I’m working on some major changes around here on this blog but before discussing them, I thought I’d post a note explaining that nothing but the front page of this site is visible right now. Go ahead, try to find another page – you will just come back to the beginning again! It’s a form of insanity, I think. In this case the insanity is caused by an unknown technical problem, which I described on the WordPress support forum here: http://bit.ly/jkUw7.

It’s interesting, I had loads and loads of people trying to help me on Twitter with it – but none of the proposed solutions have worked! It’s quite confounding. Since a whole lot of help on Twitter didn’t fix the problem yet, we’ll see what the WordPress support forum does for me.

Anyway, things are going to be very different around here – just as soon as everything works again!

Below is a visualization of the most commonly used words in Sarah Palin’s resignation speech today. The full text of the speech is available online and I grabbed this image using Wordle.net – always a good thing to do when a politician gives an important speech. It’s interesting. It might be good to compare this cloud of words with a similar visualization of some of the other Republican governors resigning this summer.

Draw from this what you will. I’ve been reading coverage of the events through Memeorandum, a great source for political news, and the one thing that stands out to me in this visualization is that allegations Palin addressed the nation and not the state she was serving seem questionable given how much she talked about Alaska and Alaskans. It is also interesting to see how many times she used the word “dollars.” She used the word government far more than she did family, though when watching the video of her press conference it sounded like she was really talking about family a lot.

Do you think this kind of analysis can be truly useful? I think that it’s most useful when comparing multiple speeches for content, but even then I’m not sure how to read the meaning of word frequency.

See also a comparison I did in January at ReadWriteWeb of President Obama’s inaugural speech compared the Bushes’ and other past presidents.

Data analysis is fascinating and of course much larger opportunities to engage in it are becoming available every day online. I believe we’re going to see a whole lot of innovation making use of the text of conversations as a foundation for analysis in the near future. Not cute little stuff like this, but big, ongoing, ambitious projects. Hopefully for more than just marketing purposes. Here’s a blog post and great audio interview on that topic, if you’re interested.

RSS and blogging forefather Dave Winer has asked me to co-host a weekly podcast with him and we’re starting the first live episode in just a few minutes!
I’m very excited about it, as I’ve long enjoyed Dave’s other podcasts. I hope you’ll give it a listen, enjoy it, take your dog for walks more regularly (that’s the best time to listen to podcasts, in my experience!) and send feedback about how we can make the show even more awesome.

We’re going to be talking about cutting edge tech news and I’m sure Dave will be adding a lot of perspective from the early days of Web 2.o’s unfolding. He was there at the start and is still breaking new ground on a regular basis. It should be a fun show.

Facebook announced the imminent availability of vanity URLs today, meaning I could soon become facebook.com/marshallk or some variation. Chris Messina’s take on this is a must-read. Or I’ll just give you the short version:

I don’t need a Facebook vanity URL because I already own Marshallk.com. That’s a heck of a lot better. I can be found on Facebook by searching for my name, or via the breadcrumbs of conversation that I occaisionally drop there.

More importantly, you can also find me at Twitter, at FriendFeed (if you really want to find me on LinkedIn, Delicious, StumbleUpon or Flickr, it’s all listed at FriendFeed too) or you can call me on the phone. My phone number is listed on the side of Marshallk.com. I spend most of my days at ReadWriteWeb. I also have a physical body that occasionally makes an appearance in public.

The point is, I’m in charge here at Marshallk.com and that’s the way I like it. I know who makes the rules, so there probably won’t be any new ones I don’t like. I cannot say the same about Twitter or Facebook, not at all. Anything could happen over there, and if that’s the only connection that you and I have – it’s quite possible that connection will be broken in time. I’m here at Marshallk.com to stay. That means I’m going to stop telling people about my serf’s address at Twitter when I introduce myself, and I’m not going to promote my special link on Facebook (if I get one) – I’m just going to send people to this page if they want to find me, and then they can find where ever I happen to be hanging out through here.

I know most people don’t have their own domains registered, but for those of us who do, maybe we should reclaim some of the control that comes with ownership of digital identity. Just a thought.

Over at ReadWriteWeb, where I spend most of my time, we write mostly news and analysis but some “how-to” type posts. Below you’ll find one of my favorite how-to posts I’ve written lately, originally titled Groups: The Secret Weapon of the Social Web. I thought I’d repost it here in case any Marshallk.com readers missed it and because it’s relevant to my consulting work as well. Clients regularly hire me to advise or assist in the creation of strategic groups of contacts on various platforms. It’s super helpful. Check out this post and you’ll see why (and how).
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