Newspaper History, Wordpress Exploits and Sarah Lacy

Good Lord, nearly 6.20pm and I still haven’t done a decent post today. And I was so sure it was going to be a quiet day today. Never mind, here are some hit and run things that caught my attention today:

• Marc Andreessen is writing about the history of newspapers and how that compares to the birth of new media. I had a conversation about this very issue with Antony maybe 18 months ago, and I do think it’s a fascinating subject. I shall be following it keenly.
• Self-hosted WordPress blogs which haven’t been patched recently are being exploited widely. I like WordPress. I use it for some blogs. But I dislike the more fanatical, evangelical end of its community who think EVERYBODY should use it. As a particular blog platform approaches ubiquity, it’s going to be exploited (just as happened with Windows and desktop OSes). We saw this with Movable Type and comment spam. Now it’s WordPress’s turn. This is why we need a diversity of blog platforms.
• Sarah Lacy (she of the infamous Zuckerberg interview) now has a blog, called Sarah Lacy. Prosaic name, but nice design. (Discovered via Techcrunch UK.)