In the spirit of Thirty and Thirty-Five comes Forty-Two — the following awesome, beautiful, and creative web of thoughts that occupy my brain.

No matter.

I’m not patient enough to write poetry or prose, so I’ll just count down after Futurama.

Don’t you worry about life, the universe, and everything; let me worry about blank…

42. We believe in the interconnectedness of all things.

41. Everything is about inclusion.

40. Everything is everythang.

39. Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

38. As human beings, our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

37. Let it go. This too shall pass.

36. SIMPLIFY.

35. Lessons are repeated until they are learned.

34. The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

33. Reflect on happiness.

32. People are very bad at predicting what will make us happy.

31. There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.

30. We are feedback loops. We are the stories we tell ourselves.

29. Love is when you open your heart to pain.

28. To get over grief, be there for someone else’s grief.

27. Kittie heaven is mousie hell.

26. Bird is the word!

25. The ride does not require an explanation. Just occupants.

24. It’s not going to stop till you wise up.

23. Character is destiny.

22. Reflection creates identity.

21. You can do anything.

20. We can change the world with a pen and paper.

19. Starting is hard.

18. We’ll see.

17. Life is… delicious ambiguity.

16. Beware drift. Do what you love!

15. True happiness comes from within.

14. Get yourself a giant panda! (Super kawaii!)

13. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

12. That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.

11. It goes to 11. (Be sure to read through to Andy Weir’s story, “The Egg”!)

10. Life is like business. It’s 20 percent what happens to you, and 80 percent how you respond.

9. 80 percent of success is showing up.

8. Our attitudes produce our luck.

7. Love more, fear less.

6. Be grateful for every breath.

5. Be who you are, as hard as you can.

4. Be here now.

3. Be excellent.

2. There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.

1. Only kindness matters in the end.

********* …enlightenment… *********

I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of social applications, and consequently am retracing ten recent thoughts on the subject…

And now, the countdown.

10. LOOK: because of the ubiquity of follows and video in social applications, we are always being watched.

9. “Pandas and Lobsters” explains why it’s hard to build great social applications.

8. “Whales and Lobsters” explains why it’s lucrative to build great social applications.

7. So I told TechCrunch that Facebook is worth more than people think.

6. And I told TechCrunch that Twitter is worth more than people think.

5. And I told TechCrunch that Google is struggling with usability issues in social applications.

4. So I told Gigaom that Google should stop playing games and get serious about social applications.

3. But I have the feeling that conversations with Google about social applications haven’t landed the target.

2. Mind you, being a Facebook whale is an epic fail, too.

1. Luckily for Facebook, advertisers have been embracing Facebook so much, that they have the money and time to figure it all out.

Which leads us to the question…

What next great social application should be developed?

Troutgirl and I know the answer. Now we just need time and the right resources.

It is not a cliché: There is good money, and there is bad money. Good money can make a great idea better; bad money can destroy a great idea.

Now comes the fun part. The part that puts the “fun” in funding.

Such is the state of social in 2010.

So if you’re looking for me, you’ll find me on Posterous. (And occasionally here. But mostly there.)

Here’s a sampling of my top ten favorite Posterous posts:

10. Road Trip Across I-10 in 2010. Road food!
9. On aneurysms.
8. Everything is about inclusion.
7. Top 10 Ridiculous Facebook Pages.
6. Death panda!
5. Fuck iPhone, I’m gettin’ an Evo!
4. Eulogy for Bob.
3. My bucket list.
2. Lessons are repeated until they are learned.
1. Get yourself a giant panda!

Onward and upward, to infinity and beyond!

Let’s say (hypothetically, of course) I’m starting to develop a brand new mobile application/service today, January 31, 2010.

I’m gonna want it to run on iPhone first, and eventually Android. Maybe even Blackberry and WebOS someday. Possibly even Symbian. Possibly.

So I start by reading…

PhoneGap

…and then look at some iPhone-specific help…

jQTouch / Three20

…and then I scratch my head:

1) Is PhoneGap flexible enough that I can feel good betting my company on it? Or should I just start by building my iPhone app natively and THEN figure out what to do once I want to be more than iPhone/iPad?

2) Will I want to throw PhoneGap out 3-6 months from now because of its own limitations?

3) Will Apple stay consistent in its belief that it approves of PhoneGap?

I’ve added this as a question on Quora as well.

So I asked myself: On which service can I become a whale in 2010?

Whale, n. One of the biggest users of an Internet service, who together with other whales form its delicious nucleus. Whales are Malcolm Gladwell‘s “Connectors” and they are the foundation of any social network’s etiquette, memory, and wisdom.

