Murdoch Newspapers Targeted Gordon Brown

This story has become a monstrosity. Folks praised Murdoch's closing of News of the World last week, but that's likely only the whet appetites.

At The Scotsman, "Hacking updates: 'Gordon Brown was targeted over 10 year period'":

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said he will refer the proposed takeover of BSkyB by News Corporation to the Competition Commission.

The announcement came less than an hour after News Corp said it was "withdrawing proposed undertakings in lieu of reference to the Competition Commission" - meaning it would no longer spin-off Sky News to secure the deal.

It will delay the bid by at least 6 months.
Gordon Brown is the latest figure to have been targeted by News International publications, according to reports, with allegations that they obtained medical records of his son and tried to access his voicemail.

Brown was targeted over a period of more than 10 years, during which a "blagger" tried to obtain details from his bank account, his lawyers were tricked into handing over information and his son's medical records were obtained by a newspaper, according to the Guardian.

Prince Charles and Camilla may have also had their mobile phones hacked by private investigators, police have warned.

The heir to the throne and his wife are among 10 members of the royal family to be warned they may have been targeted.

Earlier, Nick Clegg has called on Rupert Murdoch to "do the decent thing" and reconsider the bid in the wake of the phone hacking scandal that his engulfed the British arm of his media empire.

The Deputy Prime Minister said: "Do the decent and sensible thing, and reconsider, think again, about your bid for BSkyB."

More at WaPo, "Tabloid intrigue spreads: Queen and Brown reportedly targeted as police complain of sabotage."

Also at Telegraph UK, "News International journalists 'hacked medical records of Gordon Brown's family." Scroll down at Telegraph for additional links, and see Mediagazer, especially AdAge, "Life After Rupert's Reign: What Will Happen in a Post-Murdoch World?"

Janice Hahn Faces Prospect of Defeat in Congressional Runoff

Here's the tag for LAT's coverage of the runoff election in CA-36 on Tuesday. And here's the latest headline: "Vitriolic South Bay congressional race nears combative finish." Not mentioned is Hahn's backing of the gang intervention program, nor are the efforts of the Hahn campaign to get Fox News 11 to STFU. See: "Gang Intervention Money Controversy Not Over Yet":

Watch the whole thing. It's riveting and real.

And see Jim Geraghty, at National Review, "Ganging Up in California's Special Election."

AP's not touching it, however. See NewsBusters, "In CA-36 Race, AP Ignores Democrat Hahn's Gang-Intervention Scandal, TV Station Intimidation."

More at The Other McCain: "CA-36: GAME-CHANGER! L.A. Station’s Report Destroys Democrat Janice Hahn."

Palin Plots Her Next Move

It's this week's cover story at Newsweek (via Memeorandum):

It's a fluffy, upbeat piece, and the photos will be splashed at airports and supermarket checkout stands nationwide, just as "The Undefeated" documentary premieres. This will drive progressives crazy. I can see Steve Benen now, incredulous that a "half-term governor" should get so much attention. And well, that's the basis if her appeal right there. Finally we have a national figure who's just one of us, unpretentious and willing to fight. I'd say it's providence, although we heard enough of that "Lightworker" stuff from the Obama cult in 2008. Palin's down to earth, and just what America needs. I hope she makes up her mind soon.

Lucy Pinder 2012 Official Calendar

A follow-up to "'Isn't it funny the way lefties are, at bottom, puritanical about sex?'"

At V³ Magazine, "Lucy Pinder 2012 Calendar Photoshoot [NSFW]."

She's something else.

'Isn't it funny the way lefties are, at bottom, puritanical about sex?'

That's Ann Althouse. I mentioned I'd come back to that quote earlier, but you know, actually, it's not so funny sometimes, progressive puritanism, especially when it devolves into crusades of destruction against ideological enemies. Althouse immediately reminded me of Scott Eric Kaufman, who readers will recall launched a lecherous campaign of allegations at my college workplace, libeling me as a sexual offender with statements that by his own words were completely without foundation in evidence. But just to hurl such demonic claims into the maelstrom of academic identity politics --- against conservative foes especially --- practically guarantees traction. I'm still not quite ready to go into details, but sometime later I'll publish the written record of Scott Eric Kaufman's malicious attacks. Progressives are awful people, truly horrific imitations of humanity. And I was surprised that SEK would admit so much in an update to his blog:

I'm not the best at being human — by all conventional standards, I'm an abject failure — but I always could find a place with words, and that place has been, for most of my life, online.

