As a part of my ongoing thoughts about blog post titles, I thought I’d see how much traction what I think is a very big story would get with a different headline. Instead of “MySpace to Unveil Integration With Sites Around the Web, Using Open Standards” how about we leave the tech-tarnished name MySpace out of it. It’s still the 10th most popular site on the whole internet!

From that story yesterday:

MySpace will announce in the next few weeks a major new feature being added to its MySpaceID product that will allow third-party websites to write updates into the MySpace activity feed just like Facebook Connect, but will also incorporate open semantic microformat code in order to comprehend what those updates are about and make more sophisticated update highlighting and recommendation decisions.

It’s a major move being worked on with both the Activity Streams and Open Social communities – it could push the rest of the web, outside of Facebook, in a direction that supports radical app innovation through the creation of a level playing field of readable data. And it could make MySpace a lot better, too.

“We don’t want to do anything without semantics, to be honest,” Monica Keller, group architect for activity streams at MySpace, told us by phone today. “We can’t afford to show a user content on their home page that they aren’t going to like.” At a time when MySpace is in serious trouble and trying to regroup, a home run by Keller and crew could make MySpace more relevant to people again and impact the rest of the web in positive ways radically unlike the impact of Facebook’s proprietary software.

Here’s the rest. Tell me, is this not a really big deal? Maybe people don’t have confidence in MySpace to pull such an ambitious plan off – but I suspect most readers didn’t even look past the company’s name.

I don’t know why I hadn’t taken the time to look at it before but Mozilla’s Jetpack is really neat. (info:direct download) It’s a browser plug-in that you run little programs on top of that add functionality to your Firefox browser. It’s like a mix of Greasmonkey (see intro here if you’re unfamiliar, this is important) and browser plug-ins. It’s real easy to use but there aren’t a lot of Jetpacks that have been built yet.

Here’s one list of Jetpacks “in the wild.” There’s another on Userscripts that I’m going to go look at right now. I’ve been using this sidebar generator and this keystroke tab selector for a few days and love them a lot.

It doesn’t appear that this experiment has gotten much traction at all so far, but I’d love to be proven wrong about that. If you’ve got any thoughts about Jetpack, or any favorite ones, let me know.

Little things like this can make a very big difference in what you’re able to do efficiently on the web.

Richard and I disagreed about what to title the post I put up yesterday, now titled Three Principles of Social Software Creation From Andy Baio. That’s pretty much the title he wanted and I changed it to that after just a few hours of seeing it go absolutely nowhere with the title “Andy Baio & Three Principles of Social Software.” I wanted to lead with the subject’s name, as the post is largely about him, and I think readers have been enjoying my profiles of individuals lately. Richard wanted me to lead with the key concepts, instead of with a name that relatively few people know. (Even Andy admits that!) I told him that if the post got less than 2k pageviews my way, I would admit he was right and I was wrong. I didn’t even give it more than a few hours before conceding defeat. The poor little thing is at around 600 pageviews after 18 hours right now. I should probably just let it go.

It’s also possible that it just wasn’t a very good post. Very few people shared it and that’s the key to getting traction, of course. It’s a shame because Andy Baio is a really interesting guy. You should go check out his blog and shared links.

We have found, though, that posts with titles that focus on people tend not to do very well with readers. Interviews, profiles, etc. Leading with company and concept names (How Urban Airship Saved Tapulous’s Bacon on iPhone 3.0 Day or How One iPhone App Could Save Public Radio) allows for some people profiling to go on and for readers to be receptive. I now concede that.

Melissa Hart wrote an article about The Trouble with Twitter as a tool for journalism in The Chronicle of Higher Education today. Hart is a prof. at the University of Oregon, where I secured a degree in Political Science a handful of years ago. Hart’s article is worth reading because it’s funny and moving, even if (I think) it is wrong. Neglected are the ways that Twitter can supplement full-lengthed writing (no one just shares links on Twitter for a living and calls themselves a journalist, not even the awesome Breaking News Online guys) or the way Twitter can help with listening. I’ve written here about how Twitter is paying my rent (now my mortgage) and I like to point to this article from 18 months ago made up almost entirely of interviews performed on Twitter. I’d write that better today, I like to think, but it demonstrates the usefulness of the tool none the less.

The point is, Twitter is not just a broadcast system – it is at its most useful as a listening tool. (The White House suffers the same shortsighted thinking about Twitter.)

Do I think that Hart is right when she mourns the declining public appreciation for longer, more thoughtful and well-researched journalism? I do. If “reporting” tends to be faster and more superficial than “journalism” and the social web is pushing us towards writing that is faster than both – then I know I’m trying to have my cake and eat it too. I’m aiming to get my writing out at the speed of a Tweet, with the accuracy of a reporter and the thoughtfulness of a journalist. I’m not there yet, but there’s mostly bad habits standing between me and that goal, I think the goal’s in sight. It seems a shame to me when we focus so much on how the web is making our culture worse. I don’t think that’s the whole story at all.

Hart, incidentally, is here on Twitter. I hope she tweets some more, I enjoyed her article on the subject.

Something I’ve been thinking about for awhile is the idea that the primary places of public discourse are now privately owned online social networks. Facebook, Twitter, video games, etc. This is where we meet and discuss everything from matters of personal to social importance. This lawsuit about a game player suing over being kicked out of a multi-player game got me thinking about it most recently.

In addition to government laws, those conversations are now subject to company Terms of Service, profit motives and technical requirements. That strikes me as a negative turn for free speech and political discussion. On the other hand, the platforms are so much more powerful now than a physical town square or other older models. I’d like to find some good people to interview about this and see if there really is a story here. What do you think? Who would you suggest I interview? Let me know.

Another example: US Energy Secretary Steven Chu just joined Facebook in order to discuss energy policy there.

1. “Remember this iPhone app.” How often do you read some mention of an app, find it in the store and think “I might want to buy this later?” That happens to me often and I don’t end up buying those apps.

2. LinkedIn Connect – like Facebook Connect but for LinkedIn. When you see people commenting around the web or really doing anything – how often do you wish you could easily see what they do for a living? I wish for that all the time.

3. Desktop icon image selection for iPhone links saved to the phone’s desktop. I know I’ve got all kinds of links saved with ugly blurred text icons – why not let me flip through images from the page like Facebook lets you do when posting links?

I posted this from my iPhone in part to test WordPress 2.8 posting by phone and it worked pretty well. I wish (4.) there was a button on the iPhone keyboard to insert a link! UPDATE: What a wish come true! It appears I can select a word or phrase in a blog post here and click the WP visual editor button to add a link. They might call it copy & paste but clearly “select” has other uses as well!

How about you? What’s on your “little feature” wishlist for the web or mobile?