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I don’t love the internet like I love my family & friends, or even how I love chocolate.

I love the internet because it’s probably the most signifiant wealth enabler in the history of mankind. At least since the invention of stone and then metal tools.

When I sit in front of my screens and bang out line after line of code, I’m doing more than just building web properties. I’m creating wealth!

Not only that, when I make a web property or service that people want, I deliver to all customers at once. Unlike a blacksmith who creates wealth one horseshoe at a time, I make one horseshoe and as many people who want it get it at the exact same time; with zero incremental cost of delivery. This kind of wealth multiplier has never existed before. It has a dark side of course; every mistake is multiplied as well, but the positives far outweigh the negatives. You can respond extremely quickly and cheaply to people’s changing wants.

This is not news, but I’m working hard with my team on building our digitalOttawa.ca startup. we’re moving into our new offices downtown this week, and I’ve been reading and watching all kinds of business wisdom & inspiration to get me pumped up about pushing forward.

Here we go!

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This week’s news that WordPress.org and WordPressMU.org are merging is VERY big, even though it might not seem so at first.  source

I think this indicates a significant change in the WordPress direction. There are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of active WordPress driven websites out there; what WordPress.org does inevitably shapes the web.

It seems to me that the WordPress CMS is changing from an “instant-on blogging platform” to an “instant-on open social network framework”. One that uses open protocols and may even be getting ready to play nice with wave.google.com, which could very well be the future of ALL social media platforms.

I’ve been playing around with Buddypress.org recently and I think whatever it becomes over the next 18 months is what will replace “blogs” over most of the web.

Since WordPress might be integrating the best of buddypress, WordPress.com will become much more like Facebook soon. Being able to instantly “spawn” your own “Facebook” that connects and syncs with any other WordPress setup on the web (and other SM like twitter, flickr and Facebook) will be what someone might call the “post-blogosphere”.

Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Flickr are all great, but they are at their core very similar to AOL in 1999. A walled garden that will inevitably choke itself to death.

The good news is the mainstream inside-out social network is coming very soon. One where semantic data & relationship links IS the network, not your list of users, and the more that linked network is open, the more value it will have. Just as the post AOL internet took all their users.

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It’s been a crazy week.

I’m currently providing web comms consulting to The Public Health Agency of Canada. We’re in the midst of the Swine Flu outbreak, and I have to say I’m extremely impressed with how things are being managed.

I’m also really excited to be finally executing a lot of the social media plans we’ve been evangelizing about over the last year. We’ve got the agency Tweeting news updates as they happen, syncing all social media activity across the .gc.ca site, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. We also put together a live webcast in record time (John, you’re wicked).  I’m hoping to add some more of our ideas in the next few days.

I think Canadians should be proud of the way PHAC has been managing this issue, so many people here are working so very hard 24/7 to ensure Canadians stay informed and the governement acts in a proactive manner.

Kudos GC.