Second Life to start selling “Real Life” last names (OReilly via CNET)

Online Bartering Gets a Foothold on the Web (NYT)

An interesting post on ProBlogger about the average age for blogs in the Technorati Top 100 is 33.8 months (roughly 2 1/2 years).  An interesting point for those looking for commonality among consistantly popular blogs.

There has obviously been a lot of discussion about the Google/You Tube buy - some good, some bad. One of the better looks at the situation, as it stands now, can be found over at AdAge - while I don’t agree with all the points (I think that the integration between the two might be more shakey at first), there are some interesting points, including the potential for better sorting of content over on YouTube (amen!), the potential for better ad serving on YouTube (yup!) and the potential to take video to the “next level” using Google’s massive infrastructure. One thing I’m actually interested in is whether or not the merger opens up the possibility for longer videos on YouTube available to all (not just to those with Director accounts) - their self imposed time limit hopefully will change with the participation of Google. This could be something that would really open up the distribution of longer form UGV.