Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is certainly giving her Facebook fan page a workout this week, as she nears one million fans.

Using the site to flack her new book, “Going Rogue,” which comes out officially today, it got a big boost from her interview today with Oprah Winfrey, clocking in at close to 995,000 fans last night.

In comparison, her Twitter page was as empty of followers as the great outdoors.

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Last week, New Yorker writer Ken Auletta launched his new book on the search giant: “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”

But one final chapter was actually cut from the book, which Auletta posted this past weekend on his Web site. It’s made up of 25 media maxims by Auletta.

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While at a book party for author Ken Auletta in San Francisco last night, BoomTown took the opportunity to ask those gathered whether they were scared or not of Google and its growing power.

The Auletta book covers a lot about the search giant, but also drills in on how many have become increasingly wary of Google’s hegemony over key businesses on the Web.

Nonetheless, the Silicon Valley types I queried were not even slightly worried and, oddly enough, many mentioned how they loved the food served up at the Googleplex.

Hmmmm….

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Guess what? Google has too many Spocks and not enough Captain Kirks.

This is one of the many interesting insights BoomTown gleaned from a video interview last night at a San Francisco book party for well-known New Yorker scribe Ken Auletta, who has just written a new book, “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”

This “lack of emotional intelligence,” said Auletta, reminded him a lot of the subject of one of his previous books: Microsoft.

Oh, the delicious irony!

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Let’s all agree first to blame owner Condé Nast for deciding to shutter Gourmet–the elegant and iconic magazine, which has been around since 1941, after the November issue.

While circulation remained steady at Gourmet at just under one million monthly paying subscribers, Condé Nast Chief Executive Officer Chuck Townsend pointed to a fall-off in advertising spending by luxury brands that result in a money-losing mess.

But some are blaming a movement of readers to the Web. Is it true?

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Considering the ongoing skirmishes going on right now between Amazon and Google over digital book publishing, it’s more than ironic that Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos was one of only a few initial investors in the search giant.

But–in one of the many interesting details in New Yorker author Ken Auletta’s new book, “Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It”–it was indeed Bezos who invested $250,000 in the start-up in 1998 at four cents a share.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

There’s a great excerpt in the New Yorker this week.

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Yesterday, BoomTown checked in with Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar about the document sharing start-up.

Today, it’s Trip Adler, CEO of its much larger rival, Scribd.

Launched in early 2007, the San Francisco-based online publishing company allows customers to share a wider range of documents, including books and manuscripts. It now claims to have 10 million documents.

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Here is a slick video about social media that looks at its impact and quick influence, all of which is true, although it does manage to leave out the very pertinent question of whether or not it makes any money or not (because most of it does not yet, of course).

It begins by asking: “Is Social Media a Fad?”

More like a financial dud so far–but, in any case, it is a very fun watch. Created by Socialnomics, a blog by Erik Qualman covering social media, it is also a book that is now coming out.

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This morning, BoomTown was on the very terrific National Public Radio talk show, “On Point,” along with Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain.

The program, moderated by Tom Ashbrook on Boston’s WBUR station, was titled “From Desktop to the Digital Cloud” and dealt with the increasing move of data of all kinds online and into the so-called “cloud.”

In other words, eventually, a completely virtual life for music, photos, records and more, and the end of packaged software.

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Following on his last book, “Never Eat Alone,” author Keith Ferrazzi has veered in a different direction from the one now in vogue–being social-networked up the ying-yang–with another, titled “Who’s Got Your Back.”

That means trying to hyperactively build a Twitter empire of thousands and connecting yourself to a Facebook Potemkin Village of “friends,” thinking this is what’s going to make your life fabulous.

According to Ferrazzi, though, you pretty much only need about three folks to help you succeed.

Here’s a video interview.

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On my recent visit to Seattle, the highlight for BoomTown was a visit I made to see Ben Huh, the CEO of Pet Holdings.

Huh got a lot of attention when he bought icanhascheezburger.com in late 2007. The site, known as Lolcats, was well known for odd pictures of cats with even odder and often misspelled captions.

Via even more sites, Huh has created a profitable network of pointless fun. The latest is, naturally, Emails From Crazy People, which just launched.

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How much is BoomTown and everyone else in Silicon Valley trying to nab a copy of Ben Mezrich’s likely-to-be-entirely-made-up-but-who-cares tale of dirty doings at Facebook?

Muchety-much! But, so far I have come up peanuts in grabbing an early copy of the work of “fact”-ion–titled “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”–which is set to come out July 14, along with a movie later.

Facebook is not pleased, of course, and will likely be challenging Mezrich’s work as specious dreck, but here’s my own list of 10 completely made-up, utterly fabricated, just-call-me-Jayson-Blair facts that should be in the book.

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This week, I went on a trek to downtown San Francisco–from ATD HQ, located in the wilds of the Castro–to visit David Sifry, the jovial Web entrepreneur who recently launched Offbeat Guides.

The San Francisco-based start-up makes “personalized, up-to-date travel guides that cover over 30,000 travel destinations, using a combination of search technology and curation by both amateur and professional travel experts.”

In other words, on-demand travel books with a touch of humanity.

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Last Friday, BoomTown attended a packed-out book party at the Silicon Valley home of Gary and Laura Lauder in honor of globetrotting pundit Tom Friedman and his latest weighty tome: “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–And How it Can Renew America.”

The New York Times columnist’s book is catnip for the smart set–including greentastic VC John Doerr–gathered under a swanky tent on a stunningly beautiful late afternoon, even though Friedman’s message was that these kinds of days were pretty much numbered for the human race.

Can Silicon Valley stop dopily Twittering and save the day?

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Ah, Michael Wolff! Always throwing stink bombs and making deliciously wackadoo declarations about the Internet.

In a recent dinner interview the author had with BusinessWeek’s media columnist Jon Fine this week, Wolff slaps around News Corp. social network MySpace, with a series of his trash-buckling phrases, some of which are true and some a bit more of a stretch.

But it’s par for the course for Wolff, as you can see here in an appearance with BoomTown on the “Charlie Rose” show a decade ago.

“It’s craziness, it’s loco, it makes no sense,” said Wolff about the Internet, circa July 27, 1998. And later: “I think the myth of the Internet is that it is going to come into everybody’s home.”

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