Sunshocked

It was Twitter that finally did it. I simply could not sign up for another social network without taking a long hard look at the ones I was already on. It’s time to say goodbye.

Being a white, heterosexual male in the tech industry is not without its challenges. Some of the biggest revolve around how to make the tech industry less white, heterosexual, and male.

I just signed up for two accounts. One at UselessAccount.com and one at Change.org. Let’s consider which would win in a fight to the death.

At 29, I’ve lived longer than Jimi Hedrix, James Dean, and Kurt Cobain. I had almost given up on celebrity, but then I go and get named Time Magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year. All I can say, “It’s about frickin’ time.”

There needs to be a better word to describe companies that embrace community, clarity, and agility as a business model. Though they have nothing to do with Ruby on Rails, AJAX, or tag clouds, there’s something decidedly “Web 2.0″ about Nintendo lately.

It was neither High Fidelity nor Merlin Mann that inspired the following very important list of why lists are very important, but the surfeit of posts on Digg, Tailrank, and Reddit that are merely compilations of things already known—and, specifically, that these posts are wildly popular. Here’s why.

Admit it. You secretly hate MySpace. Maybe not even secretly, maybe you wear the shirt everywhere. Still, you’ve been forced to respect it because it’s an unstoppable juggernaut with over one hundred million members. Well, let’s burst some bubbles.

I like to name my little projects in a similar fashion to military operations. Redesigning my website to make it more accessible was Project Infinite Access, revamping my wardrobe was Project Dashing Devil, and vying for a raise was Project Mo Money. It is with the same spirit of grim determination coupled with all-around jauntiness, that I embark upon Project Internet Famous.

Exxon got outed last summer in its funding various “Think Tanks”. Now it seems to be getting into the Web 2.0 crowd by making videos and posting them to YouTube. Oh, and forgetting to mention that they’re Exxon.

Pope Leo X, despite having an awesome rap star name, is immortalized in time as the Pope to get 95 bitch slaps from Martin Luther. Luther was excommunicated and had to go into hiding, but spawned The Reformation nonetheless. Not bad for one piece of paper nailed to a door.