The more I immerse myself into the blogosphere, the more of myself I feel slipping away.

By day, I’m conservative and private.

By night, I speak my mind and share personal details of my life.

Is blogging my reawakening? Or is it stripping away something I can never take back?

So here’s my question to loyal BlogHearld readers:

If you had to assign a percentage to how much of yourself you reveal on your blog, what would it be?

Some will argue that you must give it all to perfect the craft. Others will think it’s crazy to share a single shred or personal detail. As for me, I’m fickle, changing my stance on a day-to-day basis.

I find the roots of some of my strongest content have their seeds planted in areas I don’t want to share with complete strangers.

Should we all stand here naked? Or is it time to dress ourselves back up? Please answer soon, cause right now I’m down to my boxers and socks (and that’s probably far enough!).

For something that is meant to be a fun pursuit, reading blogs can be bloomin’ depressing sometimes! read more

For the first time, the internet is a stronger source of national and international news in the US than the newspaper. This according to a study from the Pew Research Center, with a summary published online containing a lot more information for the number crunching media enthusiast. According to the study, 40% say that they get most of their news from the internet, while just 35% cite the newspapers as their source. Now, that doesn’t mean that they are bypassing the New York Times, they might just be reading it online. Television is down from 74% in 2007 to a mere 70% (!), and by far the strongest source of news in the US.

For young people, however, the internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the internet (68% vs. 34%).

If I was in the television industry, I’d be worried about now.

The year is off to a great start for WordPress fans with WordCamp Las Vegas, WordCamp Indonesia 2009 in Jakarta, Indonesia, a snow-filled skiing and photography WordCamp Whistler, two WordCampED educational WordCamp events in Worcester, Massachusetts and Vancouver, BC, Canada, WordCamp Jena in Germany, a warm WordCamp Miami, followed by a wintery WordCamp Denver.

In between the conference style WordPress events called WordCamps, intensive one to two day events with top notch WordPress and blogging experts, are a bunch of WordPress Meetups, community social gatherings to talk about WordPress and blog related issues.

WordCamps began in 2006 after Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, attended some of the earliest BarCamp events which were the start of the “unconference conference,” an informal gathering of like-minded folks who let the natural course of a gathering happen, where experts share what they know with anyone interested and willing to listen and learn.

While WordCamps were meant to follow an unstructured format, they quickly evolved into serious conferences, ranging from a couple dozen to hundreds of participants with workshops, special sessions, multi-track sessions, and a lot of events in and around the WordCamp program.

In 2008 Year-End Wrap-Up, Matt Mullenweg said there were 29 official WordCamp events in 2008. There are expected to be almost double that number this year.

From those reporting in to the WordPress staff, approximately 3,400 people attended the various international events, and Matt Mullenweg was there for most of them giving his famous “State of the Word” address on where WordPress was, is, and the future of WordPress. That’s an average of 117 people per event, and while I don’t have the specific numbers for all the WordCamps, Podcamp and WordCamp Hawaii in October had more than 600 registrants at the Hawaii Convention Center, WordCamp Israel 2008 (English) in Tel Aviv had over 500 for their second WordCamp event. read more

Being called a “skank” or an “old hag” is never easy to swallow. Trust me, I would know.

Model Liskula Cohen, who has represented Giorgio Armani and Versace products, is so pissed off that an anonymous blogger ‘defamed’ her, that she’s suing Google to reveal the writer’s identity.

According to the New York Daily News, the defamation suit seeks a court order compelling Google and its Blogger.com subsidiary to identify whoever led the ‘vicious Internet assault against Cohen.’

The blog at the center of the legal drama is “Skanks in NYC.” We’re sure the legal mess won’t help their wallets but will help the amount of traffic they receive.

This might be preaching to the choir, but I’d love to hear what you guys think about the case.

And remember, refrain from referring to anyone as the “#1 skanky superstar.” Unless of course you’re referring to me. In which case, thank you.

LiveJournal finally published a press release regarding the restructuring of the company, which is fancy words for cutting parts of the workforce. Previous reports might or might not be a bit extreme, it is really hard to tell because the press release really doesn’t tell us much.

LiveJournal Inc.’s headquarters, technical operations (and servers,) legal, administration, and customer service teams will remain in the United States. LiveJournal’s global product development and design will now be coordinated out of its Moscow office. The pooling of resources between the U.S. and Russia will allow the company to build a stronger business model, well positioned to guarantee the long-term success of LiveJournal.

As a result of these changes, Matthew Berardo, VP and General Manager of LiveJournal Inc., will be leaving the company along with other valued colleagues. Mr. Berardo played the leading role in consolidating product and design efforts to enable the business to more effectively streamline costs during his tenure. LiveJournal Inc. will now be led jointly by Stephanie Gravelle, currently LiveJournal Inc.’s director of finance and administration, and Sergei Komarov, currently CTO of SUP (LiveJournal Inc.’s holding company).

A press representative told me that “LJ laid off about a dozen employees, which is less than 20% of the entire LJ workforce”, a bit less than the previous report of 20 sacked employees posted by Valleywag. On the other hand, the PR rep talked about the entire workforce, which might mean something.

One thing is for sure, and that is that LiveJournal is in trouble. I personally find it unlikely to see this one go belly up, someone will pick it up before that happens, but you might want to hold on to your premium account dollars, at least for now.

Nambu, a company based out in San Fransico has developed an iPhone app that connects users to a host of services, including FriendFeed.

While I was not too impressed with their Twitter feature (as Twittelator and Tweetie have spoiled me), I was excited by the ability to post upon FriendFeed (as FriendFeed’s web app was less than inspiring). read more

33 Twitter accounts were hacked on Monday, mostly celeb ones it seems. According to the Twitter blog the hackers managed to use an internal admin tool to get into the account, and the team is considering this a serious security breach. This comes just after the phishing scam this weekend, which was a separate incident. Everything should be resolved now.

The hacker managed to post a bunch of tweets, like having Fox News tell the world that Bill O’Reilly is gay, and have Barack Obama invite followers to a survey. Affiliate dollars were probably made, which sounds pretty stupid to me – if you follow the money you’ll find a likely suspect. On the other hand, it could be just some affiliate link put in there to mess with someone.

Michael Arrington traced the hacker to a site called Digital Gangster, where the hacker – who goes under “Gmz” – is said to have posted the credentials. We’ll likely see more on this as it unravels.

Popular blog Lifehacker, a part of the Gawker Media blog network, is seeing some changes come January 16. Lead editor Gina Trapani is stepping down, and Adam Pash will take her place.

After a wild and woolly four years at the helm, I’m stepping down from the site lead position to work on Some New Stuff on a day-to-day basis in 2009. To be clear, my decision has nothing to do with the big bad economy or any kind of scandalous company blow-up—it’s just time for me to move onto new projects. It’s tough letting go of something I love so dearly, but it’s easier knowing it will be in very capable hands.

Good to hear, no Nick Denton slashing the workforce this time.

Adam Pash has been a Lifehacker contributor for 3 years, so he should know how things work. Also, Gina Trapani will continue to post on the blog, as well as do some other stuff, so she’s not disappearing totally. A little more in the announcement post.

Bad news for 20 employees at LiveJournal, they just got sacked, leaving only 8 left to run the now Russian social network. Vallyewag broke the story, and found this LiveJournal blog that tells of no severance package and a total lack of advance warnings. Ouch. I bet Six Apart is happy it sold the service to SUP in time.

Hopefully the LiveJournal service will not suffer too much because of this, but if I were a user I’d start getting backups. I doubt LiveJournal will go all JournalSpace on us, but still, you never know.