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Yes, the Hardball host started a fundraising phenomenon in the 6th congressional district in Minnesota with his Oct. 17 MSNBC interview with incumbent Michele Bachmann. She called for a media investigation into members of congress to see which of them might be anti-American.

But, Chris, come on. Be a little generous to the internet effect. You implied on Monday night's show that it was entirely the power of your show that drove outraged viewers to contribute hundreds of thousands to Bachmann's opponent.

You did good, but what you did was to start a viral effect. Check out the blogs that helped spread the influence of your interview in the first few days. Factor in the rabid use among politics junkies of microblogging tools like Twitter that have replaced our RSS readers to pass around these blog and video links, and there you go.

A single interview in isolation would not have caused the Democratic National Committee to take notice of Elwyn Tinklenberg's campaign. Thank you for getting the snowball rolling, but individual contributions flooded in from the combined influence of your interview and the net effect. The DNC recognized the resultant phenomenon. There was a team at work here, and as quarterback it would be gracious of you to acknowledge the whole squad.

Danah Boyd's story of how one company came to understand the viral power of the web just by watching something unfold.

According to a story in the NYTimes, the newest Microsoft MP3 player has a software overhaul.

Under the old rules a user who received a squirted a file from another user couldn't pass it on. That's possible now but each Zune can only play the shared file three times, even if its rights are not protected.

MS is thinking hard about DRM, and will offer a large library of unprotected songs, along with a place on the web to get all social about them.

The Times article leaves a lot of unanswered questions. I'm with Dave. It would have been nice if bloggers had been clued in on this announcement. There could have been a lot more informed discussion. Maybe that's what they don't want, deep down.

My questions:

- I wonder if they still have that crazy deal to give over a percentage of each player's purchase price to a record label (was it Universal?) and if other labels haven't clamored for and been granted the same deal.

- Why limit unprotected files? There shouldn't be any restrictions on podcasts.

- Considering the Gates Foundation's interest in education, I wonder if they've considered educational uses of the file sharing feature. Like squirting lectures or guided tours. It's such a unique feature, it seems like they'd try to get more creative with it.

Here's the Zune press website with specs and stuff. Ah, Edelman is handling the launch. Maybe that's a clue to why no blogger involvement, some perceived risk of the important Christmas announcement reeling out of control.

Elinor Mills on Cnet last week asked the question "Want to 'converse' with advertisers?."

No, not really. Anyway not the way they seem to want to do it.

She covered the Conversational Marketing Summit, and came away feeling wary of the whole deal.

I can't help but view conversational marketing as a thinly veiled attempt by the ad industry to insinuate itself into the popular social media craze. Calling it a "conversation" makes it sound benign and implies that it is consensual.

Yep yep yep.

Still, I do think there's a place for talking to customers that PR people don't get because they are stuck thinking in terms of image. I don't think people want to talk about a marketing slogan like Microsoft's and Federated Media's dumb "People Ready" campaign where they asked for reactions to top bloggers' takes on the slogan. That's pretty much having a conversation about nothing.

Online types do like to get into the nitty-gritty of products, and that makes you think the conversation might better be taking place in the customer service arena. Let people talk to product managers and developers and designers. Leave the PR types -- with their exclamation points and "lively language" and their messages -- right out of it.

Update
Bonus links: Doc Searls, a Cluetrain brother, brings the
marketing conversation topic up to date. Also check out this other great post from Doc on NYTimes Select, the Times' paywalled service that came down this week. He quotes from one of David Weinberger's chapters in The Cluetrain Manifesto. So amazing how well the ideas in that book have held up, but then when it came out it just felt so true, I'm not surprised it's endured.

Keepers of Harry Potter fan sites were invited to a conference call promoting a new movie starring Daniel Ratcliffe, who plays Harry in the Potter movies.

Of course they're going to feel flattered and write about it -- a lot, and probably rave. Really smart. Find the bloggers who care and give them access. So much better than astroturfing nonsense that tries to create community rather than find and tie in to existing communities. So much smarter than working to thrust crafted marketing messages on carelessly chosen lists of bloggers. Expellimarus, Bacon's!

When you look at online job listings like those at paidContent.org they're always dominated by sales and marketing jobs. Is there an imbalance of content sellers to content creators? (And could that be another sign of a bubble?) Or is it just that recruitment advertising isn't needed as much to locate the maker class?

Remember a while back when Microsoft first announced support for RSS and we found out they weren't going to call it RSS because the acronym isn't descriptive enough? I told a business story about names as an example of how whatever you call a thing eventually comes around to equate to the thing it names.

The idea intruded into my thoughts again this morning when I spotted a box in my bedroom labeled "floppies." That box hasn't held floppy disks since... well, since you didn't keep boxes of floppies anymore. It has contained sewing junk for years now, but when I see the word floppies scribbled on that box I think, "Oh, that's where my pincushion is." It's about associations, I guess, isn't it? Either on a personal or group level.

The Origami team's take on its buzz campaign is reported on the team blog.

Robert Scoble has had a peek at Origami and now he's teasing about it.

Microsoft's channel 9 will showcase it on Thursday. Sounds like the latest speculation is true -- it's a little tablet and priced right.

- My most recent posts categorized under PortableMobile are all about Origami.

I swear Chicago Public Radio, WBEZ, has spent more on snailmailings to me than I ever have contributed. Why don't they e-mail me, since I donate that way. I'd listen.

I wrote something about preferred method of contact on a customer service blog I've abandoned, but I've moved some of the posts over here.

Consider making e-mail the default contact method when a customer orders on the web. Doesn’t it make sense that if Acme Company buys something in your online shopping cart instead of phoning or mailing in the order, the buyer likes online transactions? So, it follows that your Acme buyer would prefer to hear from you in e-mail rather than on the phone if there is a problem with or a question about the order.

Doesn't that make sense?