I was visiting the kickapps office last week in New York and they are on to something big. I think WordPress, Google Blogger and Typepad could be the real launching pad for communities of the future.

If WordPress were to roll out kickapps feature set within their software, the real community building could start and get viral from the outside in (or inside out :) ) .

My friend Bijan at Spark Capital was an investor in kickapps and I am excited to see what they create.

What a great trend unfolding here in social networking and community building on the net. Mucho money to be made here despite the noise. The winners will be gigantic.

A community is a powerful thing.

I miss my community in Toronto. I have my family and oldest best friends that live there. I have a huge amount of time invested. The good news is the give back. Each time I return to the community, I feel rejuvenated as I see familiar faces and fall easily back onto the community routine. As big a community as I have in Toronto, little changes.

In the internet world, communities are the buzzword but so few have really developed. It’s a combination of time and distance. It is hard to speed up time, but everyday that ticks by helps. The distance issue is being solved with blogs and wicked internet tools like WordPress and MyBlogLog.

On the internet, I have used MyBlogLog to build a small community around my blog. I see the familiar faces and can quickly meet the new faces.

When I visit other blogs that I like (I do not use RSS), I see some familiar faces and some that have never frequented my blog (their faces are familiar to that blog).

If I were to go on a golf or hockey trip with the top 20 readers of my blog that I have not met, it would not be like we were meeting for the first time, even though most would be from differnet cities, even countries, it would be energized and people could fall into good conversation right away as if they were old friends.

That’s power.

It makes me feel like we are so early in this revolution of blogging and the more we invest the more we will get back – finally. Some amazing things are starting to get done with internet communities but it is just getting started. The leverage one should be able to achieve on the internet is both exciting and daunting.

I have lot’s more to say on this subject.

Now there are more reasons for individuals to join and network without having the inferiority complex of not having a blog.

There is no doubt that Yahoo is going to be a player in social search with moves like this. I have met some great people on MyBlogLog and there are no bounds to what can be done with Yahoo’s web 2.0 properties.

I am going to keep adding Yahoo on weakness until they prove (they may :) ) that they can’t integrate things.

Yahoo Finance holds huge promise for some better social spin.

Disclosure – Long Yahoo

I just had an extremely exhilirating, very long day and am trying to wind down.

I am still bummed about MacWorld and missing the opportunity to hook up with some San Francisco friends. It has been all New York for 6 months.

The red eye to New York was absolutely brutal. Bad dosage of Ambien and a middle seat. New York is absolutley freezing – take that Gore!

I am very disconnected from the stock market and I feel deprived and lonely at some level, but when you are not 100 percent focused on the stock market, it pays to do little. I read Trader Mike and FLY and the rest of my blogroll and stick to my trends – despite the trading thoughts here and there.

I have been thinking more and more about Yahoo since my post about getting long again and it is amazing how strong I feel about a small acquisition like MyBlogLog potentially reinvigorating a brand. Social search is still a wide open frontier and the book has NOT been written on winners and losers. Yahoo has a WAR chest of power in social search opportunities.

I was checking out the faces on my blog tonight (courtesy of MyBlogLog) and saw that Bradley Horowitz had dropped by. He could have been here for 1 secong or 30 minutes. Not the point at the moment. It’s he was here and he is not hiding and THAT’S COOL at so many levels. MyBlogLog “turns on the lights” as he mentions in a blog post. I like that analogy and hope Yahoo follows through on that simple thought.

I will wind up the night with a SOCIAL NETWORKING TIP. If you are going to go so far as to join a social network – stick your FACE on it. I love all my readers and feel I know them, but I am not Carnac. Let me know who the f#$ck you are already. It’s cute to have a litte animation or animal or logo as your persona – for about 30 seconds. Don’t be a fool. If you are going to be part of a network – JUMP IN!

One of my fave blog networking tools and a great buy by Yahoo. Let’s see what they do with it.

They have a lot of blogger information with this purchase. Do some good with it.

Yahoo is one of my longshot picks of the year. It is up strongly so far. Time will tell.

Update: One of Yahoo’s PR firms, OutkastPR, emailed us to say that this story is innacurate, and that Yahoo has not acquired MyBlogLog. We dug a little deeper with some insiders and it appears that Yahoo and MyBlogLog are in very early acquisistion discussions, and nothing more. Founder Scott Rafer was completely silent when asked about the rumors today – suggesting he didn’t mind getting all the press attention.

Bummer – for me :) .

I have long offered my money to Eric, Scott and Todd over at MyBlogLog to take as an investment.

In my face!

I love this service and have written about it often. Congrats to them. Nice deal for everybody. A little nervous that Yahoo will screw this viral baby up, but for now I am sticking with the service as Eric will not let me down.

Now I have to cancel that Porsche I ordered and start working again.

If you have a blog and are not using a simple tool like this, you are mistaken.

He just started blogging but has some great stuff up already if you want to sell some Amazon or SHWAG on your site.

Met him on MyBlogLog . Don’t be fooled by the name – it is a networking goldmine for those willing to work at it.

I hear Linked In is way better, but I am a lazy creature of habit so can’t give you an honest comparison. Let me know.

Today’s lesson is check the post date when you are reading a financial and stock picking site :) .

I was just over at Fred’s site for my morning read and the first thing I do is check his MyBlogLog recent readers to see who is hanging around his site. Lot’s of smart people hang out there. This morning I noticed a name I recognize – James Altucher.

He is a smart stock and market dude. Problem is he is all walled up at TheStreet.com. I am thinking – “that’s cool”, he is signed up at MyBlogLog. So I click on his head shot and head over to his page (by the way James – You look like Bob Dylan’s stockbroker). I see that I have the chance to be his second “friend” (Eric is the automatic first) – which really means his I am his first friend.

Stay with me!

So I join, call myself his friend and admirer (Note to MyBlogLog – let people customize their wording here “cats who dig me” or “not stalkers or freaks who think my writing is cool”) and head over to “SuperCash” (great blog name – like I said – this dude is smart).

He has three posts – all great – and I figure cool – he is keeping a free blog. I send him a MyBlogLog message that you can see from the previous link.

Woops.

In my excitement in making a “New Friend” I forgot to notice that his last “free” post was May and his last LogIn date on MyBlogLog was July. Nice :) .

So, the moral of the story is – check login and poste date to avoid talking to yourself online.

PS – His second post is a great interview with Cramer . Not great because it was a great interview, but just great in the coolness of the web and video and who can talk to who.

PSS – The interview with Lord Cramer reminds me what the problem is WITH Cramer. What the hell is he talking about anymore! He is so overexposed that anytime he talks it is confusing. Shame.

Note to my readers – if I invite you to my house and you grab a beer – “check the born on date.” I rarely drink and still have beer lying around from a New Year’s party in 2000.