Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

It’s been a real winning streak since then for D, due in large part to our great speakers–such as Microsoft (MSFT) icon Bill Gates and Apple (AAPL) legend Steve Jobs.

Both have been onstage many times over the years, including a historic interview the pair of tech titans did together in 2007 at D5.

Other amazing speakers have included: Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE), Barry Diller of InterActiveCorp (IACI), legendary director George Lucas, Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (AMZN), former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman, News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft head Steve Ballmer, Walt Disney (DIS) honcho Bob Iger, Bobby Kotick of Activision Blizzard (ATVI), CBS (CBS) CEO Les Moonves, Democratic and Republican pols like former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John McCain, all the leadership of Google (GOOG) and many, many more.

We have had a lot of great moments onstage with all these tech and media players over the years, to be sure, with interviews ranging from the funny to the sublime to the truly disastrous.

But, like the digital industry and the innovation our conference focuses on, we also like to lean forward to try to figure out what the Next Big Thing is around the corner, whether it comes from Silicon Valley or not.

That’s why we’re kicking off our conference on May 26 with two of the founders of Twitter–Biz Stone and Evan Williams–who are riding high on tech’s latest hot thing, which might turn out to be either a rocket ship or a shooting star.

They’ll be followed up over the next two days by a plethora of interesting players, from the leaders of several major mobile companies to content execs hit hard by fast-moving digital forces to a new Internet leader like Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz, who is trying to turn around one of the Web’s great icons from its more recent lackluster path.

And, as we always do, we will be featuring a spate of demos too, trying to see if we can unearth that next next thing.

In the past, the D stage has seen the debut of start-up products like Sling Media’s Slingbox, Aliph’s Jawbone and Pure Digital’s Flip, all of which have gone onto glory. And also some, like Palm’s Foleo, which did not.

While not everyone can attend D, our crack staff is committed to bringing all the action from this year’s conference to readers of the All Things Digital site via up-to-the-minute blogs, photos, videos, tweets, digs and more. We’ll also, as soon as we can, post the videos of each of the onstage sessions, in their entirety.

Until it all kicks off, here is the list of speakers, below, in alphabetical order, who will be appearing at 2009’s D7 conference:

Irving Azoff | CEO of Ticketmaster Entertainment (TKTM)

Mitchell Baker | Chairman of Mozilla

Steve Ballmer | CEO of Microsoft

Carol Bartz | CEO of Yahoo

Mark Cuban | Chairman of HDNet and Owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theaters and Magnolia Pictures

Eve Ensler | Playwright and Founder of V-Day

Arianna Huffington | Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo | CEO of Nokia (NOK)

Mike Lazaridis | Co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIMM)

John Lilly | CEO of Mozilla

John Malone | Chairman of Liberty Media Corporation (LCAPA)

Roger McNamee | Partner, Elevation Partners

Jon Miller | Chief Digital Officer of News Corp.

Jon Rubinstein | Executive Chairman, Palm (PALM)

Randall Stephenson | CEO of AT&T (T)

Biz Stone | Co-founder of Twitter

Owen Van Natta | CEO of MySpace

Katharine Weymouth | Publisher of the Washington Post (WPO)

Evan Williams | Co-founder and CEO of Twitter

Jeff Zucker | CEO of NBC Universal (GE)

Almost-First Daughter Meghan McCain (pictured here) gave the Republican Party the analog equivalent of an unhappy emoticon yesterday in a column in The Daily Beast, predicting the political party will lose power quicker than a faulty iPhone if it does not get more Web-savvy pronto.

BoomTown always liked GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s sassy spawn, who had a pretty good blog–deliciously called McCain Blogette.com: Musings on Politics From a Pop CultureGirl–during the campaign and was always coming out with some little nugget that I am sure made her PR handlers cringe.

Well, there she goes again!

In a post titled, “Why Republicans Don’t Get the Internet,” Meghan McCain noted flatly:

The Republican party isn’t exactly Internet savvy. That’s no secret…This has been a source of personal frustration for me for a very long time. Unless the GOP evolves as the party that can successfully utilize the Web, we’ll continue to lose influence.”

Thankfully, it gets worse!

