Damn, since Pownce opened up just a week or so ago I’ve been getting a steady stream of people who want to be my friends. Twitter is still ahead, but growing far slower. Just today I added another 120 friends to Pownce for a total of 839. More than 4,400 on Twitter and more than 1,200 on Facebook. Here’s an interesting interview about how Pownce came about.

All four of the social networks I’m on, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce are VERY active. How we’ll keep up with all of these I have absolutely no idea.

It’s real interesting that many of the blogs are playing up Skinkers and Microsoft’s new P2P video distribution system as a “Joost killer” or, more humorously, a “Slingbox killer.” My Slingbox has a tuner. I don’t remember seeing a tuner in my Media Center box upstairs so how could a piece of software kill my Slingbox? I don’t get that.

These things have another problem: the Web is a better video distribution network cause we don’t have to leave our browsers where we all feel comfortable.

Why else? Cause the Web can be fixed. The Web can be added to. The Web can be participated in. AOL-style clients lock us in, can’t be updated on our timetable. And how do we get our own content into Joost? Anyone know? I don’t.

I look at how my son uses media. He dives in and through various Web sites snacking on media along the way. A YouTube video here. A New York Times video there. A PodTech video next. A Kyte.TV video later. Now he’s already using his camera to upload photos from the street. He’s joined the media creation revolution. Can’t wait until Apple turns on the video camera on the iPhone. Wait until he sees that Facebook has a video feature. THAT is the thing everyone in the video industry should be worried about and focused on. Anyone notice that you can upload video to my Kyte.tv

Why would he start up another environment just to watch video? Especially when many of these let him participate by throwing comments up, or chatting, or doing other things?

I just am not a big believer in yet another AOL-style client. I think the Web is far more interesting. Don’t miss what Facebook is doing with video, though. It’s totally not sexy. Not wrapped in a pretty client. No big deals with Viacom, etc. But I bet that in two years it’ll be something that changes the industry. Joost? Skinner? I don’t think so.

What do you think?

Oh, and don’t forget about the iPhone. Heheh.

Tony Macdonell has a good comment: Adding Friends is a Full Time Job, and I’m Tired of It.

Someone will solve this. Someday. The pain is just starting to come into sharp focus for lots of us.

Facebook: this is your chance to radically solve this for everyone. Explode YOUR identity system before someone else does.

It’s been a long time since I’ve last listened to Adam Curry, founder of PodShow. I think it’s cause I got rid of my Sirius satellite radio. Anyway, his show is really interesting and I think he’s getting back the voice that I missed from the early days. PodTech could learn a lot from listening here and noticing how he works in his community into his content. That always is what interested me about Podcasting and all this new stuff. The medium is two-way. At PodTech we’ve been working too hard to optimize our one-way video.

You’ll start seeing PodTech turn to be a better listening company. Just today Jeremiah Owyang opened up a Facebook group for PodTech. You know how to find that, right? Add me as a friend on Facebook and you’ll see it on my profile.

Thanks Adam for the inspiration.

I started Google Reader to see what the bloggers are yakking about and Ed Bott was the first poster I saw. He’s complaining that A-list bloggers don’t get it right and don’t correct their posts. What caused him to write this? A story that’s at the top of Techmeme that announces that Skinkers and Microsoft announce a live, streaming content venture. But the problem with Ed’s whine is that I see three headlines on TechMeme, one from “One Microsoft Way;” another from “TechCrunch”; and another from Don Dodge who works at Microsoft. That’s it. And all three stories don’t have the problems that Ed is going on and on about. So, not sure who the “A listers” who got it wrong are. Ahh, I see, Long Zheng wrote a post that details it.

Interesting that I saw both of these guys’ posts before I saw any of the offending ones. Maybe that’s why I like reading feeds more than I like reading TechMeme lately.

But it’s also why I’m at least partially off of the “break the news first” bus. That business is getting a LOT more competitive and I find I’d rather sit back and read everyone’s feeds and pick the best post out of the bunch for my link blog.

One other thing, I told an audience recently that I don’t believe anything on the blogs for the first 24-hours. So I guess I actually agree with Ed’s thesis. If it doesn’t get refuted by someone who is actually involved then it probably is true. Except over on sites like Valleywag and Fake Steve. There they don’t even try to get the facts right and are TOTALLY for entertainment value. I read those things just for a laugh and don’t try to refute every little post they make about me (which seems like every few hours lately which is funny cause Nick Douglas of Valleywag, about a month ago, wrote a post saying I was irrelevant. If I’m irrelevant and they are writing about me what does that make them? Heheh).

Anyway, onward. I’d rather work with mainstream press than take potshots at them. Same with bloggers. We all can do a better job.

UPDATE: Of course it’s not just bloggers who don’t get things right. Here’s a Dow Jones refutation of a professional news outlet’s claim that Dow Jones has been acquired.

Translation: be skeptical! And distrust things that don’t have open comments.

So, it turns out my videos are NOT working on the iPhone. At least not the ones that used to work on the iPod. They faked me out, start playing and seem to play fine for a while but then the video player crashes. Not a good experience. We’re working on it, but for now you might want to buy Visual Hub. That’s the tool Rocky uses to convert my show to various formats. The new version lets you convert from a number of different formats into iPhone formats. I’ll let you know when our formats work well. I’m doing some experiments as we speak.

Anyway, in the meantime, you might want to watch David Pogue’s New York Times “iPhone Song.”

My son, Patrick, says that of all the reviewers he liked Pogue’s videos the best. If you know my son, that’s hearty praise cause he watches EVERYTHING that hits the Internet about Apple.