Google+ fills a void between public and private, it serves what is likely to be an older demo less interested in hooking up or hipstering out and more interested in the social utility it provides.

A VC Fred Wilson, in a later part of the same post on social networking companies.

In any case, I hope Google+ succeeds. Given the blog posts saying this will kill Tumblr, Twitter, Foursquare, etc, you might wonder why I feel that way. Well first, I don’t think competitors kill companies and services. I think the vast majority of “deaths” are self inflicted.

– A VC Fred Wilson, on the newest entrant into social networking game.

“As a former Amazon Associate, I can tell you that a great many sales of Kindle Books are for the 99¢ complete Dickens, etc.”

–Movie critic and Web publisher Roger Ebert, providing some context for Amazon’s stat about Kindle e-books outselling print books.

“I give [Apple] two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake.”

– A 2001 prediction by David Goldstein, president of Channel Marketing, about Apple’s newly launched retail stores, which celebrate their 10th anniversary this week.

Had to monitor Fox for a story. Can’t. Deal. With. The. Blathering.

– Message posted yesterday to the Secret Service’s official Twitter account. The agency later told the Washington Post that an employee “mistakenly believed they were on their personal account.” The tweet has been deleted, and the agency says it is “conducting appropriate internal follow-up.”

“To all the families and graduates, post-graduation please Skype on … I also have to tell you, a guy I know in Seattle has a son who goes to the school down the street here, UCLA. I saw him the other day, and he starts chirping at me, chirp, chirp, chirp. I said, “I’m going down to USC to speak.” Chirp, chirp, chirp, UCLA better, chirp, chirp, chirp. I had it. I whip out my Windows Phone, I Bing the university rankings, and I just show it to him right there in black and white, USC 23 – UCLA 25.”

– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer works a handful of product mentions into his commencement address at the University of Southern California

“Our experience has changed us and shaped how we view our responsibility to the industry. We are pleased to bring this matter to successful resolution, and we are excited to keep delivering great products and services for our partners and customers.”

– Microsoft on the expiration of its 10-year antitrust consent decree

Most companies don’t get murdered, they commit suicide.

– EDventure’s Esther Dyson on Twitter

“Hi subjects – sorry I is laters wiv the update. Croozin off-rode thru the park earlier & mashed a fox, two deer and rabbit wid the landy rover. – gonna tweet that Oliver Innit 4 sum recipes; Phil’s had to lie down cos he won’t use seat belts; gotta go.”

– A Sun commenter imagines Queen Elizabeth tweeting from her new iPad (about which she is reportedly royally stoked).

“Al Qaeda Inc. might suffer some initial setbacks from Osama bin Laden’s death, but so did Apple Inc. when shares dropped over rumors of Steve Jobs’ illness. But it did not take long to realize that Jobs has established a highly functional corporation, and the shares bounced back. The same can be expected for al Qaeda.”

– CNN jumps to an early lead in the Most Repugnant Analogy of the Year competition.

I do know that ‘monetization’ is an option for me, and I do realize that I have been ‘missing out on some big bucks’ and not ‘milking the media for what it is worth’ – I just don’t have the energy or motivation to think in that direction. Or maybe I’m just plain stupid.

Sohaib Athar, who became a celebrity after unwittingly live-tweeting part of the Osama bin Laden raid, explaining that he’s not charging for interviews. Athar has just published a FAQ that attempts to cut down on the need for more interviews, and it’s well worth reading.

“[It's] a two-horse race.”

– RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie on the tablet market

Bin Laden is dead. I didn’t kill him. Please let me sleep now.

– Sohaib Athar, the Pakistani IT consultant who unwittingly live-Tweeted the bin Laden raid, and who has since been inundated with media requests.

I’d say [the] rapid rise of the tablet. I didn’t completely see that coming.

– Dell CEO Michael Dell on what’s surprised him most about the evolution of the tech industry

“I know it sounds crazy, but our new company, http://altly.com, is building an alternative to Facebook. More details soon :-)”

– Former Veoh CEO, and, more recently, former MySpace Music CTO Dmitry Shapiro, setting some not-very modest goals for himself via Twitter.

“As a RIM investor, I was sort of hoping there would be more customers than reporters here.”

– Henry Kim, one of two customers who lined up outside Toronto’s Future Shop for a BlackBerry PlayBook this morning

“I like our chances for a lot of share. We’re very excited about where we are.”

–Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie on the BlackBerry PlayBook’s chances in the tablet market

“It was a gift from God to save Apple.”

– Former Apple Evangelist Guy Kawasaki on PageMaker

“If you believe demographic studies, the workforce in their 20s and 30s isn’t going to accept black corporate PCs with black corporate mobile phones and not be allowed to run Facebook or Angry Bird apps.”

– Clorox CIO Ralph Loura, who has scrapped company-issued BlackBerries, offering employees their choice of an iPhone or an Android- or Windows Phone 7-powered device

They used to be our big rival, but now it’s kind of like kicking a puppy.

– Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin on Microsoft

“I couldn’t be happier that Apple has created a market and built up enthusiasm but longer term, open, capable and affordable will win, not closed, high price and proprietary. Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex.”

– Andy Lark, Dell’s global head of marketing for large enterprises and public organizations, on Apple and the iPad’s role in enterprise

“I’m the president of the United States. You think I’ve got to go borrow somebody’s computer? ‘Hey, man, can I borrow your computer? How about you? You’ve got one?’”

– BlackBerry fan Barack Obama, explaining to a Univision-hosted Town Hall meeting that he also owns other devices, including Apple’s tablet.

“They’ll be bigger than IBM next year, and they’ll be bigger than HP the year after that.”

– Forrester Research CEO George Colony predicts Apple will soon be a $200 billion revenue company

“I killed newspapers.”

– Eric Schmidt’s suggested epitaph, via Washington Post legend Bob Woodward. It’s not accurate, of course–real culprits range from an overabundance of commodity news, to the evaporation of classified ads and monopoly ad pricing to an over-reliance on debt markets–but it is pithy.

“I don’t think that we’re playing catch up to anyone, least of all IBM.”

– Hewlett-Packard CEO Léo Apotheker returns IBM’s fire at the company’s big strategy meeting today.