Status is the ultimate social gesture

Great post by Fred Wilson about the role of status updates in the digital/social ecosystem. Love this quote in particular:

Much of the innovation in social networking is being driven by entrepreneurs in their late 20 and early 30s. These people were teenagers or young adults when AIM came out in 1997 and they rapidly adopted the IM interface for rapid (and rabid) communications with friends from their bedrooms and/or dorm rooms. The status update is ingrained in their social networking intuitions.

That's the same reason so many young entrepreneurs are embracing (and innovating around) game mechanics and game design thinking  - they grew up playing videogames, so it's second nature to them.

Go read the whole thing