SEK lost a friend, and to that, well, "any man's death diminishes me ...", but I'm not grieving for the prick. He's an asshole who deserves the ridicule and contumely, and I see that Serr8dt's beaten me to the comment thread, administering some long overdue punishment. And honestly, I didn't hesitate for a second in following up in support:

'You honestly believe this is an appropriate post to make that kind of comment on?'

Oh, quit your bitching, Scott. Everyone knows you're an asshole and you're just opening up the target range here for your enemies. And frankly, I don't believe you ... this post is insincere puff and inglorious piddle, although you got this right: 'I'm not the best at being human—by all conventional standards, I'm an abject failure...'

I would normally hesitate to kick a man while he's down, but SEK owes me both a formal apology and witten retraction. I'm not holding my breath. It's a bitch out there sometimes, but you reap what you sow. And pathetic mewling isn't necessarily going to engender sympathy. In the end, good triumphs over evil, I believe, and SEK's an epic loser. Let's see if this moment of retrospection has any effect. Perhaps out of pain Scott can find the light and do the right thing.

Sugar Daddy All Out

Sarah Palin, "The Sugar Daddy Has Run Out of Sugar; Now We Need New Leaders":

Barack Obama’s big government policies continue to fail. He should put a link to the national debt clock on his BlackBerry. The gears on that clock have nearly exploded during his administration. Yesterday’s terrible job numbers should not be a surprise because it all goes back to our debt. Our dangerously unsustainable debt is wiping out our jobs, crippling our economic growth, and jeopardizing our position in the global economy as the leader of the free world.

*****

This debt ceiling debate is the perfect time to do what must be done. We must cut. Yes, I’m for a balanced budget amendment and for enforceable spending caps. But first and foremost we must cut spending, not “strike a deal” that allows politicians to raise more debt! See, Washington is addicted to OPM – Other People’s Money. And like any junkie, they will lie, steal, and cheat to fund their addiction. We must cut them off and cut government down to size.

*****

As we approach 2012, there are important lessons we can learn from all of this. First, we should never entrust the White House to a far-left ideologue who has no appreciation or even understanding of the free market and limited government principles that made this country economically strong. Second, the office of the presidency is too important for on-the-job training. It requires a strong chief executive who has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments. Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more than words. It means taking on the problems no one else wants to tackle. It means providing vision and guidance, inspiring people to action ...

Charles Krauthammer: David Brooks 'Not a Conservative'

At Daily Caller (and Nice Deb), "Krauthammer on NYT’s David Brooks: ‘He’s not a conservative’":

Robert Stacy McCain Slushee Blogging

You gotta love this. Cute kids making the pitch for dad:

See: "How to Be the Best Dad Ever."

This is funny:

Newt Gingrich announced his presidential campaign raised $2 million in three months. Newt endorsed Scozzafava, went cruising the Aegean Sea, has a million-dollar line of credit at Tiffany, and Republican donors give him $2 million for a campaign that was doomed before it ever started. I fought the good fight for Doug Hoffman in NY-23, yet I can’t even get enough money for a trip to Alabama.

This is whiny:

In response to that [Althouse] post, at least three of my “friends” in the blogosphere accused me of mere traffic-baiting. Of course, Little Miss Attila’s malicious jest was to be expected, but the others surprised me.

And, well, I was just giving ole' R.S. McCain a hard time, but Stogie was a little more pointed: "When News Is Slow, Invent a Controversy: R.S. McCain vs Ann Althouse." And in the comments there, Adrienne from Adrienne's Corner:

I think Stacy is a brilliant writer and a really bright person. He doesn't need to do things like that to get hits.

Ann Althouse's popularity is a mystery to me...

Actually, my first quotation above attests to Robert's talent (and more on Althouse later), although I'm not going to put a little link-baiting past him. Heck, I got some traffic out if it myself! Learn from the master!

And about that "'friends' in the blogosphere" line? Friends are friends, right? I mean, when I meet Tim Daniel for a political event, and we share a few beers, I'm not separating him into "friends" vs. "friends in the blogosphere." And I've met Robert Stacy McCain a number of times now, and we spent a couple of days together last year, when the Crimson Tide went to the Rose Bowl. Shoot, we're BFF dude! (Added: How do you make BFF plural? BFFs doesn't really work, but BFsF? That doesn't look so cool.)

