I'm not so sure I agree with the metrics.

I've shown in the past that they are easily gamed, and don't provide an accurate measure of value. Other than helping you weed out a spammer, there is no metric that recognizes "quality" or the even-more-important "relevance."

I always try to provide something to the people with whom I interact. It might be value, information, or merely a chuckle. But it's something other than driving traffic to me, or adding to a mythical "collection" of followers. The numbers mean only what you project upon them.

Can we be certain that the publishing industry isn't sitting back and salivating a little at this?

They get to sell "safe" copies of all those old books, and reap the same benefits that the RIAA did once everyone upgraded from cassettes to CDs.

As a matter of fact, why not go through and "sanitize" the content as we go, eliminating all of those troublesome details that might lead people to inconvenient notions about history and culture.

The Fire Department is here for your collection, Mr. Wilson...

You're quite welcome. We can both take credit for it!

You're onto something with this analogy.

Do you know *why* the valence bonds in diamond are stronger than in graphite? Diamonds crystallize in three dimensions, graphite does so in sheets of two dimensions.

Friendships are stronger when they have more dimensions to them - and yes, also when they are forged under shared pressure.

The rate of increase of the human population is already declining.

Estimates are now that worldwide human population will top out at 14-billion, then slowly decline.

There is enough room for all of us, unless we do something stupid like cripple the world's economy.

When economic conditions improve, people have fewer children.

It all smacks of attention-whoring if you ask me.

Well, you didn't, but I went there anyway.

Trav --

I don't give a rip about what @oprah does.

I am curious to see what the 500,000 people who joined BECAUSE of Oprah do.

I'm looking at the fluid dynamics of Social Media and Networks - how information propagates, how people form new relationships and friendships, and what they do with them.

Focusing on @oprah is like paying attention to the rock that caused the ripples, when the interesting part is the ripples themselves.

Micropersuasion is dead.