In a post earlier this month, Nicholas Carr summarized Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘second law’ and in the process coined a choice descriptive phrase for life in contemporary social networks …

And the Second Law has, as Hansell notes, a nice Gordon Moore kind of ring to it: “The amount of information we disclose about ourselves will, like the number of transistors on a slice of silicon, double every year.” I’ll buy that.

I’m troubled, though, by the implications of this exponential growth in our release of intimate data. I mean, aren’t we all pretty much tapped out already? Think forward a few years, and imagine the kind of details we’re all going to have to disgorge just to satisfy the demands of Zuckerberg’s Second Law. Shall no fart pass without a tweet?

Fred Wilson (who is an investor in the above implicated Twitter, and who must have been a bit miffed), responded thusly:

I think Nick is missing [the point] ...

... Sharing is not limited to blogging and twittering. It includes posting photos to Flickr, like the 82 photos that Obama’s photographer David Katz posted the other day. It includes videos we upload to YouTube, music we post to Tumblr, quotes we like that we reblog, sharing our travel plans on dopplr, uploading our transactions to wesabe, posting our stock trades to covestor, and many other forms of social sharing that are too numerous to outline here.

We are just at the start of the social media revolution and this is not about twittering farts. To suggest that is trivialize an important societal change that we are undergoing. As I’ve said before, my vision for social media is really simple:

every single human being posting their thoughts and experiences in any number of ways to the Internet

I think it’s going to happen and Zuckerberg’s law is in line with my thinking about how we are going to get there.

They’re both right.

We’re finding new ways to share the human experience left and right, and that’s important. And in the process, we’re doing a hell of a lot of tweeting about farts. How you view that mix has a lot to do with your personality type (tolerance for idle chatter, for example) and whether or not you’ve found real value in the process somewhere along the line to reward your attention, either as a means of expression or a format for services with concrete utility. Social media is still unable to deliver either of those values reliably for broad swaths of the population at this point. I believe we’ll get there, but I won’t blame folks that decide to tune out until we figure it out.

Ian Rogers (Topspin Media) delivered a keynote presentation at the Grammy Northwest Music Tech Summit that got me thinking. I wasn’t at the event, but I’ve gone through the deck (online here) and it’s a good, quick read.

Outside of the case studies, three themes jump out:

1. “As Chuck D said at MIDEM last year, ‘There is nothing wrong with the music business, there is a problem with the CD business.”
2. “The only perspectives that matter, are the artist and the fan.”
3. “We aren’t seeing a decline in music consumption,” along with “Or an unwillingness to pay for music” (the latter point is overstated, but he calls into question the supposed truism that ‘kids won’t pay for music’)

Ian closes the deck with a description of a new, lower volume, higher margin distribution model, enabled by the ability of artists to cultivate smaller, more targeted audiences online and the absence of massive intermediaries to depress the artist’s margins. All this makes perfect sense.

The missing piece is the overlap between the artist’s need to cultivate and broaden audience over time and the interests of consumers, which is not simply to remain loyal to a particular artist, but to also discover new artists over time in what will be an increasingly dense morass of choices. These two interests will be bridged with a combination of social tools and data driven consumer/artist matching tools.

And it’s another market that ripe for a social network that knows how to get small.

Several folks have asked how Sasha is handling the new arrival. She’s been a very proud, sensitive, and caring big sister. She shows obvious signs of stress and anxiety as she explores the new family dynamics, but so far, to her credit, she hasn’t taken it out on him. We’re obviously very proud of her and can’t wait for him to be old enough to take notes from a wise and protective big sis.

As an aside, all of this is new for me. While I have several siblings that I’ve grown up with and around, I’ve never lived full-time in a household with siblings, so it’s a fascinating and very special dynamic to watch. And we’re only on day 5 …

On 2:53am this sunday morning (11/9), Julie gave birth to a wonderful little boy. He’s healthy and beautiful and busy charming hearts throughout our extended family. We stayed for two nights in the hospital (saturday, the labor night, and sunday, a recovery night). We’re still working on a name. So far Julie and I have been exchanging proposals, last night working until late in the evening, to no avail. But of course we’re also juggling the extended family (both sides, several staying with us), sleep deprivation, getting to know the new little one, and the requisite oogling and oggling, staring at him and each-other with dumb, affectionate smiles. Ah, and I’m back at work. Not to worry, we’ll have a name soon. In the meantime, we’re enjoying his company and setting up for more visits.

• Complete photo set

In anti-spam quarters, especially those one stage removed from the problem (marketers and business observers, for example, distinguished from those on the technical side of the fight) I frequently hear that the great majority of spam comes from international quarters, especially relatively lawless 3rd world countries where US courts have no access.

