My favourite stories of the week tell us just how weird it is out there in the World Wide Web:

1. Facebook, the social networking site that has engulfed the world, is finally making enough money to cover its operating costs after reaching… wait for it… the 300-million user mark. Good Lord is all I can say. It took this long? I don’t why they didn’t start charging for access a while ago. Facebook’s got so ubiquitous that I’d say at least 100-million people would cough up one dollar a month (myself included) to use it. Click here to read the BBC story.

2. Bandwidth in East Africa is happening — and has the potential to overtake South Africa,  Brian Herlihy, the CEO of SEACOM, said in an interview with Alec Hogg on his SAfm radio show. Click here to read the transcript.

3. And Peter Bruce, the editor of Business Day, wrote an excellent column about why we still need newspapers in the digital age:

You can be indifferent to the future of newspapers but not about journalism. No right-thinking South African should be… Integrity and courage and accuracy in journalism are all oxygen to a democracy and I know of no other way of sustaining it today, other than in a healthy newspaper industry.

Nuff said, Mr Bruce. Click here to go there.

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News24, Business Day and Moneyweb have all had big design makeovers in the past few months and though I’m no design guru, I use the Net everyday and have come to the conclusion that:

1. It’s ideal to have a busy, busy front page in order to entice users to stay on your site and click around.

2.  Of course, content is key but these trendy, clean Ikea designs — like the new-look News24 (and old-look The Times)   — hide too much away on other pages. Put more of it on your front page, guys. IOL, for instance, is not the prettiest website around but there’s a lot going on and it does mean you end up clicking on more headlines that take your fancy.

3. Business Day is hiding far too much away — especially its opinion, analysis and economic stories which is what sets it apart from the other sites. Don’t hide your light under a bushel, folks.

The Richmark Sentinel... is it fashion forward or OTT?

4. You can overdo it though and Michael Trapidos’s Richmark Sentinel is completely odd. It’s so busy,  it assaults the eye but  it is growing on me, what with its vertical newspaper column feel. It is  OTT but then maybe it suits the site, what with it’s grand sounding name and they do have a petty good mix of columnists.

5. Moneyweb’s new look is pleasing and they are actually managing to punt more on their front page than before the redesign though having a  biggish picture on the front page is really only worth it if you have a steady supply of complelling pictures. One gets a bit of a fright when you load up the fornt page, to be confronted by  the  ugly mug of a columnist (my own included).

While we’re talking Moneyweb, my column this week is about Denis O’Brien, the second biggest shareholder in the Independent Empire. Here’s an excerpt:

I requested an interview with O’Brien and was told by his people that he was on holiday but after ferreting around online, I think I can confidently say that O the Younger is a businessman with balls and many would buckle in the face of his colourful, cussing gift for entrepreneurship. For a 2008 Forbes cover article, O’Brien defined his business strategy as: “Get big fast. [Damn] the cost. Be brave. Go over the cliff. [The competition] doesn’t have the balls.”

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Answer: “People,” says Dogbert.

Here’s a three-minute Dilbert special with Dogbert on the true meaning of the Internet. It’s an absolute classic!

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One has to wonder what will happen to IOL if the newspapers of the Independent group are sold off separately, which is looking increasingly likely as the Irish parent company, Independent News & Media, has asked Deloitte to be on standby as the administrator in the event that the firm fails to restructure its debt.  Read the story at Accountancy Age.

This is required by Irish insolvency law in case the debt talks fail and one Irish-American news organisation is reporting that sources say the company is unlikely to make the deadline of July 24 (by which time they have to refinance a 200-million euro bond — or probably face bankruptcy). Read the story at Irish Central.

It is unlikely that the SA operation will be snapped up in its entirety as it will come with a hefty price tag and the Competition Commission would be unlikely to approve an existing media player buying the whole shebang.

There will, however, be much interest from Caxton, Media24 and particularly Avusa, which is hemmed in to Gauteng and the Eastern Cape,  in buying some of the Independent newspapers that include The Star, Pretoria News, Cape Times, Cape Argus and Durban’s The Mercury and Daily News. But what will happen to IOL?

The new owner of the Cape Times or The Star, for instance, will want its content feeding its own operation so I presume this will spell the end of IOL, which has shaped up to being a reasonably successful entity and something of a pioneer in SA. I wonder how all the back content will be disentagled from the the IOL archive — maybe the tecchies out there could speculate? 

Personally, as an Internet user I’m not overly keen on these big news portals. Except for News24, which is a handy translation service from the group’s excellent Afrikaans titles, I’m often irriated by IOL as I can’t get a handle on what each newspaper is serving up, on its feel and its character. I would like to dip in and see Joburg through The Star’s eyes, for instance, and Cape Town through The Cape Times’s eyes. Looks I might get my way.

While we’re in Media Land, somethings clearly afoot at Avusa, as suggested by the pledge by the Sunday Times that accompanied the  "Hi there, I’m here to serve you" story by the new public editor, Thabo Leshilo, on Sunday. 

Mention was made "of preparations to merge our print (Sunday and daily newspapers), online and mobile platforms" so we’ll see what comes of that.    

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Five things you need to know today in SA

1. What a fascinating story this is. News 24 reports that scientists are upset about the trade in dassie urine for the perfume industry because the toilets of these furry little beasts are a treasure trove of earth’s history. It’s pretty bizarre that dassie pee is used in perfume (hence forth womenfolk will be scrutinising the labels of their favourite smellies with more attention, I’m sure) but now it’s revealed that some of the dung heaps are more than 40 000 years old and can tell us about climate change through the eons. Isn’t that amazing?

Journalists pick up all sorts of useless information and, as a reporter in Cape Town, I was once told by a Table Mountain National Park scientists that dassies are unique in the animal world in that they use a latrine system — meaning they don’t poo and wee just anywhere but really do give a shit. I think you call that a poo