Wired is one of my favorite magazines, and the recent story by Evan Ratliff is one of my all-time favorites. Ratliff tried an interesting experiment, as he tried to disappear without a trace and then challenge the world to find him.

The idea for the contest started with a series of questions, foremost among them: How hard is it to vanish in the digital age? Long fascinated by stories of faked deaths, sudden disappearances, and cat-and-mouse games between investigators and fugitives, I signed on to write a story for Wired about people who’ve tried to end one life and start another. People fret about privacy, but what are the consequences of giving it all up, I wondered. What can investigators glean from all the digital fingerprints we leave behind? You can be anybody you want online, sure, but can you reinvent yourself in real life?

It’s one thing to report on the phenomenon of people disappearing. But to really understand it, I figured that I had to try it myself. So I decided to vanish. I would leave behind my loved ones, my home, and my name. I wasn’t going off the grid, dropping out to live in a cabin. Rather, I would actually try to drop my life and pick up another.

Wired offered a $5,000 bounty — $3,000 of which would come out of my own pocket — to anyone who could locate me between August 15 and September 15, say the password “fluke,” and take my picture.

The story is a compelling read, so I won’t reveal what happened. Read the story first, and then go back and read some of the follow-up blog posts.

The struggle for privacy will be one of the enduring issues facing us in this century, and we’re just getting started. The Ratliff story poses some interesting questions for all of us to ponder.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

While new media web sites like TMZ and SPORTSbyBROOKS are having a field day covering the Tiger Woods affair rumors and the questions surrounding his recent accident, old media (or mainstream media) outlets are having a little more trouble with it. I watched a news story on ABC over the weekend after the accident in which the affair rumors, Rachel Uchitel and the possibility that Tiger’s wife Elin Nordegren lied to police about the accident were not even mentioned.

James Poniewozik from Time.com has an interesting take on the dilemma facing the MSM.

And, of course, like any media issue today, it’s complicated by money. Or the lack thereof. Journalism organizations (like Time Inc.) are losing revenue and shedding jobs left and right. How much attention can we afford to pass up in the name of purity?

So whenever a story like the Woods story emerges, one of the most entertaining aspects is watching the contortions the respectable media go through to put a sufficiently meta spin on it, to justify covering the hot topic (and not passing up all those free eyeballs), while appearing to be serious-minded, and not like all those other outlets just trying to pry into Tiger Woods’ personal life.

Like so many things that the trapped-in-between mainstream media does nowadays, though, this probably does it little good in the long run. They don’t truly satisfy, for instance, the reader who just Google-searched “Tiger Woods golf club affair car crash,” and wanted to learn something new about the incident. Meanwhile, to anyone who expects them to ignore this kind of story and focus on “real news,” their game is transparent.

What these half-measures do, more than anything, is convey the sense that the mainstream media is phony, inauthentic, that it lacks the courage of its convictions either to go all in and give the public what it wants, or take a bullet and stick to its principles. Trying to please everyone, it pleases no one.

That said, hope springs eternal in the mainstream media that there is a way of properly threading the needle when it comes to juicy stories like this one—that if they are simply self-aware and meta-referential enough, acknowledging these contortions will make the contortions somehow more acceptable.

In many ways he’s dead on here. But he also fails to mention one factor that doesn’t apply to Time but applies to the television networks. Tiger Woods is more than just a famous athlete. He’s a brand; he’s a multi-million dollar business; he’s a global icon. For the networks there’s a price to be paid for pissing of Tiger (and Nike as well). So while Time and other old media magazines might wrestle with how to handle this, the decision is a bit easier for the big television networks. They’ll be happy to bring up the rear on this story.

AOL has been very impressive with its new emphasis on content. New sites like Asylum and Lemondrop have produced cool content in their respective niches. It also doesn’t hurt to have them linked up from AOL’s high-traffic flagship site.

The Wall Street Journal, however, is reporting that AOL will also get into mass-produced content (sometimes referred to as garbage content).

AOL is putting the finishing touches on a high-tech system for mass-producing news articles, entertainment and other online content, the linchpin of Chief Executive Tim Armstrong’s strategy for reviving the struggling 25-year-old Internet company after Time Warner spins it off next month.

Mr. Armstrong’s goal is to make AOL, which has been losing visitors and revenue, a magnet for both advertisers and consumers by turning it into the top creator of digital content. He hopes to do so in part by turning some media and marketing conventions on their ear, and potentially blurring the lines between journalism and advertising.

“Content is the one area on the Web that hasn’t seen the full potential. Hopefully, we will spark a revolution of people doing content at a different scale,” says Mr. Armstrong, a former advertising executive at Google.

