As with most successful websites, the strength of LJ lies in the devotion of its userbase. Up until recently, the “management” of LJ was rather hands-off and the site grew organically. The previous owner, SixApart, recently unloaded LJ onto a new buyer, a Russian company called SUP, and, well, things are changing quickly on LJ to the dismay of many. (Put briefly: Worries about censorship. Just to be clear: I’m in no way affiliated with any of the Harry Potter folks!)

To be fair, some of these changes were happening while LJ was still owned by SixApart. Still, considering that SUP’s recent moves to monetize LJ have shaken the confidence of many users, we’re in the thick of a large-scale problem in LJ-land. It remains to be seen what will happen with the userbase long-term; many are threatening to abandon LJ completely for greener pastures. Who knows.

But while Livejournal slowly implodes, Yelp’s doing pretty darn well. The review site is much younger than Livejournal, but it’s still doing a lot of things right from the get-go. It has a small but very devoted following in most of the major cities. There’s a healthy contingent of Boston Yelpers—I’m one of them. Yelp not only exemplifies the Ultimate Web 2.0 Ethos of transparency and interactivity (putting the users in control), it also provides a fascinating model of how to turn that into money. And, as we all well know, that’s something a lot of people are scrambling to figure out.

It’s somewhat ironic that one of Yelp’s big draws online, in Boston anyway, is that it throws and sponsors some of the best events in the city. Often these events will be co-sponsored by a local business looking to strengthen its brand recognition, but not always. Yelp members get to network and attend a fun event, the co-sponsor gets word-of-mouth advertising—it seems everybody wins.

The two common threads with both LJ and Yelp are the empowerment of the userbase AND the face-to-face human element. But the moment that LJ’s new ownership started to wrest the bottom-up ownership from the userbase, there’s been a slow-boil revolt. That’s no small threat when people pull their paid subscriptions.

If things progress as they are now, Yelp will exemplify how to foster AND monetize a healthy userbase, whereas LJ will be a cautionary tale of how to hemorrhage users from one of the largest and oldest online communities in the world.

For Boston-area bloggers, Adam G is a demigod. Okay, he’s a superhero. Something like that. He’s a cool dude who works hard on covering Boston-area news with a fresh and local take. For that, he’s earned a huge following. Hopefully I’ll get to meet him in person some day, but until then March 5 will remain as “the day I almost met Adam G.”

It’s still a bit early for spring, but Plumduff and I will be going for a walk after work to enjoy our recent balmy weather. We’re done snowboarding for the season, so she’s getting ready to run some half-marathons and I’m giving my road bike a much-needed tune-up. The winter felt a bit too short this year, but I’m never one to complain when it’s time to come out of hibernation.

I was walking around the Back Bay area on Sunday night and just happened to have my camera with me. I’ve always wondered about this castle.Was this an old armory? My google-fu fails me here. Does anyone know the story behind this structure?And yes, admittedly, this is a rather sub-par photograph.

And yes, also admittedly, I’m not updating this blog NEARLY as much as I should. I’m taking a hard look at where my content is (isn’t) going, and I’m trying to figure out what makes the most sense to concentrate on here. Cardinal Rule #1 of Blogging is to keep content fresh, and I’m breaking this one left and right. It’s been nearly a month! Ai yi yi. Sorry for the silence on my part.

You can see some of my vacation photos here: San Francisco & the Bay Area, Pacifica, I-5 North, and Long Beach & Los Angeles. Up top is one of my favorite shots from Pacifica, just south of San Francisco. (see:Pacifica pier)

I got an exclusive tour of the Googleplex, too, but of course no photos were allowed. Said hi to the guys working on Google Maps, got a free lavender melon milkshake, played some old school arcade games, saw the dinosaur skeleton, even checked out the on-site gym. It’s as cool a corporate campus as everyone says it is. Definitely made going back to the ol’ cube a little more difficult—good thing I love my job ;)

And yes, for anyone wondering, the S.K.I.N. concert at Anime Expo was as amazing as I’d hoped. OK, it was several hours late and I got a severe sunburn from waiting in line to see it, but still it was absolutely one of the best experiences of my life. You can’t top being 10 feet away from some of your favorite musicians ever. After nearly a decade of seeing those guys on a TV of computer screen, the first thing I thought when I was right in front of Gackt was “damn, the framerate on this is really high…” Once a geek, always a geek.

I’ll link a more formal review of the concert a little later, but a brief review will be in the summer issue of purple SKY magazine for those of you that subscribe, and there will be a follow-up article on the four main musicians of S.K.I.N. on SKIN-Online soon (I’m a staff writer for them now, too!) Major congratulations to the SKINOnline team, which worked tirelessly at this year’s Anime Expo to get the word out about the band and the fansite, they did a fantastic job.

A special thanks to Misha of the SKINOnline team for inviting me to co-host a Japanese rock panel, it was both fun and nerve-wracking to be an “authority” on Japanese rock music in front of a room of curious listeners. Apparently I fooled some people into thinking I knew what I was talking about ;) Still, I wish I had some photos of the panel—if you have any, please send them my way.

