Boomerang

On a recent trip to a cruel and shallow money trench, known to some as Las Vegas, I was photographing the classic Flamingo Hotel when my friend asked, “Why are you taking pictures — you’re not even on Facebook?” I was shocked that she didn’t think my noteworthy life was worth documenting if strangers couldn’t see it. I recently took myself off the web to avoid being available to strangers and now I’ve become a “social-media pariah” among my friends.  

It seems as if candid photos have gone from a form of preservation to personal promotion. An individual’s online profile has become a free peep show for anyone to gawk at from the other side of the glass. Keep in mind that your pictures are available to everyone and that privacy features aren’t always dependable and should never be seen as a surefire way to protect your anonymity. Look at Facebook’s recent security system incident that involved a computer technician hacking into Paris Hilton’s private photo album.  

The more one reveals about their personal actions on the web, the more they strip away the mystery of their private lives. However, that can be to our advantage as well. We have the ability to shape how people perceive us through the photos we upload and share with everyone. The only problem is how do we control the use of our personal information and photos when in the hands of other people?

Ashley Alexandra Dupré, the prostitute associated with Gov. Eliot Spitzer, is a perfect example of how openness on the web can backfire. In a just a few hours after the scandal broke, journalists were able to discover an array of information about her — from a photo of her in a bathing suit to private details of her difficult childhood. She may have never expected immediate infamy, but she made the journalists’ jobs a lot easier. Millions of people have made all kinds of personal details available online via social networking sites, perhaps without thinking it could be used against them. My advice: Imagine that everything you type online is being read by a potential employer. Or, better yet, by your parents.  

As PR pros, it’s our job to be “in the now” and “in the know.” Trend tracking is one way we accomplish this but it’s not the only reason to stay on top of the market pulse. Trends help us maintain our clients’ relevance in the marketplace, identify changes in consumer expectations, and increase a client’s “cool factor” with specific audiences. Market trend knowledge gives us valuable insights so we can develop goods, services, and experiences that appeal to customers. It helps us avoid the risk of disappointing (or worse yet - not even reaching) target audiences.

Scoping the blogosphere over the last year, we’ve seen niche networks become more prevalent but not necessarily at the expense of the more wide-reaching sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. Experienced networkers are spending considerable time on niche sites like Goodreads and Imeem that cater to particular hobbies or interests. We’ve also seen a growing number of networkers forming smaller sub-communities on the larger sites.  

Yes, tracking trends helps us stay on top of what’s happening right now, but it also provides insights into what’s coming next. Looking around the corner, I expect to see a growing number of sites that connect offline neighborhoods, housing communities, buildings, and dorms to online networks. These new networks will provide a virtual space for community members to interact and to find or promote local services. The good news is that a highly localized online network will enhance its offline community. 

For some, the benefit of joining the neighborhood network is to quickly learn about what’s happening, and get updates about their immediate environment. For others, it’s more about connecting with people in their area who share similar socio-economic backgrounds or lifestyles. Hey, if they all live in the same building – they must have something in common!

Since moving to San Francisco six months ago, my roommates have had the average shelf life of a fledgling social network. I have lived with 16 different people, some of whom were merely nameless faces I passed in the hall on the way to the bathroom. Looking for perfect housemates requires hours of forced conversations among complete strangers. Through my experience, I have learned that there is one universal question at the end of every craigslist open house post: “What kind of music do you listen to?”

Music is a powerful faith, chock-full of devotees brought together by their mutual loyalty to some hip-hop disciple or rock god. You are what you listen to. The online community imeem.com revolves around the world’s passion for rhythm, and that is why it’s not just another social network. imeem is a craving.  

The best part about imeem is creating personal streaming, music playlists from its vast and diverse free library. Pull up your imeem page and you have all your favorite music at your fingertips to listen to at work or share with friends.  

The thousands of users from around the globe sharing their personal collections make discovering new music easy on imeem. Other music sharing Web sites like Pandora and MySpace are limited by its selection. And though imeem leans toward personal use, companies and business professionals can create blogs, upload photos and calendars to share with clients and colleagues. As you can tell, I’m an imeem convert, despite my progressive hearing loss, under a music spell.

With so many great internet applications built around social music, it’s only natural that the next up-and-coming music-related social network would involve at least a little “booty shaking.” DanceJam, founded by Geoffrey Arone, Anthony Young, and MC Hammer, is a community that leverages social networks, video, and people’s passion for dance. The site provides an Internet destination where users can watch and rate videos of people dancing, compete in dance-offs, and check out the latest and greatest moves from around the world. According to Wired’s recent coverage, DanceJam will offer slow-motion tutorials that will allow viewers to break down dances one move at a time.

