I'm writing today about Google's Android mobile OS (that's operating system for you Luddites, none of whom, come to think of it, read this column) because it's the only appropriate topic to discuss right now. As many of you know, the so-called G-phone, (really a T-Mobile handset called the G1). is going on sale today, and with that, the world of social computing will never be the same, even if the term "social computing" strikes me as somewhat oxymoronic..

It's surprising it's taken this long for some major Web property to try to do in display what search advertising has long ago done for small and medium-sized businesses. And it's also surprising, given the push for open-platform, friction-less ad buying, that the new self-service ad service I'm talking about -- called MyAds -- came out of MySpace. Not that MySpace hasn't been trying to crack the code of monetizing its zillions of pages of inventory just like anyone else, but, sheesh, you would have thought that Google or Yahoo or Spot Runner would get there first, particularly since MySpace …

While you were busy watching the economy tank in late September, two major news outlets launched beta versions of online communities: The New York Times and National Public Radio. Now for a thought I hope somehow neatly melds together the financial crisis and the media world: I've actually been spending a lot of time thinking about how the financial crisis will affect the already-alarming trend downward in the newspaper business (and to a much lesser extent, things like radio), and, on a personal level, hope that, in building stronger social media tools, analog media will be able to have its …

One of the best things about social media is the ability to use it, when need be, to get results out of uncooperative corporations, particularly when customer service fails to live up to its name. Such power in the hands of average members of the consumer republic would have been unfathomable even five years ago. My personal passion for the subject harkens back to the Stew Leonard's store in Norwalk, Conn., which has, for as long as I can remember, had the following posted on a rock at its entrance: "Our Policy: Rule #1. The customer is always right. Rule …

I received an email from someone I met last week at OMMA Global, asking if all of us people up on stage yammering on and on about social media had forgotten about the blogosphere. He has a point. For many of us, blogging is somewhat like breathing. Inhale a deep thought. Exhale it into a post. Press "Publish." Repeat.

It's hard to focus on anything right now except for the crisis on Wall Street. I'm no financier, but it's easy to see that, even for those of us who don't know a credit-default swap from a swap meet, whatever the hell is going on down there is going to have a huge ripple effect, even among hot businesses like the social media sector. As layoffs cut through the financial world and beyond, those of you in the social networking space will feel it, too, and this will happen in good ways and bad.

So, only moments after I finally tried out the new Facebook yesterday, I came across this item on Gawker (via siblog Valleywag): "700,000 Facebook users join 'I hate the new Facebook' page." And all I could think is, all of those magazines that have gone through redesigns over the years are lucky they didn't have social media around to let readers tell them what they really thought.

I'm always intrigued when I see an agency holding company make an investment or form a partnership with an up-and-coming digital media company, as was the case with last week's announcement that SocialVibe, the social media company run by fellow MediaPost columnist Joe Marchese, has entered into a strategic alliance with the Emerging Media Lab of Interpublic Group, one of the Big Four agency holding companies. OK, so given this is a strategic alliance, no investments in SocialVibe were made, but that shouldn't diminish the importance of any big holding company trying to get its arms around social media.

Those of you who read my other blog, or follow me on Twitter, probably know that I've become a bit obsessed in these waning days of August with the appearance of more and more characters from "Mad Men" on Twitter, acting completely in character, save for the salient fact that the service didn't exist in the early 1960s....

Please indulge this column full of Olympic-themed late-summer frivolity, but just can't quite get out of my head that Michael Phelps has more than a million Facebook fans. I was reading this on Mashable yesterday, and it made me wonder anew about what that really means in the context of eight gold medals, a gazillion world records, and a whole bunch of pending endorsement deals.