Anyway, hit the guy's tip jar. Those kids are persuasive!

'Saints Go Marching In': David Rieff at The National Interest

From the July/August issue:

AS WITH so many absolutist projects that make up in vehemence what they lack in nuance and realism, it should probably come as no surprise that R2P is a doctrine borne of a combination of institutional crises and guilt, conceived in the offices of then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the thirty-eighth floor of the UN in New York and largely fashioned in Ottawa at the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). For Annan, the global failure to respond effectively either to the war in Bosnia or to the Rwandan genocide was both a moral stain and a potentially grave threat to the legitimacy of the UN-based international system. Not unreasonably, he believed that one of the principal reasons for these devastating and tragic failures was the absence of any international consensus over how to reconcile respect for a nation’s sovereignty (on which the international system has been based, at least in theory, since the Peace of Westphalia) with the need for outside “humanitarian intervention.” That somewhat misleading term had been attached to various outside efforts at least since the UN went into Somalia in 1992. At times the armed missions were imbued with the goal of preventing states from systematically committing crimes against their own people—as had been the case with Belgrade’s rule in Kosovo; at others, with stepping in when governments were too weak to prevent such crimes from being committed—as had been the case in Sierra Leone when the Revolutionary United Front guerrillas came close to destroying that country. R2P, which began to take shape in 2000, was an attempt to remedy what had become an ad hoc interventionism.

Already in 1999, Annan had published “Two Concepts of Sovereignty,” an essay in which he argued that whether states liked it or not, globalization was transforming the substance of national sovereignty. The world simply was no longer prepared to stand by “when death and suffering are being inflicted on large numbers of people.” The needed interventions had to be based on what Annan called “legitimate and universal principles.” But these were still sorely lacking. In Kosovo, Annan wrote, a group of states had “intervened without seeking authority from the United Nations Security Council.” In Timor the council had authorized intervention but “only after obtaining an invitation from Indonesia.” And then there was Rwanda, where “the international community stands accused of doing too little, too late.”

The secretary-general could not act directly; too many member states, particularly among the G-77 countries of the developing world, would have been outraged. Instead, he wisely chose to approach the Canadian government to see if it would sponsor a study that could begin to develop an acceptable new norm. In early 2000, he asked David M. Malone, formerly Canada’s number two at the UN and at the time head of the International Peace Academy in New York, to convene a Canadian-funded private meeting of leading specialists in international legal affairs to see whether criteria for intervention (if only of a preventive nature) could be developed that would command a wide consensus among UN member states. But the group failed to reach agreement. It was after that failure that Malone, Lloyd Axworthy, then Canada’s foreign minister, and Robert Fowler and Paul Heinbecker, the outgoing and incoming Canadian permanent representatives to the UN, decided that Canada would take a more ambitious (and more public) approach, launching the ICISS, chaired by Gareth Evans and the distinguished Algerian diplomat Mohamed Sahnoun. The report they issued a year later was called The Responsibility to Protect. Its central theme was that “sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens from avoidable catastrophe . . . but that when they are unwilling or unable to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the broader community of states.”

Go click on that top link and read it all. Rieff was once one of the foremost proponents of humanitarian intervention. Now he's apparently a coldly calculating realist determined to unmask the sick hypocrisies animating the international human rights community. He concludes with an excellent discussion of the Libyan intervention. Regime change really is the goal. And it's so funny that would a Republican president have backed it we'd be having Hitler parades across the world from Washington to London and beyond. But with a Democrat administration in power, the U.N.-based humanitarian intelligentsia can mask its neo-imperialism with smokescreens of good intentions. It's pretty mucked up.

Panetta Ties Iranian Weapons to Attacks on U.S. in Iraq

Well, it's not like this represents anything new. Even the Bush administration was caught off guard by Iranian influence in Iraq. The situation has changed. The threat's as substantial as ever.

At LAT, "Panetta: Iranian weapons used to attack Americans in Iraq":

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Sunday that weapons supplied by Iran are behind a rash of attacks against American forces in Iraq, part of an escalating campaign of violence ahead of the planned U.S. troop withdrawal by the end of the year.

"We're seeing more of those weapons going in from Iran, and they've really hurt us," said Panetta, who arrived in Baghdad on an unannounced visit after a two-day stop in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials said 15 U.S. troops were killed in June, the most in any month in two years. More than half of the deaths were caused by rockets known as Improvised Rocket Assisted Mortars that U.S. officials say are provided to Shiite militant groups by Iran.

