The session grid is already looking really cool. My favorite session so far:

Best Practices Panel: I am a Twitter God and So Can You

The Twitterati are masters at gaining followers, driving conversation, and assimilating the tsunami of commentary and links that stream to them on a daily basis. In this session, our panel of experts will discuss what strategies, tactics, and tools have taken them to the top of the twitosphere.

Writing Tweets that get attention and retweeted * Services and utilities you can’t live without * Smart followership — knowing who (and how many) to follow * The best devices and software for mobile posting * Timing your Tweets

For a brief period, we’re offering seats to the full two days for $199.00. This bargain price is available only to the next 14 registrations as of this post (they’ve already started disappearing).

After the early bird seats sell out, the two-day event will cost a whopping $249. On May 15, any remaining seats will go up to $395. So make sure to grab yours now.

Every couple of weeks, a meme stressing about “an increase in Twitter spam” wanders the Internet. Each time I see this meme appear, I turn away from my keyboard and bang my head against my desk three times.

Twitter spam. Really? Are you even paying attention? I’ll say it again, you choose who you follow. If you’re following a newsbot, you’re going to get news spam. If you follow a good friend who can’t stop RTing, you’re going to to get retweet spam, but complaining about it is like standing the middle of a freeway asking, “Why do these cars keep hitting me?”

Go read the full post.

There are a couple of genius ads, of course, like the Cadbury Gorilla one mentioned in the article, but:

not enough agencies are adjusting to the online world, the IPA warned. In its worst-case scenario, the resulting decline in paid-for advertising space could see £16m ($23m) of revenues lost by the industry by 2016, if agencies fail to create new products and services to cater to the social media world.

The good news is that this is a problem on both ends: advertisers are looking to create new advertising products that work in a social media setting (and make them money), while at the same time social networks like Facebook are going to be scrambling to find effective ways to monetize their pageviews.

It seems likely that they’ll end up finding some answers in the middle, out of necessity if nothing else.

There’s a good roundup of the web tactics from both sides on Ars Technica (link found here, and the really interesting point in the piece is that there is such a marketing battle being fought between the two online.

Apparently the opinion of the digerati is important even in determining the justness of war.

Ok, now I’m just fishing for the Techmeme add.

The good thing about all the stir that the WSJ has created is that Network Neutrality is going to gain a little more public traction, especially if the “unsubstantiated” rumors about shifting interests at Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google turn out to be true.

I believe that a lot of innovation on the web comes from the fact that it is built on “dumb pipes,” and it’s also this fact that creates an economy of abundance instead of an economy of scarcity.

Throughout history, though, the big money has been made with an economy of scarcity. I’m surprised there are any corporate interests that support the idea of network neutrality. It upsets all the classic business rules and *gasp* makes life better for the consumer, the innovator, and the small business.

In my mind, it is not enough to offer high-level “access” to business at the same price, because not all businesses have access to the same funds. I see little to no difference between Lessig’s position and one that allows large businesses to easily maintain monopolies in their market by quashing competitors.

I just got an e-mail from David Plouffe—and I’m guessing most people who read this blog probably got the same one—talking about a really cool initiative to boost civic engagement that, and here is the key component, utilizes online tools to coordinate offline interactions.

Check it out:

I just recorded a special video message — from a place you might recognize — about this weekend’s Change is Coming house meetings, and why you should join tens of thousands of your fellow supporters.

Watch the video and find a Change is Coming house meeting near you. Or host one yourself and invite your friends, family, and neighbors.

At the house meetings, you’ll reflect on our campaign, discuss the future of this movement, and identify some ways to get involved in your community.

Meeting hosts will report back, and your feedback will be instrumental in guiding this movement through some important and unprecedented territory.

This grassroots organization has always been about more than an election. It’s about transforming our country — and we’ve only just begun.

In tougher economic times, it’s harder to get away with experimental marketing, especially if it’s hard to quantify:

Calculating ROI from social media efforts is no different. If ROI doesn’t apply to social media marketing, then social media should not be used for marketing.

But I think this is a failure of data analysis, not a failure of marketing. The real questions is: How do we start to quantify and standardize the results of social media marketing campaigns?

The good news, according to the source article, is that online ad spending isn’t supposed to take a big dive the way traditional ad spending is expected to. The bad news is that social networks have never been the fertile ground for advertising the way that search has been.

I wouldn’t be surprised if MySpace actually showed a growth in online ad revenue next year, but I think that the real revenue model for social networks is going to be elsewhere. Facilitating user transactions, for example, would be a great source of revenue.

It’s worth clicking through just to see the hideous algorithmically determined opening sample frame, where I appear to be poised to hurl. Note that I finally got a haircut last week.

Note to self, audio only next time.

On one level it sounds a little ridiculous. “Oooh! Google is reading your e-mail!”

But on another level I think there are some real and valid points in here that ought to be thought about.

In my mind, the two things that this video surfaces that actually deserve some attention are:

1. Email drafts are sent unsecured over the open internet
2. Making web apps more desktop-like means removing security features

The drafts situation is worrisome largely because it seems to defeat the purpose of having any sort of secure connection for your webmail.

While I think the amount of e-mail that gets actively “snooped” is probably a lot lower than it seems (let’s be realistic, does your boss really have time to read through all the e-mail getting sent and received by all of her employees?), it does matter from a trust standpoint to maintain a secure environment for the user.

And I understand Google’s interest in making web appls feel more like desktop apps. I’m in total support of that—there are plenty of advantages to having off-site data and off-site applications, not the least of which is that it makes switching devices nearly pain-free.

I also approve of the idea that we want web-based applications to look, feel, and respond like native desktop applications. That’s the holy grail of web apps.

But I don’t think that should extend to ignoring the realities of how a web app works. A gmail desktop shortcut can look and feel like a desktop application, but still supply menu controls that identify HTTPS sites and perform other web-native functions. And I think that it should.