Being a whale on a social network can be quite frustrating — Facebook stops us at 5000 connections at which point our iPhone app pretty much stops working; LinkedIn won’t tell people how many connections we have once we’re over 500; and Twitter displays a fail whale whenever they can’t handle the truth.

So why do people become whales? Whales are born, not made; whales cannot NOT whale. It’s in our nature. Plus, being a whale can be quite rewarding: you get a lot of social capital and are able to move among different groups of people to spread interesting thoughts and products. Bonus: Whales also feel inexplicably good when they introduce people who otherwise might never have met.

So where in 2010 will I be able to whale to my big pimpin’ heart’s content?

Of the 30something startups I know who are hiring, this weekend I got more than a dozen invitations from:

• Plancast (119 connections)
• Foursquare (375)
• Yelp (147)
• Quora (104)

Yelp has been around for years, but its recent use of Facebook Connect has given it new life. Foursquare launched last year, but it has gotten really hot in the last month.

Even so, none of my connection counts on these services come close to my friends on Facebook (4997), LinkedIn (“500+” — really??), and Twitter (3838).

Side note: I’m also a fan of Gowalla (180 connections) but I haven’t gotten any new invites on there in a while. I wonder if users are intimidated by places with names like Death Star and Helms Deep.

Memo to all consumer Internet services: You get the behaviors you allow. Whales make it so.

I do have some friends who are hiring — mostly for developer jobs, but as these companies grow, they’ll hire for other positions, too. I will try to keep this list up-to-date. But as heisenthought points out, everybody wants JavaScript developers, it seems.

Please at-reply me on Twitter if you’d like an introduction to any of these companies:

SayNow (Palo Alto, CA) — JavaScript and Ruby developers who like to rapidly prototype social applications

Gowalla (Austin, TX) — Ruby, JavaScript, and mobile developers

Foursquare (New York) — Excellent developers

Hypertable (Burlingame, CA) — Technically-minded salesperson

Quora (Palo Alto, CA) — Python developers

Asana (Palo Alto, CA) — designers, developers, and a businessperson

Plancast (San Francisco) — JavaScript and PHP developers

Payvment (San Francisco) — JavaScript and PHP developers

Apture (San Francisco) — JavaScript and Python developers

AppDiscover (Redwood City, CA) — iPhone and Android developers

Campfire Labs (San Francisco) — Javascript, Ruby, and Python developers, and systems engineers

Dolores Labs (San Francisco) — your guess is as good as mine

Sitepen (anywhere) — JavaScript developers, visual designers, and project managers

EcoFactor (San Carlos, CA) — Java developers

Manymoon (San Francisco) — Java and JavaScript developers

InTwig (Redwood City, CA) — JavaScript and PHP developers

eFitPlan (San Francisco) — Java/PHP/Ruby developers who want to fuse the latest exercise science with computer science to provide personalized workouts and fitness coaching to the masses, for free

Breakthrough (Palo Alto, CA) — Ruby engineers, a Product Manager, and a Director of Sales, ideally with health care experience but not required

Palaran (Palo Alto, CA) — Search scientists, Systems engineers, Frontend hackers

Reputation Defender (Redwood City, CA) — JavaScript and PHP developers

Truveo (San Francisco) — web developers and sysadmins

iSocket (San Mateo, CA) — JavaScript and PHP developers

Ribbit (Mountain View, CA) — C++, Java, Flash, and mobile developers

Ustream (Mountain View, CA) — C++, PHP, Flash, JavaScript, and mobile developers

Blekko (Redwood Shores, CA) — Perl, C++, and JavaScript developers

Wolfram Alpha (San Mateo, CA) — everything

Lithium (Emeryville, CA) — a little bit of everything

Gaia (San Jose, CA) — PHP and Flash developers

Watercooler (Mountain View, CA) — JavaScript, PHP, and Flash developers

Playdom (Mountain View, CA) — JavaScript, PHP, and Flash developers

Sociable (San Francisco, CA) — Product manager

Liftium (San Francisco) — JavaScript and Ruby developers who want to on-ramp new publishers using Liftium’s ad technology

Chai Labs (Mountain View, CA) — Rock stars

Snooth (New York) — JavaScript and PHP developers, and salespeople

Yelp (San Francisco) — JavaScript, Python, and iPhone developers

Etsy (Brooklyn, NY) — The question is, what AREN’T they hiring right now?