A senior U.S. official said the attacks against U.S. forces were an effort by the Iranian-backed militias to make it appear as though they were forcing out American troops, all of whom are due to withdraw by the end of the year under a 2008 agreement between Washington and Baghdad.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other U.S. officials also have said publicly in recent days that Iran is behind the surge in violence against the 46,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq. The high-level effort by the Obama administration to blame Iran for the attacks comes as U.S. officials are stepping up the pressure on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to resolve whether he will ask for some American troops to remain beyond the year-end deadline.

By playing up the Iranian threat, U.S. officials may be hoping to spur such a request from Iraq.

RTWT.

Amazing that an increase in casualties would spur the administration to prolong the deployment. Mr. President, you're ignoring your ASFL base. Duh.

John Cook, Dude Trying to Out CIA Agent Who [Helped Kill] Bin Laden, Married to Anti-Zionist Allison Benedikt*

Gateway Pundit has the story on John Cook, "Disgusting. Far Left Gawker Posts Photo of Suspected CIA Agent Who Helped Kill Bin Laden." And following the links takes us to The New Ledger, "Gawker’s John Cook Attempts to Out CIA Agent Who Helped Kill Bin Laden." Be sure to read the whole thing. It's juicy. But what's especially interesting is this snarky aside:

If Cook is correct or not, this individual is now a high value target for a group of terrorists who enjoy killing people and their families who have done them wrong. It’s pretty much all they do, in case Cook hadn’t noticed amidst ranting at his family members about how much he hates Israel.

That "ranting at his family members" line links to Jeffrey Goldberg, "Giving Up on the Zionist Dream," which is of course Goldberg's response to Allison Benedikt's now infamous essay, "Life After Zionist Summer Camp." Folks might remember when I blogged this, but one of the most interesting things at Benedikt's piece is the account of her husband berating her family about the "evils" of Israel. I never bothered to search for the guy, and she didn't reveal the name, but The New Ledger has the goods, and a quick search shows that the same family that Cook slammed took the time to post marriage announcements with the major New York newspapers and magazines, like the New York Times and New York Observer:

That's quite a revealing puzzle in the end. John Cook, and his wife too, apparently, might was well move to Yemen to start their training with Al Qaeda. Never mind that Osama Bin Laden wasn't motivated to attack the U.S. because of Israel (think Saudi Arabia instead), for members of the anti-American, anti-Israel contingents, what matters is to be on the side of America's enemies. And with this latest news on Cook's efforts to out the CIA operative, I'd say these folks are getting into John Walker Lindh territory.

It's pretty bad. And given Benedikt's laudable upbringing in the Zionist youth movement, it's fundamentally sad that she met such a guy, who by her own account pulled her over the edge into pro-terror ideological affiliations.

*Fixed the title.

Althouse Responds!

I knew it!

Robert Stacy McCain is the master link troll!

See Ann Althouse, "Charging with fists raised at Althouse: from the right, it's Robert Stacy McCain, from the left, it's Thers."

Robert Stacy McCain should be pleased that Thers decided to attack me on the same day, because I wouldn't have rewarded his attack with a link if it wasn't funny to find myself in the "Clowns to the left of me/Jokers to the right" position.

There's a lot there, but one line I'm saving for comment on another post. Well, one or two lines.

Kate's 'Marilyn Moment'; or, Rule 5 as Celebrity News Reporting

It's not just ogling at beautiful women. Rule 5 blogging can also bring you up-to-the-minute news. Thanks to Teresamerica, I caught the news of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and her Calgary upskirt moment: "Rule 5 Saturday: Kate Middleton Duchess of Cambridge - The Air Up There."

And now I see the original source material, at the Toronto Sun, "Kate's 'Marilyn moment' in Calgary" (via Instapundit).

It wasn’t the royal honey ‘moon’ Canadians were expecting.

That's for sure.

Impressions: The Beatles LOVE Cirque du Soleil

I mentioned previously how moved I was by the show in Las Vegas. Charles Spencer, writing at The Telegraph UK in 2006, really captures the feeling:

Everything that was bold and beautiful, fresh and funny, sad and just plain silly about the Beatles comes together in this ravishing and almost indecently spectacular show. It's what old hippies call a head-trip, a constant 90-minute rush of dazzling sights and sounds.