Writes Meghan:

I know this aggravates the old school political operatives to no end, but it’s true. The Obama administration understands that my generation spends most of its day on a laptop or a BlackBerry, and that using the web is easy way to communicate their ideas to their constituents. Making a website, Facebook group, or YouTube video entertaining and enticing is where grassroots campaigning begins. President Obama currently has around five-and-a-half million supporters on Facebook; my father has around five-hundred thousand.”

Sorry, Dad!

But apparently not all that much, because she ended her piece with a zinger about the GOP’s new Web effort, the Rebuild the Party site, essentially declaring the party a wizened Luddite with no hopes of ever beating the BlackBerry-loving Obama.

…The website is about as provocative as a blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. At the time that I write this, the video on the homepage features various individuals, most of them I would guess between the ages of fifty and sixty, explaining why they consider themselves Republicans. Had I still been an independent, there is nothing about this website or video that would sway me as a twenty-four year old woman to join the GOP…Until the Republican party joins the twenty-first century and learns how to use the Internet, its members will keep getting older and the youth of America will just keep logging on to the other side.”

Meghan McCain is definitely right about the unusually sleepy video–which only pops when they focus on dead Republican former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt:

Here’s a video of former eBay CEO Meg Whitman talking to Matt Lauer on the “Today” show this morning about her nascent campaign to be governor of California as the Republican candidate.

Whitman, who was a favorite of failed Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, seems to have perfected the art of saying exactly nothing, even after Lauer asked her if she was nuts to run the “arguably ungovernable”–referencing a writer for the Sacramento Bee–California.

“Running a business is different from running a state,” said Lauer.

Whitman’s answer: Prioritization!

Another former eBay (EBAY) exec, who worked for Whitman, Steve Westly, is also being mentioned for the governor’s race to replace current Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the Democratic side.

I say we have an auction to determine which eBay exec gets the nod.

Until then, here’s the “Today” show video from the Meg2010Campaign site on YouTube:

Both President- Elect Barack Obama and the man he beat in an historic election, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, gave the kinds of speeches at the end of last night that make one proud to be part of a country where stark differences still can mean grace can prevail when it's all over.

But don't take my word for it--the Internet makes it possible to consider them again and again.

Thus, here is a video of McCain's concession speech (try hard to ignore the inane booing at the start by some very sore losers in the crowd at the Biltmore Hotel in Arizona, which McCain quickly tamped down), as well as Obama's appropriately calm victory speech in Chicago below it.

They serve as perfect bookends to each other and is an amazing example of how to fight hard without killing each other, which is--in this fractious world--still a modern miracle.

Or as Obama quoted our greatest president (in my estimation, at least), Abraham Lincoln: "We are not enemies, but friends, though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."

Here that is, in living color:

McCain:

Obama:

In advance of tomorrow’s elections, here’s a pair of videos of the two presidential candidates, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, talking about tech.

While Obama has many more supporters in the tech and Internet sectors in terms of numbers, including Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt, McCain’s include Cisco (CSCO) CEO John Chambers, former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman and former Hewlett-Packard (HP) head Carly Fiorina.

And while tech is not exactly issue No. 1 with either of them, here is McCain talking about it in the entire interview he did at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference in 2007 (he also discusses Iraq and other topics in the interview) and a new, much shorter three-minute video just posted by Obama on tech policy:

As BoomTown has noted, one of the best things to come out of this election has been the very funny and very topical humor that has been on "Saturday Night Live" in this political cycle.

Headlined by Tina Fey's perfect impression of Republican VP candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the offerings from the comedy television show has been biting without stooping to the rank meanness from so many other places by both sides.

Last night, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain--who has been on SNL before (his "John McCain Sings Barbra Streisand" skit was really a gem from that appearance)--was in two skits on the show and did a great job in both.

The first was a really clever opening sketch in which he and Fey as Palin appeared on the QVC cable shopping network, sheepishly explaining that they could not afford to buy time on the major networks as Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama did last week.

Money quote from McCain: "I'm a true maverick, a Republican without money."

