The old Google made a fortune on ads because they had good content. It was like TV used to be: make the best show and you get the most ad revenue from commercials. The new Google seems more focused on the commercials themselves.

So much of this news story is hauntingly familiar to me from fieldwork with Samoan migrants: the role of family, the half-hearted attempts to verify a person's identity that fail, the strong spiritual connection Te'o thought he felt with Kekua, and the hoax itself.

Why Anil favorites so much. ‘In short, favoriting or liking things for me is a performative act, but one that's accessible to me with the low threshold of a simple gesture. It's the sort of thing that can only happen online, but if I could smile at a person in the real world in a way that would radically increase the likelihood that others would smile at that person, too, then I'd be doing that all day long.’

The head of a company that makes videos go viral explains exactly how it's done. The commenters go crazy. Very interesting in the specific sense, but even more so in the overall evolution of media.

Redefining identity digitally. "As part of their Identity 2.0 profile, the user says what they want, and companies come looking for business. With companies in a position of constantly bidding for customer loyalty,