Hunch (New York) — JavaScript and Python developers, and an analytically-driven blogger

Betfair (San Francisco) — a little bit of everything

Glitch (Canada) — ???

Trackville (Mountain View, CA) — ???

Kerosene and a Match (Orange County, CA) — ???

knx.to (Menlo Park, CA) — business development person

speedi.ly (Palo Alto, CA) — ???

AdCru (San Mateo, CA) — ???

Ellerdale (Menlo Park, CA) — ???

PandaWhale (Palo Alto, CA) — iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and CSS/JavaScript-on-mobile-Webkit developers

Career Resources (Redwood City, CA) — looking for temps

And of course Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Zynga, Ning, Bing, and Silver Spring Networks are hiring too.

Meanwhile, a friend I haven’t heard from in a while wrote me out of the blue.

If you know anyone who wants to talk with her, please contact me.

She writes:

I wanted to say hello and also let you know what I have been working on the past couple of months. I have just recently been hired on full time by The Solidman Group as head of all their sales and marketing. We are an event and tour managing company. We coordinate all facets of tour operations including 3 party vendor hiring/management, travel arrangements, budget oversight, project management and communications with TV networks and other media outlets. We provide all Audio/Visual installation and coordination for diverse concert venues. We also provide expert audio production and project coordination advice and consultancy.

Working for this company has been a dream job. I have never worked with such an organized team of people. I think I have finally found doing something that I like….haha! Pass my contact info around to anyone you may think would be interested in what we have to offer; that would mean so much to me… =)

Here are some of our “NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS”:

The Pretenders
Stevie Wonder
Lady Gaga
Serena Ryder
Wu-Tang Clan
Paul McCartney
Amy Winehouse
T.I.
Mark Ronson
Santana
Spank Rock
Atlantic Records
CMJ Music Conference
Bilal
The Fleshtones
QTip
Semi-Precious Weapons
Ghostface Killa
The Clipse
John Scofield
Jeremy Enigk
Pink
Envy On the Coast
The Roots Jam Residency
Harper’s Bazaar
Gilded Age Manufacturing
Fashion Rocks
PRPS
AMC
FUSE
IFC
SPORTS ILLUSTATED
ESPN
DISCOVERY CHANNEL
HBO
TBS

Didn’t you tweet something about social networks and lobster traps not that long ago? (analogy or post, etc)

To which I replied,

Isn’t it crazy how hard it is to find a tweet from last month? If you google or bing “ifindkarma lobster trap” you’ll find a RT.

Which begs the question, why is searching Twitter so hard for finding the original tweet? All the search engines find ReTweets from other people.

Why can I not search Twitter and find the tweet?

Why can I not search Google and find the tweet?

Bing or Facebook (which itself is powered by Bing)? I don’t think so.

The original tweet was on July 3rd:

“Facebook is basically designed like a lobster trap with your friends as bait.” http://bit.ly/oR2o2

And apparently over time it will be come increasingly hard to find until eventually it disappears, because eventually all tweets disappear:

3200 tweets ought to be enough for anyone. #famouslastwords http://bit.ly/3B5ntp

I don’t like that Twitter search maxes out at a week.

I don’t like that the length of time tweets stay in Twitter search keeps getting shorter.

I don’t like that Twitter search is only concerned with what happened recently, and not what’s most relevant, or most comprehensive, or what best uses my social graph.

So even though I’m predicting that Twitter will be the world’s second biggest search engine within five years, they have a long way to go to be a comprehensive, relevant, social-graph-based search engine.

Unless…

“Someone will probably come around with a microblogging service that syndicates better & searches better than Twitter.” http://bit.ly/8AXYd

Wal-Mart of the Internet or World’s Second Biggest Search Engine? Maybe both. Time will tell.

In the meantime, I’d better backup my tweets…

But that’s not entirely true. I spent July with my family. I went to Mississippi, and my nephew Zachary turned 3. Also, earlier this year my brother and his wife had their second son Nicholas, and later this year my sister and her husband will have their first daughter (and my first niece!), who remains to be named.

Next week my sister has her shower in St. Augustine, Florida, and I cannot make it, so we got her a teddy bear and a baby stroller and a card from Gibson that was so cute I wanted to capture it here…

Life Lessons Your Baby Will Teach You

• Everyone needs to be held.
• One smile can brighten a whole day.
• Change is good.
• So are naps.
• Simple pleasures can bring great joys.
• Comfort is more important than fashion.
• Quiet time is precious.
• Good health is a great gift.
• The best things come in small packages.
• Every day is an adventure.
• Miracles do happen.
• We never, ever stop learning.