AOL is betting it can reinvent itself with a numbers-driven approach to developing content, based on what Web-search and other data tell it is most likely to attract audiences and sponsors.

As pointed out this the article, this strategy mimics the approach taken by companies like Demand Media and Associated Content. Wired has a long profile covering Demand Media’s strategy, which uses an algorithm to pick narrow content subjects that could generate significant revenue from sources like Google Adwords.

Thousands of other filmmakers and writers around the country are operating with the same loose standards, racing to produce the 4,000 videos and articles that Demand Media publishes every day. The company’s ambitions are so enormous as to be almost surreal: to predict any question anyone might ask and generate an answer that will show up at the top of Google’s search results. To get there, Demand is using an army of Muñoz-Donosos to feverishly crank out articles and videos. They shoot slapdash instructional videos with titles like “How To Draw a Greek Helmet” and “Dog Whistle Training Techniques.” They write guides about lunch meat safety and nonprofit administration. They pump out an endless stream of bulleted lists and tutorials about the most esoteric of subjects.

In one sense the strategy is brilliant. There’s obviously some demand for content in each of these areas, and companies like Demand are meeting the demand (what’s in a name?) and profiting nicely from it.

On the other hand, much of the content is crap, and the crap from these big companies who get massive love from Google will often rank higher than similar content produced by others. This raises another question – will quality ever matter in search results? The criteria used by the search engines, which heavily rate factors like incoming links, are easily manipulated by content factories like Demand Media.

Manipulating Google results is obviously a big business these days, and companies like Demand Media and AOL are just doing it on a much larger scale. But we’re getting to the point where content is turning into a commodity, and Google is feeding the beast. In the long run, it will be interesting to see if Google adjusts its secret sauce, or whether the content factories will litter the web and the search engine with second-rate content.

This is a cool development. Bing will now have a search function for Twitter. It’s set up in a way that’s much easier to navigate than Twitter itself (no surprise). You can quickly see all the popular subjects like you see on Twitter, but the page lays out the latest tweets for each popular topic. If you click the topic, you see the recent tweets, along with links to the actual stories that are being sent around.

It’s very handy, and it’s nice coup for Bing over Google.

A federal judge has ruled that Craigslist is not liable for ads listed on its site.

A federal judge in Illinois has dismissed a lawsuit by Cook County sheriff Thomas Dart accusing Craigslist of creating a public nuisance by allegedly running prostitution ads.

U.S. District Court Judge John Grady in Illinois ruled Tuesday that the federal Communications Decency Act protects Craigslist from liability for unlawful ads submitted by users.

“Sheriff Dart may continue to use Craigslist’s website to identify and pursue individuals who post allegedly unlawful content,” Grady wrote. “But he cannot sue Craigslist for their conduct.”

Good. The attacks on Craigslist have been ridiculous and unfair. Imagine the consequences of holding sites liable for everything posted on their sites. Social networking and new media are revolutionizing the way we communicate and will have significant implications for business as well. We don’t need the morals police holding companies liable for individual behavior they deem to be problematic.

Twitter’s new feature is currently in Beta, so you’ll only have it if you’ve been invited, but the new Twitter Lists feature is creating quite a buzz.

ReadWriteWeb.com has a handy post explaining how all this works. The process is rather cumbersome, as you have to add people one at a time to the lists you create. You also have the option to make your lists public, so that can create some very interesting lists for others to follow. Getting on certain public lists will probably be the next status symbol next to the number of followers.

Also, each list can be followed as well, which will probably touch of a new frenzy as lists are created and followed.

It will be fun to see how all this develops. In was inevitable that Twitter would start adding more features, but the simplicity of the service has been one of its best qualities. Simple often works better, though that often changes when you have explosive growth. It’s a great problem to have, so get ready for lists mania!

The pay wall argument heated up again at The Paley Center for Media.

The big debate over pay walls is getting down to the fine points; as opposed to grand theological, existential questions, it’s really more of a sharper dispute over the method of getting users to pay. Do you dangle carrots and hope the support follows? Or brandish a stick—perhaps a variety of sticks of different lengths? The debate played along those lines at the Paley Center on Tuesday, with the make ‘em pay side represented by Steve Brill, co-founder of startup Journalism Online, which promises to help news outlets charge for their content, and Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of non-profit NPR, arguing for making pay optional.

The most vocal panelists—the group included Buzzmachine’s Jeff Jarvis and media consultant Shelly Palmer—backed up Schiller’s contention that having a formal pay wall will only drive consumers away. In defense of the pay model, Brill contended that businesses need to run on direct money, and advertising and promotions won’t keep the lights on. Plus, he and others dismissed softer measures of coaxing money through online tip jars as being hard to count on.