The popularity of TV programs like “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance” illustrates how much people love to get their groove on – or at least watch other people doing it! And let’s not discount the incredibly popular YouTube videos like Soulja Boy (check out the instructional video here), the Evolution of Dance, OK Go – On Treadmills and the NBA All-Stars dancing debut. DanceJam will provide a yet another way for people to get their dancing fix.

If the site delivers on its promise, DanceJam could bring the love of dance to a much broader audience. In the same way that Dance Dance Revolution brought aerobic movement to video games – two things not usually associated with one another - I hope DanceJam increases enthusiasm for the social and physical elements of dance. DanceJam has the potential to be what social networks are meant to be – online interactions that ultimately enhance our offline lives.

Facebook, like many social media sites, is complex. There are one-to-one relationships, there are one-to-many, and there are many-to-many, not to mention the varying degrees in between. I love it (and some might even call me addicted), because it’s in my nature to be social and to express myself. I want a place to unleash my creativity in a social forum. What’s so cool about all these emerging networks is that human behavior is actually driving the development of technologies. We’re constantly tweaking technology to better fit our social communication and productivity needs, which makes me think that Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Jaiku, Digg and Del.icio.us are only the beginning of what’s to come.

For example, the number of APIs from various companies is driving innovation of new applications. A couple I like are Twittervision, a real-time geographic visualization of Twitter posts anywhere in the world, and Twittermap, which allows you to search a location (or Twitter user) to get a quick view of what people are doing in that area. The next thing I’d like to see is the ability to search for a phrase (e.g., basketball or the movie “The Departed”) so you could get a real-time snapshot of what people are doing or saying about a particular topic.

I can’t imagine what life would be like without social media. Balancing work, staying informed and maintaining a social life are, for me, three full-time jobs. Lately, I’ve added apartment hunting to the mix, and rely more than ever on social media tools to optimize my time so I can do the things I care about.

Let’s take staying informed: I’m not typically sitting in front of a stack of newspapers or magazines when I find a spare moment. Using social media, I can listen to podcasts of my favorite French radio show during my morning commute, discuss issues with bloggers via IM on my lunch break — even listen to BusinessWeek podcasts, directly from the reporter, on my iPod while at the gym. This is invaluable if I ever need to speak to him about a client. Social media allows me to consume and interact with information when it’s convenient for me.

My apartment search is another example. Because the housing market is so tough in San Francisco, each ad on Craigslist receives hundreds of responses. Sifting through and responding to ads becomes a full-time job. Most responses become buried within minutes, so timing is everything. Instead of living in front of my computer screen, I set up RSS alerts for ads that fit my criteria. When one is posted, it’s instantly sent to my phone via email. I can access the ad, research potential roommates on Facebook or Google and respond within minutes if I think it’s something that is a potential fit — all while hanging out with friends at Dolores Park.

So what would life be like without social media? I don’t want to know.

If you want to learn more about living a green lifestyle you should start by talking to others that are knowledgeable about the topic. You can find lots of those people at SustainLane.com, a social network for people to find and share reviews on all things green, from organic macaroni and cheese and chocolate bars to eco-friendly furniture and electric scooters.

In addition to providing great pointers on where to find the green goods, Sustain Lane provides “US City Rankings” that illustrate how people’s quality of life and preparedness will fare in the face of our changing environment. San Francisco, “still a shining example”, ranks #2, (right behind Portland) on the list due to its innovative sustainability efforts. With so many green alternatives in my new hometown, it’s convenient to have a resource like SustainLane.com to help locate them.

I was a skeptic about the value of Twitter, but that was before I really started using it and thinking how it can be applied as an effective social media tool. Twitter allows you to send short messages, up to 140 characters in length, to your friends and colleagues in answer to a simple question, “What are you doing?” Messages can be delivered via SMS (aka text), IM or the Web. Ross Mayfield refers to Twitter as continuous partial presence management. Now that’s a nice fancy term, but why would your client, or anyone for that matter, want to use this? Do we really care what everyone else is doing minute to minute?

To answer that, let’s take a look at how Twitter is actually being used versus how it was originally intended to be used. As I see it, Twitter users fall more or less into three camps: (1) those using it to carry on a dialogue in public (though you can send direct messages to individuals); (2) those using it to let their friends know about neat stuff they encounter (a quote, a URL, an event, etc.) without expecting a response; and (3) those letting their friends know what they are doing.