While at Anime Expo, I also got to meet pop-rock star Anna Tsuchiya (the singing voice of Nana!) as I attended/recorded/asked questions at her press conference. She’s a fascinating person, very sophisticated, engaging, and spunky. I didn’t know much about her before Anime Expo but now I’m a fan. She really is an artist to watch with a very interesting story.

Digg dismay

I just thought I’d chime in with a growing number of news aggregator users and say that I’m quitting Digg. Not that anyone will miss me, and not that my departure will in any way harm the growth of this otherwise extraordinary tool, but I thought I’d take a moment to explain my decision.

I’ve been using Digg for over a year now, since March ’06. The quality of stories hitting the frontpage has decreased gradually as the site has gained in popularity. In the past few months I’ve removed political pages from my site preferences, just to be spared the endless political flamewars, but this hasn’t filtered out all the bile. Here’s a blog post that gets right to it: Digg marred by racism, sexism.

I was pretty proud that I held out for so long, over a year even, and just brushed off some of the dumber front page items without second thought. I’m not a PC soldier, so jokes at women’s expense about bad driving habits or garrulousness don’t bug me. (After all, in closed quarters women make jokes about male habits as well.) By no means am I an internet toughguy, but I’m not a total lightweight when it come to internet, er, misbehavior, either.

Spend a few minutes reading the comments on Digg, and you’ll see high-voted comments that go well beyond the pale, that no one I know, male or female, even in private company, would find funny.

After one post too many in this vein, I’ve decided it’s time to leave this site behind me, despite its great premise and fantastic potential. A year ago, I was really excited about what Digg could do, but truly the declining quality and maturity of its userbase is dragging the rest of the site down with it.

Let me make this clear: I do not advocate censorship by any means, so I would never call for action to be taken to stop people from commenting or submitting stories worded as they wish. (Google “misogyny on digg” and you can see that some folks have already tried.) And yes, the internet is full of bored, anonymous folks who take out their passive-aggression on the world by trolling or spewing hate. This is how the internet has been and always will be, and I won’t be a crusader in trying to fight that, as it’s an un-winnable battle.

The Digg system works in that people vote up or down comments they agree with; however, a site where gross (and incorrect!) generalizations about race, gender, nationality or political affiliation get hundreds of thumbs up of support is not one I want to visit.

I say this as a word of caution to many publications that seek to drive traffic to their websites by gaming the Digg system. Granted, Digg traffic is a boon to ad revenue, but do you really want your content associated with a site whose userbase approves of a story called “Tell girls to shut up, it’s good for them“? Associating with this in a business setting is not only very inappropriate, it’s damaging.

So before jumping headlong into the joys of news aggregators and the mystique of Web 2.0, consider carefully the potential audience you’re working to attract.

(Her blog is aptly named “malpractice,” even her blog’s URL refers to corruption in the Greek system: a “fakellaki” is an under-the-table cash gift to doctors.)

Amalia died on May 25. Her blog’s final post has become something of a memorial site (well over 1,000 comments on there and counting), as well as a rallying point for Greeks to take action against the rampant corruption in the medical system.

Corruption in any kind of bureocracy in Greece has kind of been a given for many decades. From the stories my parents told me over the years, in order to get anything done easily, it’s expected you either have an “in” with someone, or you’ll pay a bribe.

The furor over Amalia’s treatment, which has only intensified with her death, has caused nothing short of a storm in the Greek blogosphere (check out the posts on metablogging.gr tagged “Amalia”.) There are videos on youtube in her memory in several languages, here’s the one in English:

That lead me, somehow, through the magic ways of t3h intern3ts and WordPress, to this: Greek Blogger Camp! (No worries, the link is in English). Apprently they’re already on their second day of events. I’m really curious to read reports of this event as soon as they’re posted, it sounds like it would be a really fun experience… on Ios no less. Go to the Cyclades, discuss blogging? Sign me up please!

For the curious (like me!), comments on Greek site Metablogging reveal there are about 40 people in attendance. (Sorry, this link is in Greek.) Really wish I was there right now.

And on a less fun but decidedly more practical note, the NYT posted a response to last year’s advice for young graduates. Being decidedly in that group, I enjoyed this article a great deal (as I did last year’s). It all boils down to: “don’t waste your money, save tons.” Sage advice, always worth repeating. It’s discouraging though that pretty much everyone I know has some level of college debt. Juggling it with all your other financial obligations out of the gate (rent, car payments, etc) is a post-graduation rite of passage. Only the strongest will survive?

It’s funny, I was actually part of a story in the Washington Post last year about fresh graduates who lived at home to save money. In a neat little twist a few months after this story went to print, I moved out!

(It was a good exercise being on the other end of the interview as an editor/reporter, though. Ylan Mui, the reporter who interviewed me, really did a great job on the story.)