People with gobs of time on their hands might participate in the trend du jour, flashmobbing, where Internet-organized crowds of irony-seeking people suddenly show up at a physical location (the downside being, of course, that they then put themselves in close proximity to other flashmobsters). Well, some enterprising Internet souls - with even larger tracts of time on their hands - have created an innovation that precludes the annoying physical presence of the flashmob: flashblogging. Apparently starting from a Yahoo Group, the flashbloggers are flitting from site to site, depositing their comments on various bulletin and comment boards.

Perhaps because Up2Speed has already stretched its editorial guidelines and covered flashmobs as though there might be some commercial application, the flashbloggers visited upon the Internet marketing site their unique brand of, um, humor with posts to an Up2Speed item starting on Thursday.

Posing as an enthusiastic flashblogger, Up2Speed was able to infiltrate the group, joining as a member. Once in the secret confines of the special-purpose Yahoo Group, an organizer offered up several missions to ironic or non-sequitor postings on several target sites. The suggestions seemed to meet with little enthusiasm, suggesting perhaps that flashblogging may have a half-life even shorter than that of flashmobbing.