Lost in the chaos last week, amidst signs of rapture and fears of a second dot-com bubble, was a positive omen. What once appeared to be one of the four horsemen of social media's apocalypse met an untimely death at the hands of user disinterest. It was a good week.

One social media topic that's held my fascination lately is how to manage one's online reputation. I'm not talking here about how a big corporation does it, but how little guys and gals -- like, say, me -- do it. At which point I happened to read about the resolution of the case of California dentist Yvonne Wong, who, according to this story from MediaPost, has been asked to pay $81,000 in legal fees to Yelp and the couple whom she sued for a negative review. So much for her claim that the review had led her to emotional distress. …

As a Kindle user since its first model debuted, I've marveled how it has changed my reading habits, and in some ways has changed my life. Some of the most profound changes are the social ones.

While we're all busy dumping on Twitter, let's get down on it for something other than its business model, namely that it also isn't as influential a news source as you'd think. At least, that's what I read on the CBS News site, where a headline trumpets: "Twitter fails at spreading hard news -- Step aside Twitter: You aren't as good at breaking news as the media thought you were."

Recently, I caught up with MyLikes, a vendor in the sponsored conversations genre (e.g., "pay per post") that beckons participations to "like these campaigns to make money." That only works if its users see themselves as "social publishers" -- which is how MyLikes refers to them. It's not how I see myself. I will not "like these campaigns to make money," as the site beckons. I don't think I'm alone. Whether you work with a brand or you're a kindred spirit, this one's for you.

I know, I know. The first reason the White House cited for not releasing photos of the dead Osama bin Laden was that they might incite violence. That's not a bad point, but we all know the real reason: anyone with a deep enough need to believe conspiracies will find a reason not to believe what they see - and social media is a very able courier when it comes to helping fashion that kind of non-reality.

Where were you when you heard that Osama was killed, or likely dead, or probably the subject of an upcoming White House address on national security matters? This is one of those moments that serves as a cultural barometer for the state of media today. It may be a fluke depending on what you were doing that night, but collectively the scores can be much more revealing.<

Just when I thought I was burned out on all things Groupon, LivingSocial, et al (and there's lots of et als in this market), along comes Deals on Facebook. Which is not to be confused with those two, or BlackBoardEats or Google Offers, or Bing Deals, by the way. Why? Because these are Deals on Facebook. And believe it or not, even though I spent most of the last paragraph making fun of online coupon deals -- look for the launch of Catharine P. Taylor Deals, coming soon to an email inbox near you! -- this product is different, …

Over the weekend, I was in Dallas and watched lightning strike the city in every direction. I was so mesmerized that I stayed outside on a terrace balancing my camera on the balcony, taking photos I later shared on Facebook and Flickr, and as a time lapse video on YouTube. The whole time, though, I kept thinking, "Is holding on to a metal balcony during a storm the smartest idea?" A different kind of bolt struck the Web last week - a Bo.lt, to be precise -- and I had a similar reaction. It's one of the most fascinating technologies …

In a world where last week almost seems like a decade ago, you can call me slow on the uptake for just getting around to reading Jesse Hempel's feature in Fortune, "Trouble @Twitter," a week after it published. But now I've read it, and am glad I have, if for no other reason than it makes a good column topic.