QOTD: Now You See It …

Erasability used to be a mistake.

— Digital anthropology student Olly Osborne, who is studying the implications of data emphemerality, in a series on Medium called “Data Death”

News Byte

Quora Gives Its Writers a Stats Dashboard

Much like Evan Williams’ Medium, Quora is trying to convince people who have interesting thoughts and experiences to write them down — and, since Quora doesn’t pay, that means finding them an audience. Some writers on the site now receive 1 million views per month. So it is launching a stats tools to show counts of views, upvotes and shares, much like what’s available on other publishing and blogging platforms. While exposing stats might encourage crappy content that panders for page views, Quora exec Marc Bodnick said the site already includes tools for burying the bad stuff. “We don’t give traffic to garbage,” he said.

Twitter to Wait Until After IPO to Name Woman — Likely With International Cred — to Board

The number of women with international experience is long, but if I were to bet whom Twitter is considering for its top picks, I would name only two: Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright.

News Byte

Blogging Startup Medium Opens to All

Medium, the blogging startup created by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, announced on Friday that it is now open for all to use. Newcomers are required to sign in with a Twitter account, and can only post from Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers.

News Byte

Social Discovery Startup Sonar Shuts Down

Sonar, an app which helped users meet and discover “interesting people in the world” via smartphone, has closed its doors, according to CEO Brett Martin. The app, which raised around $2 million from angel and VC investors and received no shortage of press attention, was briefly popular — it had millions of installs — before languishing over time. Martin’s long post-mortem can be found on the blogging platform Medium.

Make It So

News in general doesn’t matter most of the time, and most people would be far better off if they spent their time consuming less news and more ideas that have more lasting import.

Twitter and Blogger founder Evan Williams on his new venture, Medium

Biz Stone to Facebook: Go Freemium

From one social network founder to another.

Former Wired Digital Editor Heads to Obvious Corp.

The digital veteran journalist makes a move into the startup space, with an aim to change how content platforms work.

Study: Online Media Pays Off for Consumers More Than Offline

Apparently, you can get digital media satisfaction.

Dell: Who You Gonna Buy?