We already knew that areas of Florida were one of the most important 3rd world areas for spam generation (see Spam Drops After Hurricanes Hit in Boca Raton). And now Silicon Valley joins the list as the dominant spam producing region of the current era (Spam traffic plunges after report blames server hosting company. Amazing. Apparently one firm, named McColo no less, was responsible for 2/3 of the world’s spam.

I’m sure we’ll have a new spam capital tomorrow, but let’s not be so naive as to assume that it’s coming from abroad. History suggests that it’s just as likely to be coming from under our nose.

We’re still waiting for the new addition to our family. He’s been taking his time. Apparently it’s quite comfortable in the womb, what with the warmth and endless food supply. Julie was due on 11/1, a week ago today. I’m at work again, and having an increasingly difficult time maintaing focus. This kid will have an awesome big sister and he has the most wonderful extended family, many of whom are out here from the east coast just waiting for a chance to meet him. So come on already …

And yes, I’ve heard from everyone, at home and in the office, every day this week, that there are specific things we can do to encourage him to come out (or convince him that the womb isn’t that comfortable after all). We’re trying our best, believe me. And that’s about all we should say in a public forum.

:0)

OK, this is cool. The Ocarina from Smule creates little ‘keys’ on your iPhone and actually responds to blowing to simulate a wind instrument. Very clever.

You have to check out the circle of folks playing the intro to Stairway. I miss my college dorm days …

As the markets flail about, groping for the appropriate point of value (worst week in 75 years last week, best day in 75 years yesterday), it can be clarifying to step outside of the mania of financial markets to look at the bigger picture. VC Confidential put together this handy summary of the likely future of the marco economy.

Highlights:

• this is a credit crisis based downturn, and as such it is likely to have a longer term impact
• look for a series of further credit shocks as additional markets of consumer debt run into default spikes (student loans, credit cards, etc)
• each of these shocks will threaten banks and other lenders; gov’t will need to stand by to prevent bank defaults—we’re nowhere near the end of gov’t assistance
• look to Japan’s credit crisis of the 90’s for one parallel; but we don’t know the timing of the ‘flush out’
• Matt McAll (VC Confidential author) predicts 4-6 years of flat to modest growth; that’s a tough road

One other note:
I grew up studying the economy under the tenure of Alan Greenspan. During the 90’s I remember the cross economy comparisons of US saving rates vs. virtually every other economy on earth—we made more and saved virtually none of it. Other people didn’t behave that way. I remember looking at the trend lines and seeing US household savings rates approach negative territory, meaning that on average, we spent more than we earned, and over time that picture was continuing to get worse. There were various explanations for why this made sense or wasn’t as bad as it looked … and now those explanations get to sit alongside the ‘new economy’ explanations for ridiculous dotcom valuations and a stock market that had outgrown P/E and P/B ratios. Gravity is a bitch.

Hey, I’m not 20 any more and being old enough to have a little perspective is not a bad thing

So one week ago, my girls left for New York to visit family. By all accounts, they’ve had a wonderful and important trip. My littlest brother, Yoshi, turned 6 while they were out there, and he was able to hang with Sasha for several days. He’s even had a chance to spend quality time with dirt and bugs in the country. And all of that is great. Except that I miss my girls. I’ve been able to do some things that I usually can’t (sleep in, shop) and the break in my routine has been a good excuse to re-think some habits. But come on, a week is a long time. Stand down, sea anemones of the east. Release them from your tentacles and send them back!

Unless Virgin plays cruel tricks with us, they’ll be back late tonight. Welcome home you two.

I love that Fred Wilson, one of the more famous VCs behind social media and 2.0 widget projects, is growing tired not just of web 2.0 stuff, but of the role that social media is playing in our lives. The excitement about these companies, especially the Facebook and Twitter types, is more than overblown. They have been exercises in the mass generation of banal and empty content. Useful at times, but also another rathole of clutter to wade through in our copious free time. Oop, there I go again ranting about internet noise.

In any event, the fact that some VCs are beginning a search for companies that will have positive social impact, rather than just ‘gain wide distribution, disrupt markets, and score an exit,’ is very encouraging.

From Fred:

So I am not bored by the web. I do want to figure out how to use the web to answer some of Umair’s questions, how do we:

Organize the world’s hunger.
bq. Organize the world’s energy.
bq. Organize the world’s thirst.
bq. Organize the world’s health.
bq. Organize the world’s freedom.
bq. Organize the world’s finance.
bq. Organize the world’s education.

We are not doing enough of that right now. And that has to change. Maybe the answers lie in what’s
next. I am going to try to find out over the next year or two.

Here here. Things are getting more interesting …