Along with a set of "John McCain Pork Knives" and "McCain Fine Gold" (with Cindy McCain as the comely demoer), Fey (as Palin) goes rogue and starts selling "Palin in 2012" T-shirts.

In a second appearance on "Weekend Update," McCain did another nice turn, running through a series of new strategies to win, such as "The Sad Grandpa" and the "The Reverse Maverick."

Here are the videos:

Opening QVC Sketch

Weekend Update

Once again, it is likely to be more popular online than on television, as it has been for all of the sketches, a striking trend for the long-running comedy show.

Famous-for-being-famous celebrity Paris Hilton continues her comic run for “fake” President of the United States, with a new online video for the Funny or Die comedy site.

She is pictured here in a photo from a current spread in Harper’s Bazaar, part of her ongoing “Paris for President” campaign.

In that article, Hilton said of her foreign policy platform: “I will carry out a foreign policy platform that will transform America’s role in the world to that of a proactive, not reactive, superpower that will use diplomacy and incentives to head off trouble in unstable regions before they unravel out of control. I will also be wearing platform shoes when I meet with foreign dignitaries to accentuate my well-toned calves.”

Somehow, given the current mess we are in, this blather actually makes some sense.

Hilton did her first online spoof video in August after Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain used her image in an ad attacking Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

In it, she referred to McCain as the “white-haired dude” and laid out–literally, Hilton is seen in the video lounging by the pool in a bikini–her policies.

In the latest, Hilton consults the most famous of fake Presidents, actor Martin Sheen, who played President Jed Bartlett for many seasons on the NBC hit “The West Wing.”

In the video, the pair kibitz over how to be the best fake President, which has been getting too close to the real thing these days.

The video includes a cameo by real Martin Sheen son, Charlie Sheen.

Here is the video (and, below it, is her first one for Funny or Die):

As has been copiously reported here and all over, Yahoo and AOL have been engaged in never-ending talks about a possible deal to merge their flagging Internet businesses.

Now, sources tell me, the circle of executives at both companies interfacing with each other has been widened, for purposes of due diligence.

That chit-chatting includes Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who has been in New York several times recently [UPDATE: But not yesterday, in a story I had previously linked to here]–where AOL parent, Time Warner, is located–to meet once with its CEO, Jeff Bewkes, and see if they can actually complete the merger.

Now, all this frantic activity does not mean a deal will necessarily be struck. In fact, in typical Yahoo style, it is going very slowly and that is never a good thing in dealmaking.

But it is this kind of ramped-up blabbery that has many at both companies predicting–hoping, really–that a deal will go through, sooner or later, as soon as Time Warner and Yahoo can agree on a price.

Or, more precisely, a percentage, since Yahoo’s stock price has been falling like a particularly sharp knife of late.

Sources said Yahoo does not want Time Warner (TWX) to have any more than 25 percent of the new company in a trade for AOL’s assets–although that figure would be slightly more if the media giant throws in some of that “Harry Potter”-generated cash into the deal kitty.

Yahoo (YHOO) management, sources said, also think its assets are of significantly better quality than AOL’s, and it still has that powerful–although declining–share in the lucrative search market.

Thus, it does not want to pay the $8 to $10 billion price Time Warner wants, and it should not either. (Here is a good analysis on the price issue by Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget.)

But Yahoo shares closed yesterday at a troubling $14.58, down 73 cents, or almost five percent.

That means its market valuation also declined by many billion dollars very quickly. It is now at $20.2 billion.

These profound stock drops, said several sources, could spur Yahoo to act before it gets even worse, which is why talks have been more frequent in recent weeks.

While not the best state of mind, panic is always a good motivator, and both companies are surely desperate to turbocharge themselves in the face of tough competition and avoidable management mishaps in recent years.

The hope? That together the pair can do better than they have separately–by combining their advertising, content and communications assets, which are among the largest in the world.

In addition, the “new” Yahoo would be able to make massive cost cuts, including layoffs, under the cover of integration and starting off with a clean slate.

So who would emerge more powerful in a new set-up–AOL or Yahoo?

Here’s a short cheat list:

Content:

AOL and Yahoo have a similar range of content assets, with big sites in all the classic categories, like news, financial, sports and lifestyles. Yahoo’s content head is Scott Moore, while AOL’s is Bill Wilson (both pictured here, left to right).

