There’s a critical mass (or tipping point, if you are so inclined) of people you need to follow such that a micro-community emerges. Once that happens, you get two things. One is quick notification of important/interesting events/news/blog posts. In fact since I’m following so many web analytics folks, I no longer have to rely on my RSS reader to bring me the big stories — the community points them out. Of course you need to be following the right people for your interests – people who say interesting things.

Second is ability to get feedback. I admit I don’t use this a lot, but it can be handy, depending on your community size. Of course it didn’t help me find a 13-year old copy of Windows…

(In response to Eric’s comment in one of his posts, yeah, my “lazy blogger” tweet to him, welcoming him to Twitter, was paraphrased from something June said to me at eMetrics last spring, about Twitter being the lazy man’s blog. At the time I couldn’t tell if she felt it was a compliment or a condemnation, but now I know.)

When I re-energized this site, I started putting a blogroll up, but quickly decided that was not scalable. Instead, I decided to use del.ico.us with the tag wablogger … and I used a very loose definition of “web analytics”.

It seems better to have a set of social bookmarks rather than trying to maintain one’s own. If you agree, please consider contributing … I encourage you to sign up for del.icio.us (they have a great Firefox extension that makes getting started insanely easy) and start tagging web analytics blogs with ‘wablogger’.

I dismissed Twitter when I first tried it, but later read that what I experienced was typical, and exploring a bit can lead to an appreciation for the nuances of the service. But it wasn’t until I read Jeffrey Walker’s two Twitter posts that I decided to take another look.

With a little web spelunking, there’s an interesting social web under Twitter. (e.g. Jenna Jameson is “friends” with Barack Obama and John Edwards) but from what I can tell, the definition of “friend” is pretty loose. The “six degrees” aspect isn’t being visualized yet, but that isn’t to say people aren’t trying various mashups: witness David Troy’s Twittervision and Twittermaps. For more, check out the Twitter Fan Wiki.

I can see a great use of Twitter: as a (non-human) status service. In this specific case, you can see BART service messages – useful if you need real-time status updates for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Another: Red Sox updates! Having Twitter as a micro multicast/social alert system (or heck, an emergency broadcast system) is a great idea – it’s faster than the typical way one uses RSS. To that end, I wonder what Bob Wyman thinks of this “publish/subscribe” system.

I know I started the post sounding skeptical, but the Twitter crew did the right thing by providing an API to the service. That means it’ll become a platform, and taken in directions the developers haven’t thought of yet. One of these may end up being a killer app.

Microsoft, not to be denied an ad network, purchased Seattle-based aQuantive — for an amazing US$6B in cash, an 85% premium. That means Microsoft gets Avenue A | Razorfish and Atlas.

This of course comes on top of the Google-DoubleClick and Yahoo!-RightMedia deals. Now ValueClick‘s shares are up. Will they be picked up by Ask.com … or perhaps Omnicom Group? Or are we done for now?

A couple thoughts here:

Yahoo! has been doing this for a while (e.g. including Yahoo Answers, Flickr photos, etc). While the more comprehensive and contextual results are probably better for most searchers, it comes at a cost: both page construction time (due to multiple fetches the search front-end needs to do for each kind of content) and page weight (the amount of stuff the browser has to download and render). When you’re known for your near-instant results, slowing down those results to add more stuff may result in less satisfaction, not more. I know Y! Search is spending a lot of time trying to get the balance right, and I’m sure G is worrying about the same thing.

Why did they pick “Darth Vader” as the example search query in the press release? I don’t really follow Google but does it have something to do with doing no evil?

Google grabs DoubleClick. Yahoo! buys the rest of Right Media it doesn’t already own. Now the NY Post is reporting that Microsoft’s trying to buy 24/7 Media. What’s interesting about the article is that it says ad firm WPP may also be a buyer.

Who’s left? Will Ask go for aQuantive?

Speaking of booting, tonight it’s all about whether or not the puck was really over the goal line.

A different video review result may have made a big change in the series, but hey, inconclusive means no change from the on-ice call. This “controversy” (the sports shows need something to talk about) follows a different Rangers-Sabres video review that everyone was talking about yesterday, where an apparent goal by Marcel Hossa was disallowed due to a distinct kicking motion. (I watched the play over and over, and to me it was not a goal — just recently the Sharks had a goal disallowed for the same reason, and it was even less obvious in the Sharks’ case.)

I’m fine with the video review system, and I don’t care how long it takes. And yeah, the officials really do seem to be off their game in the last couple of weeks. But to get whiny about it is missing the point — you should not be relying on officiating to win.