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In over a decade doing all this webby publishing networking stuff, nothing I've seen has captured the imagination and conversation of non-web-geeks than social networking behemoth Facebook.

Indeed, friends who stared at me glassy-eyed while I spieled on about paradigm shifts, convergence, personal web publishing, and sharing with strangers who are now friends, are now quickly on my case about not clicking on the widgety apps they send me to become a pirate, hug/poke/tickle them, take a quiz, install an application, vote on something incidental, compare traits or skills, or catch up on people I don't remember from Jr. High.

Blogging In China - They Have Open Source Conferences Too

I recently found this article in China's Danwei online magazine. It highlights an article written on the recent blogging conference held last week in Hangzhou, China (it was the second annual!), and touches on reasons why the Chinese government should be embracing, not blocking, these future-thinking, web 2.0 savvy citizens and bloggers.

Read this article here, a summary of the conference, the people in attendance and the issues and topics that were covered.

Oliver Stone Among A List Of Big-Wigs to Produce Shorts

The next Olympic Games is just under 2 years away, and there still seems to remain a slight question mark on the topic of citizen journalism in China and how blogging and people adhering to open source communities reporting from the games will be received.

After a month of having his new film delayed, Oliver Stone is in China for the opening of "World Trade Center". (Beijing imposed the delay in an attempt to promote homegrown films.) It looks like Stone will be doing more than just that for the Chinese. He has been named, along with 2 other international directors, Italian Giuseppe Tornatore and Majid Majidi from Iran, to create a short film promoting the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The Olympic Committee has already brought on board the likes of Steven Spielberg as a consultant for the opening and closing ceremonies, while also summoning the great work of Ang Lee to boot. They seem to want to include the great filmmakers of our time to help cultivate a positive impression of Beijing and China to the world. What better person than one of the most controversial directors known to current day film!

Registering Your Legal Name To Blog In China

The powers that be over the blogosphere in China, China's Net regulator Ministry of Information Industries (MII), has just put forth an initiative that may be issued in the near future, where upon all bloggers in China will be required to register their real names if they wish to continue to blog. This has been instigated in an attempt to put a stop to or get control over the insults, curses, libels and fraud typically found on blogs - a tactic that is both illogical and absurd. And what the hell are they going to do to these "real name" bloggers when they find them?!

10,000 Unique Visitors Every Day... Over 1 Million A Year

Elise Bauer gets traffic. Here are some notes on her session about what you can do to build your traffic and keep people coming back.

In building blog traffic, there are 3 major pillars: Content, Community, Technology

Content

• Be either useful, entertaining or timely - nailing them all would be a stellar blog, but if you were to pick and execute just one: USEFUL - information for the present, for the future, for the past.
• It's more important to have quality work than to post more frequently.
• Be intelligent and thoughtful when you write.
• Using images and photographs helps to break up the monotony of the page.
• Write well and concise. It's hard to read long, rambling posts online, so refine your work.
• Consider the headlines and post size. There are two ways to write a title 1. With a link in it 2. Smart and witty
• Include writing about polls, top 10 lists, contest, how-to's, controversial topics.
• Be Excellent - write something that you are proud of, work that is good enough to show the most important people in your life: your family.
• Blog about things you care about A LOT. You have to be passionate about your subject.