(What I think is) An interesting wrinkle to Google and Yahoo building socnets on top of email 

NYTimes Bits's Saul Hansell reports on separate plans by Google and Yahoo to leverage the habits of their considerable universes of free web email users to schloop into social networking. (Hansell will be on the next Gang podcast, BTW; I heard the bootleg that Sammy released, bringing on the fake feud that doesn't seem to be getting any traction, or acknowledgement from Steve. Good.)

One thing Hansell doesn't mention: a socnet built with existing Google tools also could be whittled down to form smaller and targeted independent social networks. You can almost do it now through Google Apps. Think Ning or PeopleAggregator.

I was wondering about that possibility a couple months ago and set up an apps for a domain site. Even got Gmail working for amyloo.com. Ha! (Surprised myself.)

I have to add you as a user before you can see what I've put on my shared iGoogle start page. It's meant to be private, intended more for an office group, so there's no registration form. I can add individual users with a form on the admin side, or it looks super easy to do bulk account adds with a CSV file having only four fields.

You know what Bits and a lot of other news organizations covering tech should do more of? Make or mash stuff and tell about it, not just tell about it. It makes things clearer for the journalist and for the reader, and it would give them more credibility. So many times reporters, and marketing types who cover online topics, are only able to skim along the top of explanations.

Maybe they're afraid they'll appear naive to real programmers. I worry about that sometimes, but it doesn't usually stop me from poking around under the hood and telling what I see through non-programmer glasses. Don't you think women tend not to be so anxious about admitting they don't know every single thing? Well, except Hillary. She thinks she has to be a tough guy to be elected, and she's probably right.

(Well that post was all over the place, wasn't it? LOL! Cracking myself up. )