Crossposted on K Street Cafe. Randall Lane wrote a provocative piece in Monday’s New York Times suggesting a “ballot buddy system” among the states to permit apportioning of electoral votes among counties or congressional districts.

I’m not a gamer, and at a recent Social Rockstar Workshop with Chris Melissinos, Chief Gaming Officer of Sun Microsystems, when the question was asked “Who in this room identifies themselves as “gamers”, maybe a quarter of the Social Media Rockstar group raised their hands. Melissinos surveyed the room and laughed, “Well, that’s great, and the rest of you are and you don’t realize it yet.”

Our friend Tim Hartman of Atlantic Media’s Government Executive Media Group is seeking a Manager of Online Products. If interested in the position, please contact Atlantic Media, via www.atlanticmediacompany.com, or contact Tim directly at THartman@govexec.com.

Here’s the position description:

Legal issues with privacy in social media stem from the nature of social media – an inherently communicative and open medium. The cliché is that in social media there is no expectation of privacy because the very idea of privacy is inconsistent with a “social” medium. Scott McNealy from Sun Microsystems famously drove home the point with his aphorism of “You already have zero privacy. Get over it.”

What would happen if Oprah endorsed my law firm? Are you wondering? Are you really? I don’t have a book to shill, or product to hawk other than my supreme skills in contract negotiation (I suppose). And parsing fair use, privacy and copyright law. But I do have thoughts on this week's two cosmic developments in the book publishing world: Google settles its 3-year old lawsuit with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, and Oprah intends to endorse the Amazon Kindle.

I do wonder: Which is the more important anthropomorphological event? (Is that even a word?)

Twitter is not a broadcasting medium. Much has been written about Twitter as the first “true” realization of the power of real-time social media. Twitter is an advocacy medium. Just ask Shaun Dakin.

I was speaking yesterday with Cheryl Platt of EFX Media, a terrific marketing and media company based in Alexandria, VA. Cheryl is Senior Business Development Executive at EFX and, more to my immediate point, thinks about things a lot and creatively. Both Cheryl and EFX create targeted internal and external communications strategies for companies, with a great strength in video. On this point, I was asking Cheryl about her iPhone, or as Cheryl calls it, her “third screen”. I had never heard the term, so I wanted to learn more.

AdAge recently reported that “Ad pages for consumer magazines monitored by Publishers Information Bureau slipped 0.8% in the first six months of 2008. Measured magazine ad spending dropped 1.8% in the first half, according to TNS Media Intelligence.”

But then: “Digital gains help make up for print-page losses.” AdAge reported from its Magazine 300 survey that digital share ranged from 0.3% to 38%, with median digital share of 9.75% - up from a 5% median digital share reported in the 2006 survey.

(Crossposted on KStreetCafe.com.) My colleague Brad Fitch writes in the K Street Café about the bailout plan, “What’s Driving Citizen Outrage?” Fitch takes a smart look at the factors underlying the passion, and recognizes a true “grassroots” advocacy campaign when he sees one.

Pat McMurray of Quinn Gillespie was kind enough to forward me an article called “Mistaken Identity” from last week’s Wall Street Journal. Emily Steel of the Journal makes the point that online marketers have come a long way in micro-targeting consumers, but still have a long way to go. In some cases, a very funny long way to go.