I’m not sure if you heard, but it’s not about centralized hubs of communication anymore.  It’s about listening.  It’s about taking what you learn from the inbound and enabling and empowering communities around you—small pieces loosely joined.

- Charlie O’Donnell on NYC’s new Chief Digital Officer position.

This world of the Internet, if we know anything from its brief history, it likes nothing more than to build someone up only to topple them. Who has an AOL account these days? Not that long ago, AOL was the single most powerful player on the Internet. Who has a MySpace account these days? MySpace sold for billions of dollars not that long ago. I’m very reluctant to crown Facebook king of the future. They certainly are flavour of the month. This is not a world that respects loyalties and longevity.

Malcolm Gladwell on social media.

According to Lockhart Steele,

I make this joke that blogs exist because people are bored at work — which is to say people with white-collar jobs and big screens to stare at. That’s undeniable.

And, according to Jonah Peretti, it’s the people who are bored at work.

The Bored at Work Network is bigger than any media network. If they like something and are willing to share it and pass it on, it will spread to millions of people around the world.

I agree and this is something that ties into productivity and my view on side projects. More to come on these things as they’ve been common themes I read about.

I fall somewhere between what Umair Haque says and what Bud Caddell says. Mostly I don’t care if social media is a bubble; I love thinking, playing and working with the media, technology and information that have sprouted up from it.

I see both sides of the argument. And, my overriding theme through all of this is that it’s great if we can figure out a few things. The largest being how to identify the trusted network of users in our social networking lives.

Craig Newmark has identified and clearly stated what I believe the problem with all this to be (article via Everyday UX),

what he thinks is the next big problem the web has to solve. And what is that? The question of who to trust online, according to Newmark. To solve it, he believes that what the web needs is a “distributed trust network” that allows us to manage our online relationships and reputations.

Great example of my favorite service, Foursquare, using personal brands to build it’s company’s brand.

Crowley states, “We designed our business cards as collectibles — collect all 6 and unlock a Foursquare badge. Once word of this got out, people were looking all over downtown Austin for employees just so they could introduce themselves and collect a badge. Every time we handed out a card, we got to meet one of our users. Actually encouraging people to reach out and introduce themselves to your team puts a name and a face on the products you’re building. It also helped us start a dialog with people who’d probably never introduce themselves.”

I spend lots of time trying to tell people that while social networking (and media) sites are quite useful, you should pick which ones you’re going to use wisely. I’m going to start referring people to this line from now on. It’s more succinct than I ever am.

But the intelligent use of the various media we now have isn’t just a matter of doing more digital. Rather, it’s a matter of more consciously allocating your use of different modes of communication: for example, making face-to-face communication a priority for those stakeholders with whom it’s needed, while using digital less. It all depends on what’s going to work best for you and for them.

Usually I go with something along the lines of, “know your audience” (do they still like snail mail) and “do what you’re comfortable with and will stick with” (if you don’t know what a tweet is, maybe you shouldn’t twitter?). Like I said, this is more succinct.

I think Foursquare is great, and I think that it’s soon to spur a bunch of services built on top of it (and not in a Social Great way; I think in more applicable and useful ways). In it’s current state, I like it, but don’t love it. I think it’s got a lot going for it and lots of places it can go.

What I think is Foursquare’s secret sauce is it’s ability to point out places I’d enjoy. Right now, I don’t find the tips to be useful and the tips that I do read, I’m not sure who the person recommending them is, so I don’t trust them like I maybe should. I still use Yelp for that, even though I don’t like that service since I don’t know anyone recommending me a coffee shop to try.

Check-ins are fine, but I don’t (necessarily) care where you, my friends, have checked-in. The only reason I care about that information is if I’m out and want to meet up with you, but frankly if I wanted to meet up with you I would have called/emailed/texted you. That information really does nothing for me, personally. It could be very valuable to brands – and, as we’re seeing, it is.

