Link Banana

Thomas Goetz’s profile of PatientsLikeMe has gotten a fair amount of attention on the blogs today. It’s a pretty interesting profile of a rather interesting site.

One afternoon in late November when I visited the office, Jamie turned to a nearby whiteboard and traced out an x-y axis, slashing a descending line from left to right. “We have the ability to run a probability engine,” he said. “We can mathematically model each patient. We can tell them what’s going to happen in their life. We can tell you when you’ll need a wheelchair.” He made a mark along the line. “And we can even tell you the day you’ll die, with remarkable certainty.”

PBS’s Cringely’s latest column seems as much dissatisfied with Facebook clutter as it is about anything, but there are a few interesting points.

The tip-off that we’re nearing the end of a cycle is the flight to quality we’re seeing from some of the bigger players. At Facebook, for example, you can no longer register using an e-mail address from an anonymous mail site like Mailinator, Operamail, or Countermail. Facebook demands that you take an extra three minutes and get a Yahoo Mail or AOL mail address for example. This is clearly the company pruning its subscribers in anticipation of an acquisition in the next couple quarters. There is no other reason to do it. MySpace isn’t doing it despite a very real sex offender scandal, but then MySpace has already been sold and Facebook hasn’t yet.

Once Facebook has been taken and one or two others, the golden era of social networking acquisitions will be over and the entrepreneurs will be headed for that Next Big Thing.

Le Monde — yes, it’s a French newspaper, but you don’t need to know the language for this — has a neat map of what social networks are most popular around the world. I knew that Orkut was popular in Latin America, but I was rather suprised that Friendster’s at the top in Asia.

Related: The Economist’s infographic about “Facebook fatigue.”