As a professional communications tool, Twitter’s primary value falls into the first two camps, assuming the messages have something to do with a client’s product or service.

But like most successful social media applications, Twitter’s value is not that it quickly and easily broadcasts a message, but that it creates conversations. And consumers are tuning in to those conversations.

Here’s an example of how it could work in today’s PR world: Let’s say your client is launching a new product at a trade show. You could use Twitter on Facebook to let your client’s community know about the product and events happening at your booth throughout the day. That can help drive traffic to your booth and get people talking about your product or service. You could even post a thought related to your client’s customer’s pain point. (For a file-sharing software company, that might be: “Darn, I hate when I can’t access my files from one, easy place! But I tried ‘X’ service, and it works!”)

Or let’s say you’re trying to increase the readership of your new blog. It only takes a few seconds to tell people, “I just did a post about ‘X’ topic.”

Anyway, as with any social media tool, reading about it is only the first step. Try it out and drop me a tweet on Twitter with your thoughts.

Will everyone who hates social networks please raise your hand? Do you (like me) believe that the overwhelming lameness of these networks overshadows their usefulness? Granted, they can be an excellent way to connect with people you never would have connected to offline. They can also be great for companies that want to connect with their customers to get real, instant feedback — which is invaluable. For my personal life however, I haven’t found social networks to be essential, since they are completely separate from my normal Web experience.

The good news is that social networks are finally getting the picture. Two weeks ago, Facebook launched its latest feature, positioning itself as an operating system by allowing outside developers to build programs to live on its site. Basically, the social network is allowing anyone with the right knowledge to create a program for Facebookers to add to their site and spread virally. I care, because now a ton of really cool mini apps will be created that focus on the things I’m interested in, making my social networking experience more in line with my regular Internet experience.

Another great benefit is that the cost of entry for creating and spreading a tool has virtually diminished. You no longer need an entire web company to produce a cool application and distribute it to a wide user base. Any single person on Earth who has a unique idea and the right knowledge can create a tool that is used by many thousands, if not millions of people within a short period of time. Take iLike, an application that makes music recommendations based on preferences, and allows users to know what types of music their friends are listening to. This company created an application for Facebook immediately after the feature launched. After only a week, around a million users have added iLike to their page.

I have to admit, I didn’t think Facebook had the guts to step up to the plate and hand the reins over to the masses. There are a number of risks it is taking on by allowing others to add to its site. Because anyone can create a program and spread it instantly, Facebook risks associating its brand with content it has no control over. Also, many users blame programs they don’t like on Facebook, rather than the developers. It will be interesting to see how other large companies deal with relinquishing control as this trend expands. Will their next step be massive regulation of this type of content? Will they try to disassociate themselves from content that appears undesirable?

I believe that the benefits of opening up these resources far outweigh the cost.  Facebook’s evolution represents a large shift in the Internet experience. If it’s successful, it will make the social network a much more useful and integral part of the Web experience. We will be able to connect to our friends in more ways and take all our favorite parts of the Web and collect them in one place. My question to you is what type of application do you want to see created on the site? 

These days politicians don’t own their own political campaigns. The days of political candidates sending one-way messages to the public are over. Today, anyone with access to the web can spread an idea like wildfire among millions. For instance, the popular anti-Clinton ad posted on YouTube clearly illustrates how one person can have a huge impact on the political landscape.

For several weeks the public didn’t know who created the clip. On the Internet, any creative mind can post to his or her heart’s desire about pretty much anything. The web allows any passionate (and clever!) individual to completely undermine the traditional roles of authority. I take that back – passion and cleverness are not even requirements to have an influential digital voice. All you need is an idea and membership on a social networking site. When the Internet provides a platform to reach millions of viewers with something as simple as a video or an e-mail, there is no denying the power of social media.

Although politicians also leverage social media to bolster their reputations, they are no longer in complete control of their image, brand, or for that matter, digital content. (In case you didn’t know, the same is true for corporations.) Only time will tell how social media will continue to level the new political playing field. In the meantime, I’ll be checking out MySpace’s Impact Channel to read what Hillary and Obama have to say on their personal profile pages. I would like to check out Rudy Giuliani’s page, but at this point the only way to access his content is to send a “friend request.” Wait though: I’m not ready to enter that level of political networking — I mean, social networking — just yet.