Reading List: Fuzzy Digital Math

Facebook’s Demise: The idea that Facebook’s best days are behind it has jumped from blogs into the mainstream. The Economist is even asking the question, gingerly. It’s case is pretty similar to the bone the blogosphere has chewed for the past week. Facebook’s stagnating in its early markets. It’s hear The Economist makes an unfortunate leap, unable to resist the comparison to MySpace. Facebook might not be cool anymore, the writer asserts. Facebook was never really built to be cool. It was built to be useful. When it ceases to be useful, that’s when we can seriously talk about its demise. The truth is when I speak to my teenage nieces about Facebook, it almost seems like a chore to them, something they do because they need to do it. Regardless, The Economist’s readers are following its lead, with 78 percent voting Facebook has peaked. The Economist

Web Publishing Woes: There’s one sure-fire place to go for tales of woe: newspaper publishing. Today’s victim: The Guardian, the venerable 190-year-old British liberal institution. Its foes at The Telegraph are enjoying needling The Guardian by claiming it could just go out of business. The paper points out The Guardian lost 33 million in the past year and is still woefully inefficient. The amusing part is when The Telegraph compares how many print staff it takes the Guardian to reach its audience compared to other papers. The truth is these numbers are crazy when compared to a digital environment in which a company like Instagram with five employees can build a 5 million user base in about a half a year. The Telegraph

URL Link-Shortener Commercials? This one is either the next huge Web business or a horrible idea. New startup Bre.ad came up with the idea to offer yet another URL shortener for sharing links, but there is a twist: When users click on your shortened URL, they’ll see a five-second promo you chose. It could be for a personal project or a charity. Or, in the case of celebrities, it could be a straight-up advertisement. It will be interesting to see the direction Bre.ad goes in the market. The “personalalized billboard” thing sounds sketchy. People are shilling themselves enough in social media without making the entire thing Amway 2.0. But for celebrities, there’s a case to be made that their audiences wouldn’t mind a short sponsor message when clicking through on a link. Ad.ly has already proven there’s a ripe market for helping celebs monetize their social media followings. After all, would people clicking on a Kim Kardashian link on Twitter get offended? Bre.ad