The Sesame Street President

There is an interesting story in this week's edition of Time magazine about how President Barack Obama is the first U.S. president to be young enough to have grown up watching Sesame Street.

When Sesame Street founder Joan Ganz Cooney met Obama at a fundraiser last year, she was prepared to hear what she always does. "I'd have bet you a million dollars," she says, "that [Obama] would tell me how his kids watched Sesame Street." But instead the President-to-be told her that he and his little sister watched the show. "I realized that this is the first President young enough to say that."

And here's a video of Obama talking about Sesame Street:

Everything he needed to know about social media he learned from being @the_swine_flu

I've met Baratunde a couple of times, and he is hilarious. He made fun of my other blog's name from the stage at the Big Tent in Denver during the Democratic National Convention (though, admittedly, New Mexico FBIHOP is a pretty damned weird name).

He happens to be one of those people who "get" Twitter -- he uses his Twitter account in one of the best ways of anyone who I follow. Ditto with his Facebook account (and probably a hundred other social media networks that I don't know about).

He also one of the few people I know that sends out more tweets than I do, which is pretty impressive.

But here is a video of him showing, using his experience as @the_swine_flu, how to use Twitter correctly and to get attention effectively. Using humor, of course.

Pirate Party wins a seat (or two) in Sweden

Internet piracy is big news these days, especially with the trial of the owners of Pirate Bay in Sweden.

And, after European Union parliamentary elections, a political party based on copyright issues has won representation to the European Union.

Exit polls in Sweden indicate the new populist Pirate Party will be a major surprise in European parliamentary balloting.

The public broadcaster SVT survey says the Pirate Party, which advocates shortening the duration of copyright protection and allowing noncommercial file-sharing, has won 7.4 percent of the Swedish vote.

Mashable writes:

So what do these election results mean? In terms of influence, one or two votes is not much. But the fact that a party based almost exclusive on web piracy gained so many votes cannot by ignored by the Swedish political establishment. The web is a dynamic medium where people can share content and information. Attempting to stifle the flow with lawsuits has proven unpopular and ineffective.

Interesting developments in Europe for sure.

The world's shortest commencement speeches

Unless it's a celebrity speaking, and sometimes even then, commencement speeches are too long and too boring. Usually.

But the LA Times shows us some short commencement speeches.

One afternoon in 1992, [Richard] Moore sat waiting under a blazing sun to deliver his address to 12th-graders at Crossroads School in Santa Monica.

The ceremony "took place on asphalt between buildings and below basketball hoops," one parent, Ralph Saltsman, told The Times. "Innumerable speeches preceded Mr. Moore.

"When he rose to speak, he paused, looked out over the audience with great presence and said, 'Feelings.' He paused again and continued to gaze out over all assembled. Then, with feeling, he said, 'Adventures.' And paused again before concluding with 'Ideas.' "

Then Moore sat down, his impromptu three-word commencement address finished.

Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere

Via NewMexiKen.

The New York Times had a story on why bloggers stop blogging. It's no secret that the amount of bloggers who actually make money off their blogs is about the same as the people who are making money playing sports -- only the biggest of the big make money, and the rest of us are playing pickup games at the park for fun.

From the New York Times story:

Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, said that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but “it’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views.” He added, “There’s a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one.”

That’s a serious letdown from the hype that greeted blogs when they first became popular. No longer would writers toil in anonymity or suffer the indignities of the publishing industry, we were told. Finally the world of ideas would be democratized! This was the catnip that intoxicated Mrs. Nichols. “That was when people were starting to talk about blogs and how anyone could, if not get famous, get their opinions out there and get them read,” she recalled. “I just wanted to post something interesting and get people talking, but mostly it was just my sister commenting.”

I have written a few blogs. I have stopped nearly all for various reasons, so I relate with this article.

That said, I still have fun writing this blog and don't see that changing any time in the immediate future.

A newspaper-backed Craigslist competitor?

For some reason, I don't see this as working -- or if it does, then it will take a long time to actually work.

Newspapers may create an alternative to Craigslist, the website that has killed classified ads. Apparently, the American Press Institute issued a white paper about possibly setting up the Craigslist competitor:

The paper concedes that Craigslist has become a prominent brand "with a huge mass of users" and that "it will be difficult to draw traffic away." But it suggests that Craigslist may be vulnerable because of its "cumbersome and very basic" user interfaces and its recent widely publicized "front-for-prostitution" reputation. The paper quotes one publisher describing Craigslist as "a flea market on the bad side of town."

It's like Google. People are so used to using Craigslist right now that it will take something earth-shattering to shift people's behavior from firing up Craigslist when looking for things they would have previously turned to newspapers for.