My new roommate: Craig Newmark

When I got into the Kinnernet conference in Israel I found out that we were all going to have roommates so that everyone could fit into the lake-side resort here. I was a little disappointed, after all I had just spent the last few trips rooming with Rocky Barbanica and I was looking forward to having a room all to myself.

But when I opened the door and found Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s List, sitting there on his computer I knew that this would be an interesting weekend. Craig’s List is the top classified ad site on the Internet and is how I got my job at NEC.

And interesting it has remained. I’m at the Kinnernet camp which is a small, exclusive, elitist, by invitation only, affair that’s just been a thrill a minute (it’s done by Yossi Vardi, the investor who’s kids started ICQ back in 1996). How did I get invited? Yossi proudly shows me around and says “this is the guy who had the first ICQ Web site.”

At Kinnernet there are robots running around, people flying weird contraptions (one of the world’s top remote control helicopter pilots is here), weird devices of all kinds, and TONS of geeks and entrepreneurs.

But back to Craig. He’s got such a great sense of humor. His business card reads “customer service representative.”

I’ve been giving him heck for not being on Twitter. He joined this morning and said “now everyone can see how boring I am.”

Valleywag, last night, asked me to ask him if he’s gotten rich yet. He answered “if I really had a lot of money would I be rooming with Scoble?”

Hey!

Anyway, some of our fun here at Kinnernet is up on my Qik account. The wifi here is very shaky.

For more info on Kinnernet, there are quite a few people blogging and stuff. Check out Google’s Blog Search for Kinnernet.

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Era of blogger’s control is over

Louis Gray, who is now my favorite blogger who covers what’s happening in the social media space, writes a blog post about how bloggers are getting worried about the fracturing of their comments. It is currently on the top of TechMeme, and since today’s Saturday, that must mean it’s the bitchmeme of the week.

Anyway, I am seeing this trend big time. Over on FriendFeed I’m seeing better comments than I see on most blogs (and more quantity too).

The era when bloggers could control where the discussion of their stuff took place is totally over.

This is a trend that the best bloggers should embrace. Me? I follow wherever the conversation takes me.

As someone else wrote: steal my content please.

As a counterpoint, Tony Hung tells us all to NOT steal his content. Me? I’ve found that by being open with my content a lot of good has come back to me, so I’m with Louis on this one.

Bloggers, pick your sides! Who you with? Louis? Or Tony?