But for those of us who grew up with the Beatles - and the first record I ever bought was She Loves You, aged eight, in 1963 - this latest piece from Cirque du Soleil is also overpoweringly moving. For it achieves the apparently impossible, allowing you to hear the Beatles with fresh ears. At times you seem to be listening to the music of your childhood and youth as if for the first time.

Spencer's a progressive, but folks might put aside ideological reservations and just enjoy the show. We were kids once. "Let It Be" is my most powerful Beatles memory as a child (and "Hey Jude" is right up there), and sometimes nostalgia is overpowering. And recall that recently I've been moved by George Harrison's songs, and it turns out that the one entirely original song at LOVE is Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." It's just so impressive all around.

I'm taking my kids to see LOVE next time we're in Las Vegas. They'll have to listen to some of the CDs, but they're already familiar with a whole lot of The Beatles from hanging out with me, my musical tastes, and from just the radio environment.

Clay Shirky: 'Why We Need the New News Environment to be Chaotic'

Take a few minutes and read it all. It's beefy. And my beef comes here:

This fall, I’m joining NYU’s journalism program, where, for the first time in a dozen years, I will teach undergraduates. Someone who turns 19 this year will have not one adult memory of the 20th century; for them, the Contract With America, the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the first Gulf War are roughly contemporaneous events, just as, for my 19 year old cohort, the Summer of Love, the Watts’ riots, and Kent State all seemed to have happened in that one busy month we called The 60s. When it comes time to explain the media landscape of the 20th century, I will be teaching my own youth as ancient history.

I could tell these students that when I was growing up, the only news I read was thrown into our front yard by a boy on a bicycle. They might find this interesting, but only in the way I found it interesting that my father had grown up without indoor plumbing. What 19 year olds need to know isn’t how it was in Ye Olden Tymes of 1992; they need to know what we’ve learned about supporting the creation and dissemination of news between then and now. Contemplating what I should tell them, there are only three things I’m sure of: News has to be subsidized, and it has to be cheap, and it has to be free.

The main thing is the news subsidy, and the other elements follow from the analysis. Shirky argues news --- civic news reporting --- is a public good, and as with any public good, there's under-provision and the need for a leader to pay the cost of the collective benefit. Government is usually the answer, and I hate the idea of government becoming involved in the media industry. I goes against everything we've learned about media decentralization in the Internet age. Frankly, more newspapers will die off, and the ones that make it will change. The last thing we need is a bunch of progressive commissars controlling the production, content, and distribution of the news --- all in the "public good," of course. But read Shirky. He claims there are other ways outside of government involvement to subsidize the news. I'm skeptical, especially in that those most receptive to anti-market proposals for the media are big-government types.

Leftists Freaked Out Over News of John Lennon as Republican

Well, mostly Jon Wiener at The Nation, although Joel Achenbach, at WaPo, "can't imagine" John Lennon as a Republican. Cute, isn't that?

But see James Delingpole, at Telegraph UK, "Was John Lennon a secret Reagan Republican?"

Over at the leftie Nation, historian Jon Wiener is having a massive sense of humour failure at this outrageous slur on a man probably second only to Che as an icon of international left-wing street credibility.

Exactly.

This story is so last month, but I couldn't get it out of my mind this week while visiting The Beatles LOVE Cirque du Soleil.

Marc Andreessen on the Tech-Sector Bubble

Or non-bubble, to be precise.

At New York Times, "Bubble? What Bubble?":

Contrary to all the recent hype about a bubble, you’ve said that tech companies are actually undervalued. So in true 1999 fashion, should I take my life savings out of mutual funds and toss it into tech stocks?

I’m certainly not an investment adviser, but on a 30-year basis, these things are cheap. If you compare how big industrial companies like G.E. are valued compared with big tech companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Google and Apple, tech stocks have never been valued more poorly in comparison. So not only is there no bubble — these prices are reflective of the fact that the market still hates tech. This bubble talk is about everybody being unbelievably psychologically scarred from 10 years ago.

Your venture-capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, is heavily invested in Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. You’re hardly an unbiased observer.

True, but the counterargument is I put my money where my mouth is.

Continue reading.

More on News of the World's End

At New York Times, "At a Paper Set to Close, Defiance and Foreboding":

LONDON — With the tremors of The News of the World scandal still spreading across the landscape of British life, the newspaper’s staff assembled on Saturday for the paper’s last working shift before it is shut down by the Murdoch empire as part of its strategy for limiting the damage to its worldwide brand.

