An interesting post from Jeff Jarvis today about The rise of the third estate and the need for Social Media participation and, by extension, Social Media Measurment- though what we have now, is still poor and ill suited for what’s required, moving forward.  According to Jeff Jarvis:

“…. No one’s in charge. I didn’t think that’d be worse than having the bozos we had in charge. But it is.

You’d think the one thing our politicians would be competent at is politics. But they couldn’t even count votes.

We knew the White House was a vacuum. Congress is a vacuum. Wall Street is lie. Detroit and the era it represents is dust. Journalism is sinking like a wet witch.

Who’s in charge? It’s falling to us, the people. We’re in charge. Problem is, we’re not ready. We’ve used the internet so far to organize some knowledge and yell at each other. We are just beginning to create the tools to organize ourselves. If only the meltdown of every authority structure could have waited a few years. Then again, necessity is the mother of organization. New structures don’t replace old structures while they’re still in place. New structures fill voids. And, boy, do we have some voids to fill.

We’re not ready, but then again, sometimes circumstances makes the person - maybe it’s time.   Now, I’m not really for or against the $700 Billion Dollar Bailout (see Bush Urges Congress to Pass Bailout in today’s New York Times) but I noticed how many people on Facebook mobalized to send the Congress representatives mesages against the bailout.

And Paul Krugman, more than anyone else, has been able to explain the $700 Billion Dollar Bailout like Where will the money come from and interestingly, in an analysis very similar to what Web Analysts produce for Traffic and Attribution, Krugman published this chart yesterday in a post on Politics of crisis