding areas where this just isn’t easy for those that contribute to the social.  My case in point would be restaurant reviews.  I have a few sites/apps that I use – Yelp, UrbanSpoon and MenuPages – and they all encourage and support reviews.  As I travel and look for feedback on new places to eat I would like to give back and share my experiences.  But in doing so I wind up adding my opinions and content to three different sites, making it difficult for me to step back and learn from that data.  I have to manage three separate accounts and if I want to pull up my favorites I can’t easily do that since they are spread out across the sites.

I can recall Marc Cantor going on about Microformats years ago and they have been widely implemented but this hasn’t prevented what naturally happens in a competitive space, that communities aren’t necessarily connected.  Clearly the technology exists to make sharing possible, but the nature of running a business means that most communities aren’t open.

Now we have several efforts underway through popular sites to make it easier to use the same credentials across numerous sites but this doesn’t fully address that your online identity isn’t portable.  In my example with restaurant reviews and votes I can’t visit one destination and see my library of reviews.  I hope that as the new generation of social sites mature that we go beyond just portable login and get into easily collecting our complete identity’s and contributions.

The Sport Shoe was pretty big in its prime, a force here in Atlanta with stores covering Atlanta.  They opened a few big box style stores and ultimately ran out of steam and closed after more than 20 years.

Just another example of how these new communities are allowing folks to get back in touch.

I am just starting to really dig through the new version to uncover all the new niceties, but the interface is clean and I can now easily get to the most common tasks in less clicks.

Oh and I won’t have to update it manually moving forward, now you can update from within WordPress itself.

On Techmeme the top two stories today (and on the day of the first commercial) were about the campaign and how everyone doesn’t seem to get it.  Michael Arrington, over on TechCrunch, says he is still confused.  It just seems so obvious that the campaign is working because everyone is talking about it.

Interesting mix in the top 100 – with many 1 way conversations mixed in among the more typical conversational users.  Also good to see that CNN creeps into the top 10.

Twitterholic: Who are these people?

Digg Dialogg lets you submit your questions to notable people (including recipients of the Digg Effect). You can even include a video of your question by posting it on iReport.

TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, and LostRemote have all covered Dialogg.

We have more in the works but they aren’t yet public so I will sit quiet for now.

So now you can embed your favorite CNN video on your blog.

Update: ReadWriteWeb covers it as well.

Anita Elberse analyzed data for music downloads and movie rentals and showed that while the long tail was indeed getting longer it wasn’t really getting fatter.  In fact her analysis showed that the blockbusters were holding or gaining in their share.

Point: In 2006, "The Long Tail" made a splash arguing that the Internet, with its expansive shelf space, would mean a smaller role for mega-hit products and a bigger one for also-rans.

Counterpoint: Now, a Harvard professor has published a study suggesting the Web is only cementing the prominence of a small number of cultural favorites.

At Issue: The basics of consumer behavior. Do we want infinite choice, or do we prefer to pick up on the likes and dislikes of others in forming our own tastes?

Chris Anderson has already responded on his blog and still sees a difference despite agreeing with her numbers.  Basically he feels it comes down to how you define the "head" and "tail".

My take is that while the tail is getting longer I see the whole graph getting deeper thanks to the Internet, so you can look at it two ways.  The blockbuster hits get even more now with digital distribution but so does the tail as everyone is now able to uncover media that otherwise wouldn’t be found.  While we may not have changed any paradigms with the Internet we have definitely made consumption easier.

Study Refutes Niche Theory Spawned by Web