There is a really interesting meme this weekend on TechMeme, kicked off by Loic Le Meur’s post “My Social Map is Totally Decentralized but I Want it Back on My Blog” where he says:

The challenge for Friendfeed and the like is that while I really like all my services gathered in one place, I would rather that these would be centralized on my blog instead of a third party service. Yes you can cross post or add badges, but it’s not really like a center feed in your blog. What I like about my blog is that it is my space, I own it, I can customize it and change it, I do not depend on anybody (except the software and host, TypePad of course, needless to say).

First of all, I am finding FriendFeed to be a great service for discovering conversations. So it certainly has utility to me, but I still really want an online me. (BTW, apparenlty in the comments of a TechCrunch post Scoble’s getting an interview on Monday … I must point out we interviewed them a few months ago on ReadWriteTalk ahh well, I guess he is MSM now - jk buddy!)

However, back to Loic’s point I also really want a centralized place where all my online conversations live. For me, I’d probably host a seperate WordPress blog just for all these conversations at some new URL like my name (which I do own but haven’t setup) but I realize for many people their blog or social network account would be fine. I pesonally feel this pain every time I’m ask to provide ‘my website’ on the web. Such as here:

& in Twitter here

I could imagine entering all of these, but would love a page I have control over which would incldue all of them:

• Profitable Signal’s Posts
• Just My Posts from ReadWriteWeb
• Interviews on ReadWriteTalk
• My Delicious Links
• My Twitter Posts (Tweets?)
• My Posts on the mSpoke Blog
• My Facebook Activity Stream - if it ever opened up completley
• My Linked in Activity
• Plus a few I’m sure that I’m missing …

(For a nice graphical version, check out Brain Solis’ post - you need to scroll to see it)

Interestingly, I talked to Chris Messina about this at SxSW and this is very much part of the vision of DiSo - which seems to be missing from the conversation on TechMeme. If you aren’t familar with DiSO, check out this great video interview by Chris on it:

The Existential DiSo Interview from Chris Messina on Vimeo.

I’m actuall on a long weekend vacation in South Beach Miami with my wife, but this hit a nerve so I figured I’m jump into the conversation quickly. However, it’s definitely time to head back to the beach and margaritas

ESPN has made headlines today (via MediaWeek) by announcing that they will no longer be working with ad networks. Specifically, Eric Johnson (EVP Multimedia Sales @ ESPN) said:

We’re heading down a path where it no longer suits our business needs to work with ad networks

Not surprisngly, the blogosphere is clamoring about the news. Including Jason Calacanis explaining “ad networks are for losers.” As the Media Week post points out, this is actually a continuation of a theme from Millard’s comments at the IAB Meeting that: “we must not trade our advertising inventory like pork bellies.”

I continue to be very bullish on the networks and exchanges. (Although, I’d like to see them take a more open approach — come on OpenX!!) Regardless if we end up with an open or closed solution, as I pointed out in my fourth 2008 prediction on RWW this is ultimately about developign new metrics:

4. Non-search advertising on the web will increase in value significantly. This will be done through a lot of innovation in the ad targeting systems (both behavioral and contextual) and new metrics being adopted by Madison Ave beyond CPC and CPM.

Unfortunately, when networks are selling ads against crappy metrics (cough … CPM .. cough) it is really hard to be deliver value back to your publishing partners. This is due to you not appropriately measuring that value from your advertising clients. Once they have better metrics, I think ad networks and exchanges will feel like better partners to publishers.

One metric I’m finding particularly compelling is that of a ‘personal CPM’ originally posted by Marian Salzman (of JWT) and advanced at Graphing Social Patterns by Charlene Li.

Admittedly I haven’t lived up to the goal of writing regularly on my personal blog. If you have been reading ReadWriteWeb or listening to ReadWriteTalk, then you’ve certainly gotten more than enough of my perspective. (If not, subscribe to ReadWriteTalk in iTunes

Also, if you’re interested in what’s going on in my personal life, my wife Jen has started a blog. I have a feeling subscribing to her posts will be a much better way to keep up with my non-professional life. Plus I think you’ll find her commentary very interesting (biased as I may be)!

Anyway the point of this post, about a month ago I was at Grove City College and spent a day talking with students in the entreprenuership program. I also gave a presentation that night on: “Why Now is a Great Time to Start a Company!” I just learned the video is availaable online, so you can go check that out here.

While probably not the most polished presentation I’ve ever delivered, it was truly what I wish I would have heard as a undergraduate. I also managed to plug my new favorite project in Pittsburgh - Innovation Work’s AlphaLab.

The slides are embedded below if you’d like to follow along:

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Note: As you may remember, all ad revenue from the WPNI BlogRoll advertising program is included as part of my annual donation to Grove City’s Entrepreneurship Program.