Today in social media

The Point: There is a lot of Junk parading as social media tools these days. Some last, like twitter, and become useful. Others just... die. Like Swurl. Don't get lost in all the chaos, pick your medium of communication and stick with it.

(Image source: http://communitywealth.com)


The title of this posting might lead you to believe I know, or even care about what the new rage in social media is today.

I don't.

Well, maybe I care a little bit because I don't like to feel too old. But anyway, I digress. It was during a conversation with a beautiful young lady about breaking into the world of communications, that I stumbled into how truly daunting, and confusing the world of Internets 2.0 could be. I (and others who have had the pleasure of meeting me) would agree that I am a fairly intelligent and technologically savvy person. So when even I begin to mentally flail and sputter while trying to explain how to go about implementing a social media campaign, I believe it's time for people to get serious.

The problem is that there are so many gimmicks and fads out there (think Swurl), and many more being created each day, which instantly seem to act like geek flypaper! And of course, if all the geeks (I sometimes count myself amongst those ranks) are on new platform XYZ, and you hope to communicate with us, then of course you're gonna have to follow us right? Not necessarily, but this constant influx of short lived fads tends to complicate the landscape and make it a pain for any would-be born-again geek to join the ranks of their forefathers.

My suggestions? Spend some time trying to figure out what exactly your goals are for implementing a social media campaign. Try to identify your target audience, and get an idea of what messages you hope to be sending them. Figure out what the best medium of communication would be to send those messages (not everything is twitter appropriate). And remember that you don't HAVE to do EVERYTHING! Granted, having a Facebook page is almost a no-brainer, especially since (it is rumored that) Facebook has plans to take over the world. It's also not a bad idea to have a youtube channel if you have videos that people may want to see. Besides those two, I don't believe I would rank any other social media tool as an "almost-necessity" ("almost" because not everyone has something sensible to say via youtube!)

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Myspace-ing not a great idea in this economy

Despite the title of this post, the truth is facebook-ing, twitter-ing and most other things-ings that involve social networking are probably not a great idea if you're posting stuff that current or potential employers might find offensive.

I was just listening to a CNN story about a former restaurant worker who got fired for "gossiping" about her boss. The fired employee then decided to file a lawsuit againt the restaurant in federal court. This issue is worthy of note because the decisions the court comes to will have far reaching implications on the privacy debate-- and on the way information can be accessed and used, and by whom.

I couldn't find a link to the CNN story, but here is a WSJ story that mentions it. Please post comments and share what you think of this issue.

update:
Two employees actually got fired. There is some discussion going on on the CNN twitter channel if you're interested: http://twitter.com/cnn

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Swurl

Swurl was an aggrigator of all one's web content, a life stream if will, of all one's activity on the interweb. Then one day it was no more. Just like that. Gone.

Certain blogs have made mention of some sort of "goodby note" that was left by the creators of swurl.com that read:

"We built Swurl as two guys doing something we love in our spare time. Unfortunately, due to the pressures of our day jobs and other distractions, we can no longer support or maintain the service at the level that we think our users deserve."

I for one never saw that note since (as you might have noticed) swurl.com now takes you to some ebay page, so I cannot verify this. Good news is, since swurl was an aggregator, no user content was lost. However, the fact that swurl just shut its doors and dissappeard raises an intersting question and and sounds a distinct alarm: in this world where everything is quickly going "paperless", and massive amounts of information are being digitalized and stored on the net (in some cases ONLY on the net), what safeguards have been built to make sure that information published online don't just disappear when the platform it was published on does?

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