Developing the pay habit: People have been exchanging cash for newspapers and magazines for decades, they just need to get back into the habit of doing so online, Brill said. In a conversation after the panel, Brill told me that the pay wall isn’t the only way to achieve that: “We believe in giving publishers a variety of options, including donations and bundling online and print. But some have this religious idea that people will be offended if you try to get them to pay for the news product. I’m just asking, ‘Who really knows?’”

“Who really knows?” Is that the best he can do? He’s trying to turn upside down a revolution in news, information and communication and he’s saying that? The debate at this point is beyond stupid.

Users are used to getting things free, but that’s only part of the reason why this will never work. Bloggers and other journalists are now used to DELIVERING the content for free. Look at a small outfit like Talking Points Memo. The quality of the content is better than that of most newspapers, and they’re growing, even in this crappy environment, and the news is free.

You can’t hide news behind a pay wall because there will also be thousands of free sources. Newspapers could charge in the past because they were the only game in town. Those days are over!

Regarding opinion pieces, your opinion no longer matters if nobody hears it or reads it. Paul Krugman has become exponentially more influential after the Times got rid of the ridiculous pay wall. The instant Krugman writes something now about health care or the economy, bloggers and news sites all over the world are linking to it. Aspiring writers and bloggers are doing everything possible to get noticed and to get LINKED. That’s how the world works now.

Newspapers have so many problems that have nothing to do with the pay model. Their costs structures are completely whacked, and yet you had supposedly smart people dumping piles of money for these dinosaurs just a couple of years ago.

If newspapers and magazines want to charge for something, they need to charge for services and delivery. Let the whole world log on to the web and see your content. Encourage everyone to link it and make it popular as hell. But, if I want the paper version, or if I want a subscription that is sent to my Kindle or any other device in a way that lets me easily read the content whether I’m online or not, then you can charge me. And guess what – I, along with most people who value news and opinion and other good content, will gladly pay for the convenience. I’d be thrilled to have all my magazine subscriptions sent to me electronically so that I don’t have to collect all my magazines before I go on to a plane. Just like books, magazines can be a hassle. Make it easy for me to consume your product, and I’ll pay for that luxury. Imagine the cool ads and sponsorship messages that can be embedded in a magazine designed for an e-book or similar devices.

Pepsi ought to leave the dating scene to the pick-up artists. Their attempt to create a humorous app has resulted in an epic fail.

When it comes to dating, the difference between success and failure often comes down to delivery. And as Pepsi Co. learned this week, even a good bit of self-deprecation can’t fix a poorly executed pick up line.

Pepsi’s AMP energy drink released a new app — “Amp Up Before You Score” — which got into trouble with more than a few people for the way it approached the fairer sex.

Pepsi quickly took to social media to apologize, but by broadcasting the apology across platforms and brands (and including a self-deprecating hashtag), Pepsi helped turn the tkt into a tempest.

“Before You Score” categorizes women into 24 types — including “Cougar,” “bookworm,” “treehugger” and “rebound girl” — and then gives users conversational resources, namely wikipedia articles and other superficial info to help with pickup lines. In an additional layer of sensitivity, the app connects to social media so that users can share their conquests: “Get lucky? Add her to your Brag List. You can include a name, date and whatever details you remember.”

In one sense I give them credit for trying. Brands need to find new ways to reach their audience, but this effort is just hilarious.

Forbes has an interesting article about the web 2.0 situation in China.

Forbes: Facebook and Twitter have been blocked here in China since the unrest this year in Xinjiang, and some Chinese Twitter clones are blocked as well. Why is this the case, and do you see the controls loosening up in the near future?

Anti: Web 2.0 Web sites like Facebook and Twitter can offer the public firsthand information, even faster than a government news agency like Xinhua. In fact, the July 5 Urumqi riots news was spreading first on Twitter hours before the first Xinhua English news piece. The Chinese government believes that the situation in Urumqi and other cities would be out of control if they can’t control the information flow. That’s the basic logic behind their decision to block Twitter and other Web 2.0 Web sites.

But this wide-scale blocking costs a lot. Discontentment in cyberspace could lead more common Chinese netizens to try to protest if all of their favorite social networking, photo sharing, video and microblogging services are blocked in the long term. And this crazy-wild blocking also harms the investment environment, which now almost makes China a Web 2.0 hell for investors. So China may loosen up the blocking in some sense.

The political reasons behind this policy are fairly clear given the recent events in Iran. Yet the risks are huge for China’s social media and tech industries as mentioned above. Can China really expect to compete in a world where Americans and others use social media to revolutionize business, news and education? The Chinese run the risk of falling way behind.

I was very impressed with Bing when it launched, so I’m not surprised to see that it’s growing rapidly.