CHANGELINGS
Marc Andreessen has a humorous post in which he answers a reader question about what the "p" stands for in the title of his terrific blog, "blog.pmarca.com". Here's his answer:
"A long time ago, I had a wonderful, well-known boss -- let's call him Harry Slarr -- who had two email addresses, "hs", and "phs". The former was for anyone to email him; the second was for a smaller group -- "phs" stood for "Private Harry Slarr".
At that time, nobody knew who I was and nobody cared, so I thought it would be funny to have my (sole) email address be "pmarca", as in "Private Marc Andreessen".
It stuck."
So "Private Marc Andreessen", is now "Public Marc Andreessen", as "pmarca" becomes his new blog brand.
A labeling device to preserve privacy is now being used to present a new public patina.
In a way, it's perfectly in sync with the larger trend, all of us internet users are under-going.
We're all morphing from the shy, tentative users of web 1.0, putting our toes in the water, to the "jump right in, and let it all hang out", denizens of web 2.0, happily social networking with gleeful abandon.
The MySpaces and Facebooks of our world are turning all of our online personas from private to public.
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