Given that we can’t rely on servers getting faster, but we can rely on more and more traffic, weblog developers could learn new techniques to make their sites faster.

I can’t help but wonder if this wasn’t at least partially inspired by the pounding¹ that Better Elevation took yesterday. I put WP Super Cache in place, but the damage had already been done. And Brent is absolutely right: my web hosting company (LunarPages) didn’t fail due to traffic, they explicitly killed the site because WordPress was taking up too much CPU.

1. That permalink URL cracks me up

Tip One: Don’t go to South by Southwest Interactive.

I’m serious. It sucked last year, and it’s going to suck again this year. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. The idea that SXSWi is a conference – or even a festival – for people doing interesting and useful things in technology is a fallacy. In reality, it’s just a non-stop orgy of bullshit fanboyism – a chance for people with stickers on their laptops to go and add more stickers to their laptops; an opportunity for sweaty dorks in Diggnation t-shirts to line up for two hours in the hope of getting Alex Albrecht to – I dunno – sign their laptop, I suppose, or maybe give them another freaking sticker. Even the parties – which are basically the only reason to go – are horrible: the free bars runs out too soon, and they’re always rammed with the kind of people who you could be forgiven for assuming have never been inside licenced premises before.

Try WWDC instead. It’s like SxSW, except the parties are accessible, the community is friendlier, and the people who attend actually make money at what they do.

Without the collective network of millions, Facebook would not exist. We are the customers because we’re paying with a different (and arguably, more sparse) currency: attention.

We are the product. Advertisers are the customer. This may seem like a semantic distinction — at least in context — but there is a fundamental difference in how customers and products are treated, even if both groups are made up of human beings.

You made a “product” to compete with their “product,” tastefully arranging your regiment, only to discover that they hadn’t made a product at all – they made a narrative. A statement about how technology should interface with a life.

See also: the associated comic.