Skepticism shows up in the mainstream press. Over-promises on market penetration, and WiFi, are the villains of the piece.

Update: Charles Hudson recounts his adventures with Bluetooth enabled headset, a handset, and a Toshiba laptop, where he runs into some of the architectural limits of a specification designed for pair-wise use. Another problem hiding here is that Bluetooth has a number of 'profiles' that embed quite a lot of application level mechanism and policy, rather than adopting the 'we just speak IP' philosophy of WiFi.
6:27:20 PM    

The Guardian, of all places, asks the question I have about all of this: Haven't we passed this way before? What's different and why?

Fortunately, I can avoid doing a full bore Old Fart routine, because Howard Rheingold has long specialized in tracking this area. Here he has a short post with useful links to address the question. Even better, check out this chapter in his Virtual Communities book for a refresh on some of the earliest ventures down the path, and some of the grand hopes of the time. (By curious coincidence, last Friday I encountered Jacques Vallee at Institute for the Future - both mentioned in hlr's chapter. Guess what he's doing these days?)

So what's new? Ubiquitous and inexpensive platform. International scope. More competitive marketplace. Arguably higher tolerance for novel organizational forms. What's the same? People. And that could be all that matters.

Update: I missed this rather pungent put-down of the category by the inimitable Mr. Winer. It's not for nothing that he holds badge #2 of this blog's Old Farts' Club. He does come to the same conclusion: It's the people, not the technology. Via Mochio
4:20:37 PM    

Over at Many-to-Many Clay Shirky and Ross Mayfield have a minor difference of opinion on the probable evolution of the network structure and distribution of links (attention) in the new referral service LinkedIn. Emergent Power Law or flat and social network? My money is with Clay, and since it's started out as more or less a Power Law, all we need is status quo to win.

A good read if you care about 'social software' (whatever that is). Remember the best way to learn a domain is to watch informed people argue about it...
3:51:42 PM    

Check out Greg Costikyan's card based simulation game of the dot-com boom and bust. Download it just to read the cards, which are a hoot and appropriately cynical tongue-in-cheek. [Nobody I know there. Nope. Nope.] Complexity looks to be firmly in the beer & pretzels category (or maybe it should be chardonnay and sushi, given the domain). Here's a good excuse to rattle on about lead investors, rounds, and business plans without putting wallet or sanity at risk.

Via BoingBoing.
1:32:04 PM