Curate's Eggs Benedict: Viral news distribution; 'Reader affection' formulae; Entrepreneurial journalism

Here's what I've been reading in the area of online publishing, new media and technology lately. I welcome your thoughts and link additions below in the comments.

1. Here's Mashable on Facebook vs. Google: The Billion Dollar Battle to Be Your Default Social Profile. Increasingly journalists will have spread their links far and wide virally on social networks and via search engines. Just waiting for people to come to your site isn't enough. I use Twitter and Facebook to try. We spend a lot of time thinking about Google search rankings too. 2. Nick Denton at Gawker has detailed a 'reader affection formula' that he thinks is better than the traditional measures of unique browsers and page impressions. Here Nieman has a look. The tryanny of building page impression numbers only to drive down CPM rates is the key here. Advertisers want engaged, high quality readers. But the traditional measures miss the boat. Denton is having a good go. Your thoughts? 3. Seth Godin expresses something essential here when he says journalists will have to become entrepreneurs organising conferences and leading tribes rather than simply earning a wage. Sort of scary and exciting at the same time. I like to think about the idea of entrepreneurial journalism. But there's a long way to go. 4. Felix Salmon had a feud with The Business Insider's Henry Blodget this week over business models. It was entertaining because Felix nailed the key issues: how do we keep advertising rates high and the journalism good when CPM-driven thinking forces a rush to the bottom and 'cheap' page impressions. 5. Tom Forenski at ZDNet has ten tips for creating profitable freemium startups. I like the freemium idea. Your thoughts for interest.co.nz? 6. Chris "Long Tail" Anderson writes at Nieman about the idea of an automatic generator of 'serendipitous' news,  given 'serendipitous news' seems to be one of the major casualties of the inexorable drive to search engine and social media driven news selection. Sort of a Chatroulette for news. Some people have too much time... 7. Jeff Jarvis riffs on the 'Problem with comments', something I think about a lot. Should I leave them right open and engage as much as possible, or heavily moderate and lock them down to raise the quality? Jarvis doesn't have an answer but the discussion is enlightening. He suggests we should all chill out a little about wanting the 'perfect thing'. We need to treat the internet more like a place than a medium.

8. Propublica has just announced plans to connect people with problems with their mortgage modifications with journalists in their local area. Is this one of the futures of online journalism? 9. The first of the most recent experiments with paywalls is being dropped by Johnston Press in the UK, Paul Linford at Holdthefrontpage.co.uk reports. I reckon these paywalls just won't work for general news, sport, politics, weather and anything other than specialist business news that can be charged back to a boss. 10. Cool. Infinitely stackable US cables. Just a design for now.