As I wrote yesterday, I expect that the more dominant Yahoo will rule, slashing and burning most of the AOL-branded properties, keeping only interesting newer brands like sports blog FanHouse, celeb blog TMZ and the Engadget, Tuaw and JoyStiq tech blogs.

And while former Microsoftie Moore is the likely head of this behemoth, don’t count on the very adept Wilson, who is known as a skilled corporate player at AOL, to stick around without a big role in this arena.

Communications:

Again, advantage Yahoo, which has bigger calendaring, email and instant messaging assets, an area once overwhelmingly dominated by AOL. That was then, of course.

Still, AOL’s communications tools are used by a huge audience worldwide and the pair together would be a powerhouse. So much so, in fact, that this might be the one major regulatory hurdle any deal would face.

Advertising:

Again, Yahoo would probably dominate, having just hired well-known former Microsoft exec Joanne Bradford to head up U.S. advertising sales. AOL’s top ad exec is Lynda Clarizio, a former lawyer who is considered dogged but much less experienced than Bradford. (Both are pictured here, right to left.)

And, Yahoo does have its search ad business, however weakening, and a stronger graphical ad business, even if the sector will be most under siege in the current down economy.

Plus, AOL’s Advertising.com, while a major ad network, is more of a business subject to bruising competition and squeezed margins.

Community:

Tapan Bhat (pictured here) now rules community at Yahoo, as well as its homepage, having just inherited it from the departing Brad Garlinghouse.

But AOL has a savvy and voluble exec in Joanna Shields, who came recently via its Bebo social-networking acquisition. While AOL woefully overpaid for Bebo and got played into thinking that other bidders were more interested than they actually were, it was Shields (pictured here) who essentially did that playing.

Sign her up for a top exec role in the combined company pronto!

In all seriousness, there is room for both in the newco, as both AOL and Yahoo seriously bite in the social-networking space. They will surely need a lot more than Bhat and Shields if they want to become true players in Web 2.0’s hottest and probably most important trend.

Engineering:

Yahoo. I do not need to explain this, do I?

Okay: AOL has always been incompetent in the technical arena, since its beginning days, compared with Silicon Valley companies like Yahoo.

All yours, Ash Patel!

Management:

Now, it is here that it gets interesting.

Most feel the push by Yang to do an AOL deal–and make no mistake, it is being pushed by him most of all–is due to increased pressure from his board, as well as major investors, who have had just about enough of his leadership.

“There is no way Jerry stays on as CEO in a newco,” said one source about Yang (pictured here). “He’ll be kicked upstairs as chairman, and I will think [President Sue] Decker will also have to go eventually, since there will be a lot of resistance if she is named CEO.”

But, said other sources, these major management changes will not happen immediately, if at all, as it is too distracting in the wake of a deal and ruins the positive “story” that both companies will surely want to spin.

And spin they will! (Go, Tricia! Go, Jill!)

And while he has a reputation for sharkish political skills, especially compared to Yahoo’s very diplomatic U.S. head, Hilary Schneider, expect AOL President Ron Grant to be an important part of the transition, since he is good–almost too good–at cutting costs.

Most expect his boss, AOL CEO Randy Falco, not to be part of the new company, thereby separating him and Grant, who are nicknamed “Smithers and Burns” at AOL, after “The Simpsons” creepy duo.

Most likely, there will be a search for a top-level CEO to take over the combined company–someone of the stature of New Corp.’s No. 2 Peter Chernin or eBay’s former leader Meg Whitman (except now, she is apparently Sen. John McCain’s pick for Treasury Secretary, if the Republican Presidential candidate were to win the election).

“If this has any chance of working out, the board has to push restart on the leadership,” said one person close to the situation, who notes that this deal is Yang’s last chance to truly impact the future of the company he co-founded and preserve its legacy. “Everyone gets that, even Jerry.”

But I think the idea that Yang would leave if there were to be a merger of Yahoo with AOL is wishful thinking on the part of his critics.

He appears tome to be very committed to seeing his vision of turning around Yahoo through.

