Monday Signal: The Vacation Edition

I am with my family this week, as it’s the kids’ winter break. So posts will be light, and Signals may be weak. Here’s a roundup of the long weekend’s news, which was dominated by Google’s continued tweaks to Buzz, and ongoing analysis of samesaid social app:

Google Names Facebook, Twitter as Rivals (Dow Jones via IWantMedia) Clearly anticipating social search and the power of social on its business model, as well as the launch of Buzz, Google in its 2009 annual report finally acknowledges what we all have known for some time.

Google Buzz Has Completely Changed the Game: Here’s How (Mashable) A positive take on the service. I’ll call Buzz a success when I feel compelled to use Gmail so as to use Buzz. I don’t think that is going to happen, though, as most likely, Buzz will open up and become part of the larger Facebook and Twitter ecosystem through third party apps (one hopes).

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://waxy.org/random/text/pov_top_websites_1999.pdf (Waxy via KK) Kevin Kelly, a key member of our merry band of co-founders back at Wired, sent me this link. It’s Time Magazine’s top 100 websites for 1999. Kevin wryly pointed out that the site I ran at the time, TheStandard.com, was ranked higher than Google.com. How things change, eh?

Attention Agencies: What Happened To Contact Reports? (Jones&Bonevac Blog) My old pal Casey Jones opines on a practice that seems to have been lost in the world of agencies.

The Power of the Audience (Anil Dash) A fellow well worth reading.

5 Things FedEx Has Learned about Managing Relationships through Social Media (Open Forum) Love to see examples of brands doing stuff well.

How We’re Using Social Media on Our Mobile Phones [STATS] (And more Mashable) Let’s not only focus on the phones, even as this stuff is fascinating.The screen is just where we are now. In a few years, we’ll be thinking about new interfaces to mobile beyond screens.