Number one:

Power is the opportunity to build, to create, to nudge history in a different direction. There are few satisfactions to match it for those who care about such things. But it is not happiness. Those who seek happiness will not acquire power and would not use it well if they did acquire it.

Number two:

It is interesting that when we use power ourselves, we see it as a good force and wish we had more. When others use it against us, particularly when it is used to thwart our goals or ambitions, we see it is–as an evil. A more sophisticated and realistic view would see it for what it is–an important social process that if often required to get things accomplished in interdependent systems.

Take that, power.

Yesterday a friend of mine suggested I start a petition to get a large group of people to commit to leaving Facebook. So I started one.

The request didn’t come out of nowhere. This week, a few early adopter-types — the kind of people who took up Facebook years before your mom did — decided they’d had enough of Facebook’s evolving terms of use and privacy issues and hit delete on their accounts (take a look at EFF’s overview of Facebook’s eroding privacy policy for more). This might not yet qualify as a trend, but something’s definitely brewing among the techno-scenti.

The problem starts and ends with privacy. It seems that every few months, the itchy folks at Facebook launch yet another iteration of the site — er, platform — exposing even more of your private information to the world, and making it harder to keep your personal life close to your chest (or at least limit it to a few hundred friends).

Read the rest here.

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Friends and family – I never, ever write emails like this. But this year is different. I’m now working at Free Press, a national media reform nonprofit devoted to increasing the diversity and accessibility of the media. Given that we are a nonprofit that depends on public support, I’m asking for your help.

As you know, the media — the Internet, TV, print journalism — is the lifeline of our democracy. Left or right or in the middle, we all depend on it to make sure that we have the facts we need to make sound decisions at home and in our communities. No matter what you do, you need a solid, dependable media system to help you do it. And I think you’ll agree with me that our media system needs to fixed.

That’s where Free Press comes in. We’re fighting for media reform on several fronts, urging the FCC and Congress to pass rules and legislation that would help create fairer and more accountable media. Here are a few examples of what we do:

We’re on the front lines of Net Neutrality, the fight to ensure that you will continue to have access to any kind of online content, whenever you want it — without big companies like Comcast and Time Warner getting in the way. This is nothing less the protection of online speech. More here: http://www.savetheinternet.com.

We’re pushing back against the proposed Comcast-NBC merger, which is simply bad for consumers and democracy. More about that here: http://www.freepress.net/comcast.

We’re just about to see success in the form of the passage of the Local Community Radio Act in the House, which would bring fresh music, news and views to thousands of communities across the country. Find out more at http://www.freepress.net/lpfm.

And we’re pushing to free your phone — supporting legislation and FCC action that would wrest power away from carriers like Verizon and AT&T and steer it toward consumers, so we can stop seeing such outrageous cell phone bills and actually have choice in the mobile marketplace. More at http://www.freepress.net/freemyphone.

There’s much more happening at Free Press; go to http://www.freepress.net to learn about it all.

And please – if you like what you’re reading, and support what we do, consider donating to the Free Press Action Fund. Even the smallest bit — $5, $10, $15 — helps. Go here to contribute: https://secure.freepress.net/site/Donation2?df_id=2260&2260.donation=form1

Thanks, and have a wonderful holiday season.

Nevertheless, the desire to connect is strong, and there are many ways to engage it, even if that engagement is fleeting. Bold headlines often do the trick. A sharp design that doesn’t call attention to itself, but appeals to users’ emotions, usually helps. But I’ve found that online designers, writers, and producers often overlook a simple fact about their audience: people rarely see what you want them to see.

I’ve spent much of my working life producing content meant to be viewed online, and whenever that content has involved words — as, um, this does — I’ve had the nagging feeling that my intended audience just won’t be able to focus on it. Not if there’s too much of it, and not if it doesn’t reach out and grab them in a visceral way. Every day, I labor long and hard over the text people will read in an email or a blog post.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m convinced that if I make the perfect argument people will see things my way.  I’m deceiving myself; most people never finish the piece, and never get to that witty comparison between “big media” and “bigger media” that’s buried in the 5th graf.

This disconnect between producer and audience applies to every kind of site.  You write a blog post featuring a complicated argument, and your readers take away the opposite point. You create a community site and make the registration and sign up process as easy as possible, but still no one can figure it out. Back to the drawing board you go.

Once again, users — accustomed to being immediately taken with a site, or else they take off — simply don’t always see what you want them to see.

Coder Jeff Atwood recently looked closer at this phenomenon. First, he jokes that users don’t read anything you put on the screen. But then he gets serious.

When I said users don’t read anything you put on the screen, I was lying. Users do read. But users will only read the absolute minimum amount of text on the screen necessary to complete their task. I can’t quite explain it, but this kind of user myopia is epidemic. It’s the same problem, everywhere I turn.

Perfectly put. As an online writer, that means one thing above all: don’t write one word more than you have to.

It was yet another moment to hang out with the traveling pack of online campaigners and progressives I’m proud to know. It was four days of panels, drinks, and the constant talking of shop. For us that means Twitter, Facebook, emailing, crowdsourcing, astroturfing, videomaking, petitioning, and general all-around campaigning. It’s always a great time, even if there’s never any water or snacks to be found and the organizers always seem to find the largest, most-oversized venues possible in which to stage these pinko events.

A few highlights:

- Seeing Andy Cobb’s fantastic parody of the Washington Post’s ill-fated Mouthpiece Theatre disaster for what felt like the 50th time. And meeting Andy Cobb.

- Watching Bill Clinton get questioned by bloggers.

Well, not really “questioned.” But there were a few questions in the heckling.

- Pittsburgh. What a wonderful city! Even the Kinko’s guys were beyond nice.

- Representing Free Press. It was great to be able to be a Free Presser here – with an actual mission – instead of looking for people to hire to trying to figure out who the cool kids were. I think Free Press is one of the cool kids.

- Seeing all of my friends. Ever since attending RootsCamp 2006, I’ve gotten to know a ton of wonderful, inspiring people who put their all into their work. Seeing them a few times a year always energizes me and makes me want to work harder and be better at the work I do.

- Feeling good knowing I was going home to Northampton, MA. If you’d told me a year or two ago that this was my home I would have laughed. But that’s where the hippies live! I would have said. Yet here I am.