And those who have counted him out always seem to be the ones who have been typically wrong, such as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and shareholder activist Carl Icahn.

Because, for all the turmoil at Yahoo, it’s Yang still calling the shots.

Ah, politics!

Actually, the maverick image was one of the reasons we invited Sen. McCain to our fifth D: All Things Digital conference in 2007.

In the video, Sen. McCain talks about substandard broadband in the U.S., tech policy and also Iraq (keep in mind, this interview took place during a time when most had written him off in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination).

Since the speech last night had more generalities than specifics, as convention speeches often do, here’s an hour-plus interview with Sen. McCain by Walt Mossberg and me:

It was tasteless and also offensive to Hilton and Spears, which seems an almost impossible task–way to go!

Now, wasting no time in taking advantage of the brouhaha and drawing attention just where it should be–to herself, of course–Hilton did this clever video spoof for the Funny or Die comedy Web site.

Wearing a killer swimsuit, she does manage to make a good suggestion about a sensible energy policy and an even better one to have Rihanna as VP.

Also, Hilton calls McCain “white-haired dude.” That’s hot. Well, warm.

In any case, here’s the Hilton video and the original humorless McCain ad just below it:

So, I have been standing by, trying to make sense of the debate that has swirled around Apple CEO, Co-Founder and font-of-all, Steve Jobs, with regard to his health or, more specifically, the lack thereof.

And after listening to all of the debate about it–mostly indignant declarations by the media, making their case mostly by wheedling milder indignant declarations from stock analysts and corporate tsk-tsk outfits–I have concluded that what is ailing Jobs is exactly no one’s business.

Even if his every breath is critical to the ongoing operations of Apple, the reason most use as their main argument for Jobs to tell all, it goes double.

Why?

Well, any Apple (AAPL) investor has to know by now that Jobs suffered from a rather serious bout with a curable version of pancreatic cancer some years ago and that recovery includes inevitable complications.

That was on display when he took to the stage of Apple’s most recent Worldwide Developers Conference in mid-June and looked really gaunt and unhealthy. It was obviously hard to look away.

People immediately reacted like it was the end of the world–which is no surprise given Apple’s rabid following–and began to suddenly acquire instant medical degrees and diagnose Jobs on the spot.

In its typically secretive style, Apple did not help matters by throwing out a thin gruel of information and noting it was only a common bug.

Of course, that felt like a bigger whopper than usual–even if he did, in fact, also have a cold, it kind of begged the question of what accounted for the rest of his haggard appearance.

In any case, the chatter went on and on, right up until the most recent quarterly earnings call when Apple’s CFO said, when asked that Jobs’s health, that it was a “private matter.”

Immediately, that sent the debate into a frenzy, as armchair word detectives went into overdrive about exactly what that meant. (Personally, I think it meant that Apple was saying Jobs’s health was a private matter.)

This weekend, the noise level reached a quantum level after Jobs made a can’t-make-this-up statement to New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, who was inquiring as to Jobs’s well-being:

“This is Steve Jobs. You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.”

Now that just cracked me up, given all that had gone on before, although some were once again indignant over the gall of a major company CEO making such a statement.

Obviously, they have never met or heard Jobs, who is well known for doing such things pretty much all the time.

And that’s the problem here and my main argument for leaving him be:

1) As I said, Apple investors who have not figured Jobs’s precarious health–after a round with any kind of cancer–into their investment strategies about Apple going forward need some serious reality medication themselves.

Guess what? Jobs has been really sick and it means he is going to have a harder time with any kind of infection or complication for the rest of his life, and he will likely be more delicate than someone who has not had cancer.

By the way, the take-away from the Nocera article and an earlier one last week in the New York Times was that Jobs had been quite ill, but not life-threateningly ill. Which was Jobs’s way of getting out the news.

2) Jobs is one of the most important CEOs, in relation to his company, around. (Warren Buffett, who did choose to reveal all when he was sick, is the other.) And that’s another thing investors should be figuring into their calculations on the worth of the stock.

As Jobs himself said in a famous commencement speech to Stanford University: “No one wants to die. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.”

