Vonage has just passed through the 1.5 million lines in service barrier but does it really matter? I mean, what's a big number mean if you need to spend $200 million a year on marketing to attract them? And does 1.5 million customers make the impending IPO easier to complete? I hate to sounds like a broken record but a companies that bleeds badly even if it has lots of customers isn't a business.

There's been a huge amount of chatter in the past week or so about how fast the blogosphere is growing (Dave Sifry) and whether there is parallel growth among blog readers (not according to the WSJ). Tom Evslin (hat tip to Michael Parekh) has a nice post on whether the blogobubble is bursting (he contends it isn't but evolving, and "just the beginning of wider use of blog technology and greater blog influence".) To be honest, I believe another key component of the blogosphere's maturation has to be an end to the tremendous amount of navel-gazing and self-obsession happening. There's too much discussion on whether blogging is good, whether it's bad, whether it's replacing or supplanting mainstream media, whether it's no longer possible to become an A-lister and whether it matters, whether blogs are credible or legitimate, and who gets to blog and who doesn't. (Mathew Ingram vs. Scott Karp) Then, there's the blog posts on blog posts on blog posts to the point where there is only a handful of ideas and a massive proliferation of people commenting on those ideas. There are times, for example, when I look at Memeorandum and see dozens of posts on a particular subject. Rather than jump into the fray with everyone else, I usually follow my own path - although sometimes it's hard to resist jumping on the bandwagon. Before this rant goes too far off the deep end, I have to concede that introspection and active discussion are part of what makes the blogosphere so fascinating. It's a new medium and - like anything new - there's plenty of excitement, education and hype-age happening. Maybe this is just part of the maturation process as blogs go from new and cool to just being part of the media landscape. In any event, I think bloggers should think more about expressing their own ideas or their take on what's happening - rather than focusing on who's zooming who.

Based on pretty good authority, Bell Canada is close to buying Puretracks, a small Canadian music downloading service that has been around since late-2003. There are a number of ways to look at this deal. It suggests Puretracks is struggling financially amid tepid interest from local consumers and/or competition from iTunes, which has become the site to buy music given the success of the iPod. It may also be a harbinger of things to come in the online music industry as smaller players find themselves unable to compete, which may lead to consolidation. For Bell, it's an intriguing strategic move. At first blush, it gives Bell control of Canada's leading online music site. This means Puretrack's relationship with Telus will likely come to an end soon after the acquisition is consummated. In theory, it also gives Bell an efficient way to sell music to wireless users as more devices become MP3-enabled and MP3-friendly. I suspect Bell isn't paying much for Puretracks so the upside could be fairly significant.