One week ago I met Kara Swisher in Rome. She asked me about Twitter in Italy and I told her we were about Twitter in 2007 but now we’ve moved on (we had read about Twitter here and here). Mainstream Web users are all on Facebook (Facebook has been huge here since last summer) while Web-savvy people interested in microblogging now prefer FriendFeed with its richer features.

I thought it was the first time something Americans where going mad for was already out of fashion in Italy.

Maybe that is why Kara was not satisfied with my answer. She was attending an ad sellers meeting, and the people she had talked to were not exactly Web-addicted. I would say not one of them knew who Arianna Huffington was before reading her name on the speakers panel (Arianna! Don’t fire me! Italian bloggers love you!). She stayed at a wonderful hotel near Via Veneto where they know all the tricks to make you believe Dolce Vita still lives on.

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The third annual WordCamp San Francisco was held this weekend, bringing together WordPress users and developers to discuss the past, present and future of their favorite Web publishing platform. Since its humble beginnings as a fork of the b2\cafelog blog software in 2003, WordPress has grown to become one of the most popular blog publishing platforms. WordPress.com, the hosted version of WordPress, saw the creation of 2.3 million new blogs this year, with 35 million posts.

My history with WordPress goes back to when it first came on the scene in 2003. I was looking at third-party software to manage my personal Web site, which had outgrown the simple content management system I had written. I initially resisted using WordPress until version 1.5 was released in 2005. What pushed me over the top was the inclusion of static pages in the Strayhorn release. This allowed WordPress to be used as a full-blown CMS instead of just a simple blog platform. Over the next last years, WordPress’s CMS capabilities and versatility have grown to the point where it’s a great choice to power a simple blog, a community of blogs or even a corporate Web site. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher agree–after all, they chose WordPress to power All Things Digital.

Automattic, the folks behind WordPress, are hard at work this year improving the WordPress experience. As millions more people choose WordPress to power their Web sites, the importance of having automatic updates is becoming very evident. During his State of the Word Address, Matt Mullenweg, the lead developer and public face of WordPress, hinted at a future update mechanism (similar to Mac OS X Software Update or Mozilla FireFox) with which updates to WordPress Core, Plugins, and Themes can be applied in real-time without the user having to upload files or type arcane commands into a Terminal session.

Having been to the previous two WordCamps, I can say that Automattic and the volunteers did a fantastic job organizing the 2008 edition. The new space at the Mission Bay Conference Center was a great upgrade over the previous location. Still, a part of me misses seeing Matt sit in one of those thrones at the Swedish American Hall!

For more information and thoughts on WordCamp 2008 SF, check out the great coverage on Andrew Mager’s blog The Web Life on ZDNet. Finally, to find out more about upcoming WordCamps in your area, visit WordCamp Central.

WordCamp 2008 DF Photos

Order these photos from SmugMug

Yahoo (YHOO) shares are headed for their lowest closing price since Jan. 31, when the stock finished at $19.18 right before Microsoft (MSFT) went public with a $31-a-share stock-and-cash offer for the company. This would be the eighth down day for the stock out of the last 9. The stock is off about 26% since peaking in mid-February at $29.98.

Pressuring the shares today: more departures from the executive ranks, and reports that the company is planning an organizational overhaul. The WSJ reports that “Yahoo executives are discussing a plan to centralize numerous product groups, such as its mail, search and home-page divisions, into a global-product organization.” Kara Swisher has the lowdown, with all the details on the management shuffle.

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I read with great interest your recent interview with Kara Swisher at the D6 Conference. I was particularly struck by your answer to Kara Swisher’s question about whether Facebook, the popular social-networking site you created, can be sold by your venture capital co-owners without your approval. Your response: “I don’t think so.”

Your answer made me think of something my own professor at London Business School once said to me: “The day you take a venture capital investment is the day you sell your company.” Venture capital firms are not Warren Buffett–they have limited-term funds and compensation mechanisms that encourage them to exit their transactions once a company reaches maturity.

So, is it true that your co-owners can sell without you or otherwise push through an initial public offering of Facebook without your approval as chief executive officer?

Well, the answer is maybe.

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If you read this blog, you might think that Kara Swisher isn’t a big fan of fun. Or at least of silly, fun apps like SuperPoke! and what we call “social entertainment.” Call me silly, but I’d take entertainment over utility any time, and you know what? I bet you would too.

Case in point: the week of April 21 and the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary. That Tuesday marked a very important day for our country. A major competition between visible and opposing candidates was decided. It was a vote that is sure to generate publicity and campaigning over the coming months, and it will no doubt continue to occupy center stage of our national attention. Of course, I’m talking about “American Idol.”

That week, the two most popular television broadcasts were “American Idol” and “American Idol” (Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively). The third and fourth were both “Dancing with the Stars.” Check out the table below (from Nielsen Media Research; click on all tables and charts to make them bigger) and perhaps you’ll arrive at the same conclusion I did: When it comes to consumption, we prefer entertaining fare.

Likewise on the Web, Google News’s (GOOG) most popular searches in 2007 are by and large entertainment related (from Google Zeitgeist 2007):

Here’s a graph from Alexa.com of traffic to the three most popular non-search-engine Web sites and the most popular news Web site.

And here’s a graph from a Morgan Stanley (MS) “Internet Trends” report from 2008 of two of those same Web sites and the two most popular search-engines:

That last graph made a pretty big splash when it debuted at the Web 2.0 Expo conference; its title was “YouTube + Facebook Views > Yahoo! or Google…” Or to put it another way: today, fun is more powerful than utility.

Consider the value of other companies that deliver entertainment: Disney (DIS), Time Warner (TWX) and Sony (SNE) have a combined market cap of over $168 billion. Gross revenue for the NFL and MLB last year exceeded $12 billion. Apple (AAPL) made nearly $2 billion through iTunes music sales alone. Social networks benefit from increased activity, advertisers benefit from an exuberant audience, and widget users can, well, share favorite “American Idol” moments, send virtual margaritas or trout slap each other.

So seriously Kara, you have to try throwing a sheep or two. As Dr. Seuss said: “If you never have, you should. These things are fun and fun is good.”

Keith Rabois is vice president of strategy and business development at Slide, which makes widgets and applications such as SuperPoke!

War! What is it good for! Absolutely nothing! Say it again!

Are wars really good for business? Is tech entrepreneurship in recession heading toward depression? The battle between Microsoft and Yahoo is reaching its climax (if not already). However, there are some very interesting and unique perspectives from two blog posts that jumped out at me–Kara Swisher and Fred Wilson. Kara has the funniest headline saying “Jesus Is Coming” with the storyline about the inside scoop on the “dance” between the two. What strikes me with Kara’s post is that Yahoo might already be defeated in the “brain drain” that they have been experiencing. Even if Yahoo survives, is it already dead on the vine?

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The great revolutionary activist of our day, Robert Scoble, is battling for the ideal of data freedom with the evil forces of Facebook. At issue, writes Kara Swisher in a post titled “Free the Scoble 5,000!!,” is “how much control you should have over your own information online.” Mathew Ingram chimes in, saying “there’s no question that the information itself should belong to Scoble.” Sounds black and white. Scoble: good. Facebook: evil. But it’s not quite that simple. When Scoble broke into Facebook’s databank, he opened a Pandora’s Box, and I would argue that neither he nor Facebook is in the right.

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