Met with a handful of clients and prospects yesterday in Seattle. During one pretty free-form conversation with Classmates -- one of the few companies that has pulled off paid consumer content online -- the discussion ran along the lines of, if the Internet was a connection layer, and HTML etc. was a content/presentation layer, and now we're adding a social layer, are there any applications that wouldn't benefit from social functionality? At least from a user's perspective.

Think about that for a second. It's tough to come up with any. You end up mumbling about exclusive access/membership or information that needs to be "pure" -- from a single, identified source (or artist). And even that could benefit from commentary. One-to-one private communications may be the only thing...

Boy, am I asking for a lot of clutter.

I love Matt Haughey's thoughtful post on the differences between comments on blogs in 2008 and those back in the day (five years ago).

But I think the root of the problem (described in various media outlets over the past year or so) of snarky, or mean-spirited, or generally unhelpful comments becoming the norm has to do with the distance we've achieved from those original link-and-essay heavy blogs.

Ironically, the comment thread on this post is an outstanding discussion of the issues involved.

There is no one answer to handling comments on the Web. I run a perfectly respectable site in my community that is full of thoughtful and informative posts by real people using their real names. My competitor down the road operates his community section more like an ongoing, anonymous brawl with interesting conversations going on in the corners. I think it works for him and his posters.

I never had a problem with Jupiter's no-comments policy, even though I love getting comments and mixing it up with my readers. I think it's a reasonable choice for the way the company does business. Some of my favorite bloggers don't take comments and it has never bothered me.

So it looks like the mobile industry concept of 'unlimited' (i.e. limited to 'fair-use') is to be applied to CWM. From the small print:

At the time of launch downloading of the tracks is not restricted unless usage is not considered to be for personal usage or user is using any unsupported applications or connection methods. If average usage for all users reached predefined levels Nokia is allowed to restrict number of downloads for individual users

Devil of course is in the detail.

Also, crucially, CWM customers, who will be on pre-pay of course, will have to pay all data charges incurred when downloading:

No additional charge for content is made per download - the music is "free" at the point of download and no prices are displayed to CWM users. End user would still be responsible for any data charges involved

That should generate some pretty rapid usage of pre-pay credits in the initial weeks as customers fill up their phones. Clearly this is viewed as a key tactic for CPW to drive their mobile broadband business. But there is a disconnect here - the services is for pre-pay customers only. But it would seem to be geared towards migrating customers to subscription mobile broadband. But if they become subscription customers, would they still be allowed to have access to CWM?

Starwood's loyalty program, Starwood Preferred Guest, has allowed members to transfer SPG to airline loyalty programs, which has been useful if not occasionally cumbersome benefit. However, now the program has gotten even better — SPG points can be used to book flights directly on www.spg.com/flights.

It gets better: there are no black out dates. On my first try comparing SPG Flights to an airline site, I found SPG offered several loyalty point options while the identical route on the airline's Web site indicated there were no loyalty point flights available.

And, it gets better still: While airline redemption programs impose fees on airline mile redemption flights, SPG Flights redemption includes taxes and booking fees in the price of the flight.

This is great news for travelers, the savviest of whom should be signing up for Starwood American Express cards from their desks in the Sheraton. It is also interesting for the travel industry — the most competitive loyalty program to book flights is now run by a hotel.