You don’t have to get as dramatic as all that to know that when you are talking about such a charismatic and critical CEO as Jobs, any lack of involvement by him–like say going on a year-long yoga retreat–is going to be a problem that investors are buying when they buy the stock.

Of course, there are other Apple employees making things work at the company, although it sometimes feels as if Jobs is crafting every iPhone that goes out.

But it’s obviously the Steve Jobs Show, and investors risk that when they buy such a ticket–kind of like anyone who bought a ticket to Celine Dion’s recent show in Las Vegas and hoped she would not get, like, a common cold!

3) And, of course, we get to the secretive Apple culture story line in every single story, which is trotted out like it is a surprise and we should all be so angry about it and demand change.

Again, have we not been paying attention all these many years? When has Apple not been secretive, except when it suits itself?

Here are a few more shockers for those still stewing about Apple’s secretiveness: Sen. Barack Obama is African-American and Sen. John McCain is old and some people in the country are racist and ageist and may hold those things against them in the upcoming Presidential election!

All kidding aside, it’s the same media that wait in eager anticipation when Jobs doles out the often-disingenuous tidbits about various Apple products coming and then hype them to the high heavens for him when he deigns to unveil them.

In other words, the Steve Jobs you are getting right now is the Steve Jobs you have always gotten–on his terms, what he wants to say and when and how.

So don’t be surprised when he does just that.

Meanwhile, Jobs has come to our D: All Things Digital conference many times and chatted up a storm. Here he is in a highlights reel of the historic joint interview with Microsoft CEO and Founder Bill Gates in 2007.

In it, Jobs is quite voluble about their longtime rivalry and also reveals their secret relationship that dares not speak its name (he is kidding):

But--as many readers have requested--they will all be available in their entirety over the next two weeks in this column.]

Here’s Part 4 of 6 of our interview with Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp. (NWS) (owner of this site and the conference), conducted by me and Walt Mossberg, in which he talks about politics (Hello, Sen. Barack Obama! Not so much, Sen. John McCain!), broadband, Apple, mobile devices, his definition of “fair and balanced” and Keith Olbermann’s craziness.

Here are the rest of the videos of the interview:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 5
Part 6

So, as is BoomTown’s patriotic duty, I was watching the returns come in from Pennsylvania in the draggy war that has become the quest for the Democratic presidential candidate nomination between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as I also pondered what would happen next in the even draggier Microsoft (MSFT)-Yahoo (YHOO) takeover battle.

Then a smart friend in the industry wrote me an email, stating the obvious:

This msft/yahoo deal reminds me of the democratic nomination. we all know how it’s going to end but it’s going to be nasty nasty nasty all the way till the end, with enough bitterness generated along the way to present a reasonably likelihood of a pyrrhic victory. the ultimate loser can only succeed in doing well enough to drag out the process and inflict more pain.”

My friend wins the pundit prize.

And, in other words, the only winners in both these ugly contests are obvious: Republican candidate Sen. John McCain and Google (GOOG).

Which are, ironically, the pair both other pairs should actually be most focused on defeating.

Not satisfied to just entertain the masses with inane Vampires and SuperPokes, the social-networking site unleashed Lexicon on users this week.

It’s kind of like Google Zeitgeist except… well, it is exactly the same concept, all part of Facebook’s admiration of Google (GOOG) things, like, for example, as many of its employees as it can entice away.

As Facebook’s Roddy Lindsay described it: “We thought it would be cool to show trends on the public and semi-public forums across Facebook (also known as Walls). Today we’re announcing the launch of Facebook Lexicon, a tool where you can see the buzz surrounding different words and phrases on Facebook Walls.”

But, as much as I hate a lot of these juvenile time-wasters online, I do like the very simple Lexicon very much, especially in its ability to compare up to five keywords or two-word phrases at once.

Thus, BoomTown is periodically going to post word comparisons here, always using Britney Spears as the control word, since she has been a perennial champ on Zeitgeist for a very long time.

So, today, it is presidential candidates–Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.

As you can see, among users of Facebook, Britney holds up surprisingly well, even though she is going through a quieter, less-manic-head-shaving period of late.

(Click to make the images bigger)

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.