Bacn (n.) - A type of automated e-mail that is less onerous than spam but less wanted than actual, human-generated communications. The classic contemporary examples are Facebook e-mail alerts, which are spam in the sense that they are automated, but desired in that they alert you to Facebook-native content you want to see. It's better than spam, it's bacn.
I bring it up because: Google hates bacn, and it's suggested that's why Google can't build a successful social network. Google is all about the practical, useful, and minimal, while Facebook is a bacn-coated timesink. Google can't beat Facebook because Google is so spam-averse it won't even touch bacn.
UPDATE: Clearly I was wrong, as Google+ is a total bacn-factory.
Last night, my colleague Jason Falls gave a presentation on the importance of maintaining your personal brand online. Among his key points of advice was owning your own domain name. Unfortunately, most of the valuable versions of my name as a domain have been on backorder for months or years (stupid GoDaddy auto-renew).
Rather serendipitously, JayGarmon.net finally came through this morning. As such, the Written Weird is no more -- or won't be by this weekend, when the DNS propagation is complete. (For the record, JayGarmon.com is owned by a State Farm agent in Russell Springs, KY -- no relation -- and I don't expect I'll ever get that URL.) Going forward, this site will be known as Jay Garmon [dot] Net. Yes, I totally cribbed the title styling from Wil Wheaton. The change is largely cosmetic, intended mostly for SEO and branding purposes. Blogger will auto-redirect all the old link equity, and since Google owns Blogger, I'm told that little to any PageRank damage will be incurred. We'll see.
In any case, the content of this site will remain the same. Moreover, the fact that my URL came through just before I relaunched my personal trivia column is a tasty piece of happy. With any luck, I'll have the new DNS situation squared before I appear on TechTalk radio this weekend. Sometimes, things just go right.
Image by funkandjazz via Flickr
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