Trying to get back into blogging more regularly, but today is not a day for a thoughtful post. Instead, a few random thoughts.

Vocabulary Words--Some new vocab words that I've encountered in the past week or so:

• Mindcasting--Jay Rosen's replacement for lifecasting, mindcasting is the idea of using services like Twitter to share ideas and resources, rather than what you had for breakfast or where you're going after work.

• Brandjacking--When someone messes with your brand, something made both far easier and potentially far more damaging with the rise of social media. Dominos and Amazon are two recent corporate victims, but it can happen to individuals, too.

Is the Kindle a Reading Game Changer? --Interesting article in WSJ on how ebooks will change our reading habits. I'm not sure  if I agree that its ebooks that are changing the reading experience, though. One of the suggestions was that reading a book will become a more social experience where you can see people's comments and annotations on the pages of your book and that is a big change. Interestingly, when I was reading this article at the WSJ site, I was already having a social experience as I could read the Diigo comments left by others who'd been there before me. From what I can see, tools like the Kindle are bringing experiences I already have on my computer to another device and making them more mobile.  It seems to me that we've already changed our reading habits to accommodate the idea of people commenting, annotating, etc., especially since many people do most of their reading online to begin with. Or maybe it's just me.

The Real Reason Companies Are Terrified of Social Media--Agreed that many companies are afraid that employees will be able to build their personal brands, potentially at the expense of the company brand. Also agreed that smart companies will focus on keeping shining stars rather than on tightening up on the use of social media.

But I think the deeper fear issue is a fear of loss of control of everything, not just of the company brand. In my experience, organizations most resistant to social media are those organizations with the biggest control issues. They're the ones that need everything vetted from the top down, that don't want employees talking to anyone without explicit permission to release information. Social media messes with traditional mechanisms of control and power on all levels and unless and until organizations get more comfortable with new kinds of "control" and "power," they will resist. 

Visualizing Social Bookmarking--For some reason, the concept of social bookmarking continues to escape many people I talk to, including my 21 year old who "hates" Delicious, despite her love affair with Twitter and blogging. This visualization is one of the best explanations of it I've seen, so I think I'll use it the next time I try to describe the concept.

Will Everyone Have Twitter by August 22?--If this is true, I'm going to need to revist my attitudes toward Twitter. It's beginning to sound like not using Twitter would be like not having a phone.