I find myself in different cities constantly, and exploring new places is fun for me. Where I get frustrated is when I try a new place and it’s a complete stinker. And this is where I want Foursquare (or something built on top) to step in.

One thought I’ve had is to build a way to email me all my check-ins for the past week where I’m asked to fill out a tip. I could do this from my computer anytime I felt the need. Completing a tip on my phone just isn’t practical. And, if a place stunk, I could say so, and my network would know about it.

My prediction is that there will be services built on top of Foursquare to help create small tribes of like-minded users to point to trusted and reputable places to visit/eat/drink. It’s the trust and personal web that I’m missing from Foursquare and desperately want.

I’m in the process of building an online community and want to be able to take it somewhat offline. Enter an app built on top of Foursquare where I segment the users from “my” community on Foursquare and encourage recommendations to create a listing of “my” approved places, which I think adds that element of trust to the reviews. Make sense? Thoughts?

As I think about it, it makes sense for Foursquare to build a lists function (like Twitter!) to handle this for us.

I love the headline over here, F*ck Social Networks, Make Friendships.  It’s a sentiment I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. What are the benefits of the social networks I’m a part of? I’m not sure, frankly. And that doesn’t sit well with me. Why participate if I can’t get a benefit out of them?

The two main sites I think about are LinkedIn and Facebook (Twitter has been valuable to me, but that’s because I’ve found how responsive people are and how it’s easy to “meet” someone). I’m a member and have friends at each of them, but want more than just friends. I want friendships.

So, in an effort to get more out of these sites, I’m putting a public call out there for all of us to put the work into cultivating more friendships versus friends. Let’s work at these friendships.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Facebook lately. There’s definitely an aspect of it I like – knowing what everyone is up to without having to put too much effort in emailing or (worse) picking up the phone. Having said that, there is an aspect I am really finding to be disturbing – and, unfortunately I’m having a hard time putting to words what it is I despise. The best way I can put it is that I don’t like knowing what some people are up to, but I don’t have any reason not to be their “friend”.

This research piece is the closest thing I’ve read to capturing some of what I’ve been thinking (er, I should say it spurred my thoughts versus capturing, anyway). Basically, I believe that there is a tremendous amount of influence within certain aspects of all these friends we have. However, I think there is a negative aspect that people aren’t considering. A couple of thoughts I lifted from the article follow.

“How we feel, what we know, whom we marry, whether we fall ill, how much money we make, and whether we vote all depend on the ties that bind us.”

…

Controlling for environmental factors and the tendency of birds of a feather to flock together—happy people prefer hanging out with other happy people—Christakis and Fowler found that we really do emulate those we care about, whether we mean to or not. Being connected to a happy person, for instance, makes you 15 percent more likely to be happy yourself.

I’ve really been considering deleting my facebook account. I’ve got a number of other online personas (www.joshpremuda.com/about has most of them, but my internet handle is usually ‘joshpremuda’, so start there) where you can see what I’m up to, so the need for another outlet is minimal unless facebook is the only place people track me.

For a bit of an experiment, I only checked facebook once this past week (gasp!) and frankly, I didn’t miss it. I get my information from elsewhere. So, now I’m really wondering what value I’m getting from it. Do I keep it because I’m providing value to others?

Facebook seems to be on a slippery slope. I feel like it could be very unhealthy to check up on ex’s, stalk someone you just met, or just get obsessed with seeing what everyone is up to.

Thoughts?

Congratulations, you have a million friends. But what’s it getting you? Marketers have worked hard to make friends online, but the benefits have been elusive at best. The real juice is word-of-mouth referrals from trusted sources, but you can’t tap into that with a sledgehammer.

AdAge touches on what Red Robin is doing, which is closer, but still not where (I believe) things need to be to get that word-of-mouth referrals. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure what the best way to get there is, but I think there is a way to do it (quickly, I can’t figure out the reasoning behind spending all the time and money to get all these Facebook Fans), and I’m constantly trying to figure that out. Stay tuned.