businessweek doesn't want you to feel stupid for not knowing about reddit

Steve McKee wrote a piece for BusinessWeek explaining Why Social Media Is Worth Small Business Owners' Time. Although I'm not entirely convinced social media is really worth small business owners' time, I enjoyed the zen-like opening to his argument:

The first thing I want to encourage you to do is relax. Take a deep breath and release that tightness in your chest. This column isn't about making you feel stupid for not knowing what Reddit.com is, or chastising you for not having three extra hours a day to spend tweeting and blogging. I simply want to encourage you to get started. (For background on social media, check out this story.)

But the implication that not knowing what reddit.com is grounds for making someone feel stupid is a nice touch. Evidently, the alien is worth knowing about. Fear not, reddit-virgins, we'll welcome you with open arms -- probably. And if you do find yourself at odds with various communities, you can always just create your own reddit.

Steve's tone is much gentler than the approach one redditor took when leaving a note on the car of a digg fan. Thanks for that, Steve. Although you could still be the person responsible for said note...

belated happy new year, thanks to the (not)great firewall of vietnam

Fun fact: Blogger.com and all blogspot blogs are blocked in Vietnam. While this is mildly inconveniencing for the traveler, for Vietnamese, this kind of censorship must be quite frustrating -- not just because they can't read my blog. Combine Vietnam's rapid development with the growing global movement for Internet freedom and I'm certain the government will find this censorship harder and harder to maintain. And that's a great thing.

Anyway, here's a recap of reddit news from the last couple of weeks:

We continued our well-publicized love affair with Treehuger, which published its top 25 reddited stories of 2008.

There were some epic Zune pun threads on reddit thanks to an epic Zune failure. The Guardian reported on the pun-tastic behavior, as did CrunchNotes.

The LATimes found the modern hobo code traveling up the reddit front page.

And Gizmodo reported on the greatness of the Yoshimoto Cube, which bubbled up on science.reddit.