At the newspaper’s plant in Wapping, East London, plans were to double the number of copies printed of the Sunday issue, the paper’s last after 168 years of publication. The run of five million copies was expected to sell out.

The paper’s closing also meant the loss of jobs for 280 reporters, editors and other employees. While some of them had hopes of being rehired for a publication said to be planned by News International, the Murdoch subsidiary in Britain — a new Sunday edition of The Sun, Rupert Murdoch’s mass-circulation daily paper — the mood as they prepared to send the final edition to press was one that mixed pride over the paper’s history of revealing some of the most lurid scandals in British life with bitterness at becoming sacrificial lambs.

“We feel like we have paid the price for a small group of people who are no longer at the paper,” Jamie Lyons, the deputy political editor, said in a Twitter post. He said that his colleagues were “appalled and disgusted” by the phone-hacking that brought the paper low, but added a defiant note. “Let’s go out with a bang,” he said.

More at that top link, and at Telegraph UK, "Rebekah Brooks to be questioned by police over phone hacking."

ICYMI: "The End of News of the World."

Dude Who Snagged Derek Jeter's Home Run 3,000th Hit Gives Ball Back For Nothing

At New York Daily News, "Derek Jeter's 3,000 hit ball nabbed by Highland Mills resident Christian Lopez at Yankee Stadium."

The lifelong Yankees fan who snagged Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit shares a few qualities with The Captain: Hustle, generosity and class.

After outbattling a crazed bleacher crowd to snag the historic homer, Christian Lopez returned the ball Saturday to Jeter - passing up a possible six-figure payday for the irreplaceable memento.

"I'm going to give it to Derek," Lopez announced on the Yankee Stadium video board during the eighth inning - prompting the type of ovation typically reserved for Jeter.

"I got to see history in the making, and now I'm part of history," he said.

Well, the comments at that both the Daily News and YouTube aren't so supportive. Downright vicious, frankly. And I gotta say: Was that smart? Will the dude regret it? The Yankees gave him four season tickets for every remaining home game and the playoffs and World Series. That's pretty "suite." And he's getting his 15 minutes, so what the heck?

Google Makes Facebook Look Socially Awkward

At Wall Street Journal:

Mark Zuckerberg might want to fast-track Facebook's initial public offering.

In what appeared to be a hasty response to the launch of Google's rival social-networking product, called Google+, Mr. Zuckerberg on Wednesday unveiled Facebook's new video-chatting feature. He called it "super awesome." Too bad Google made the same feature available in 2008. Indeed, Facebook suddenly looks vulnerable. This could be bad news for investors who have recently paid top dollar for stock in Facebook in private sales.

Rule No. 1 when launching a social network: Make everyone wait in line. Exclusivity was how, in its early days, Facebook built buzz. For more than two years, you couldn't get in unless you had an email address ending in .edu. Google is using a similar strategy with Google+.

Facebook should take note that Google used the strategy before to kneecap Yahoo in all-important email, a key driver of Yahoo's traffic. Then Google rolled out Gmail—but only by invitation at first.

Rule No. 2 is to deliver a better service. Adopting a new social network could prove similar to adopting a new email address: Many will try it out, but to keep using it, they have got to be given good reason. That Gmail offered significantly more storage space than typical Web mail meant millions were willing to make the switch. Similarly, Google+ offers upgrades on what many perceive to be Facebook's shortcomings.

For starters, Google+ gives users a handy way to organize their social contacts into different "circles"—friends, relatives, colleagues, etc.—with which they can share appropriate things. Though Facebook now offers the option to create "Groups," users broadcast their information to everyone by default.

Google+ also offers group video chats. That is why Facebook's announcement of one-on-one video on Wednesday seemed to fall short. Facebook has yet to introduce group video chat.

The biggest hurdle for Google+ is getting users, of course. But it is integrating the service with Gmail, which already has 240 million unique users world-wide, according to comScore. Meanwhile, the user experience on Facebook is a victim of the site's success. Users have accumulated so many online "friends" it can be difficult to organize them. And users often feel assaulted by too much or irrelevant social information, like Zynga game updates. Ultimately, Google+ is a chance for social networkers to start over.

Still more at the link.

Interesting.

And see Midnight Blue, "My Thoughts on Google +."

RELATED: "Managing Google Plus Privacy Settings [Google+]." And, "How to Disable Google Plus Email Notification."