The Latest Social Networking Addiction: Pinterest

For some, the gateway drug was their first tweet.  For others it was the constant poking on Facebook that nagged at them until one day they realized they had become become addicted to Social Networking.  For the afflicted, every desktop, laptop and smartphone screams out at them to "use me..."  Temptation is everywhere.  Even Twitter co-founder Biz Stone recently warned against becoming addicted to his own baby, Twitter.

So Many Followers, So Little Time

Since I launched Social Networking Rehab back in August of 2007 there has been no shortage of shiny new social networking services to fuel the pangs of the addicted.  While Twitter and Facebook may remain the cocaine and heroin of the socially addictive services, just as on the dark corners of cities everywhere there is always the threat of a new, more powerful drug making its way to the streets.  It seems the latest digital drug to feed the needs of social junkies is Pinterest.  In my humble opinion it is too soon to tell if all the interest in Pinterest is well founded, or if they are riding a wave of aggressive Facebook connecting and the early adopters' seeming obsession with whatever is perceived to be "the latest" shiny new object.

Anything Further For Fodder?

Not one to let the hype go unnoticed, Pinterest seemed like a ripe subject for me to tackle for a (long overdue) new post over at www.SocialNetworkingRehab.com, where the INVITATIONS staff will happily take the necessary steps (12 or more) to help folks overcome their uncontrollable passion for pinning.  Whether you are a true pinhead or not, I thought you might enjoy this (ahem) "news" story, re-posted here with permission.  :-)   Are you addicted to Pinterest?

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Acupuncturist Takes Pinterest Too Far

(Pittsburgh, Pinsylvania) February 20, 2012.  A 47 year-old Pinsylvania man has been arrested for aggravated assault after pinning 134 photographs to the body of an unsuspecting, but very patient, patient of the Always Accurate Acupuncture Center.  The suspect, Ivan Toopoke, is a licensed acupuncturist known for pointedly practicing his profession with piercing perfection prior to this point.  This is the first time he has been stuck with charges of needling a customer the wrong way.  

The patient, who's name has been withheld thanks to the privacy settings on her Facebook account, is a regular customer of the AAAC.  She dozed off during what was to be a routine session of stress relief sticking, only to awaken on pins and needles.  According to one witness, an apprentice acupuncturist, "I walked into the exam room with a cushion full of freshly sterililized needles, and there she was, covered head to toe with pictures of kitchen appliances, shoes, pasta dishes and Ikea Furniture, pinned to her as if she was a human pin-board.  It was shocking."

The witness's reference to human pin-board was on point, as it turns out.  Investigators who confiscated Mr. Toopoke's office computer found evidence of an obsession with the popular on-line pin-board,Pinterest.  Toopoke had set up more than 750 "boards" and had personally pinned or repinned more than 150,000 images since signing up for the sticky social network six days ago.  According to Detective Dick Richardson, "it appears that Mr. Toopoke was addicted to this Pinterest thing to the point where he could no longer distinguish between digital pins and real pins.  In his mind, his brutally abusive acupuncturing of this patient was merely a means of sharing the things he loves."

When asked about the source of the 134 images pinned to the victim, Detective Richardson noted that CSI's involved in the case had photographed for evidence a large refrigerator in the Acupuncture Office that was suspiciously devoid of any cut out pictures on it, despite the presence of a large number of small magnets.  The acupuncturist Toopoke may face jail time as well as revocation of both his acupuncturist license and his Pinterest account.  He has been sent to the prominent Social Networking Rehab facility,INVITATIONS, for observation.  The victim is expected to fully recover, and has asked if she could keep several of the photos of shoes and furniture for future reference.

A spokesperson for Pinterest was not available for comment on the incident.

Intel's "Museum of Me" Puts YOU On Display

You've probably heard of "Moore's Law" named after Intel's co-founder Gordon Moore.  Moore predicted the exponential growth of processing speed, memory capacity and other aspects of computing devices and digital electronics that we have come to take for granted.  Intel itself has been abiding by Moore's Law, continually introducing new, faster, more efficient, and more capable microprocessors that power much of our digital lives.  At the same time, as technology becomes more and more of a commodity, it is important for companies like Intel to bring out the human side of their tech, and show consumers how smaller, faster, better, can actually be applied to the things we do with our digital tools and toys.

It's All About You

As a clever promotion for their 2nd Generation Core i5 processors, Intel has created "The Museum of Me," which slickly uses Facebook Connect to create a sleek and charming virtual walkthrough of The Museum of YOU!  Connect with your Facebook account and in a few moments you'll be the featured exhibit, with the museum walls adorned with your friends, photos, words and more.  It is a visualization of your social graph on Facebook that is guaranteed to put a smile on your face, and it is a great reminder of the "wow" factor a creative use of processing power can deliver.  Click here to get your Guggenheim on and march through your own private MOMA.  A day at the museum is always fun!

Create your own Museum of Me.

DISCLOSURE: I am part of the “Intel Advisor” program and am compensated and/or receive other value from Intel to advise and attend events on their behalf. 

Thanks To Google +1 Is My New Emoticon!

In our fast paced world of micro messages and real time communication we are always looking for ways to save keystrokes and characters and express ourselves as efficiently and effectively as possible.  Hence the popularity of the simple Facebook "Like," the ease of a RT (retweet) on Twitter, and of course the almost ubiquitous smiley emoticon.  :-)  Thanks to Google I have a new favorite emoticon: +1

A Two Stroke Engine of Encouragement

This morning, as I am often wont to do, I sent out a "Good Morning" tweet to the world, but I added a simple, "Hope your day is a +1" paying homage to Google's newly announced "social" tag.  After all, it is a way to imply something positive in only two keystrokes - less than the word LIKE, or LOL and even shorter than the average emoticon.  ;-)  Almost immediately I received a +1 on my tweet from the iconic Twittizen, @Iconic88.

Soon the +1 meme began to spread and @carissaO chimed in as well and @Iconic88 cleverly suggested that Google should add a +1 button to the Android keyboard.  I say +1 to that suggestion, and I think I will continue to use +1 in my tweets to show positive encouragement.  Perhaps Google is listening and we will see a +1 coming soon to an Android device near you...

What do you think?  Do you give this blog post a +1?  Will +1 pivot its way into your daily vernacular?
 

How To Beat A Bot (By Being Human)

So, I am sitting at my computer minding my own business when a Facebook Chat window pops up and asks,

 "around? jeffrey, got a second??"  

It is from "Michael N.," an old high school acquaintance who, like so many others, I have befriended on Facebook but haven't really engaged with save for a few mass messages from other old High School friends that we were both copied on.  We are friends by Facebook standards and we certainly hung out in the same crowd on occasion "back in the day," but (no disrespect to Mike) we were not close friends.  That's why I was surprised to see a chat message from him...  So I answered,

"Sure. I am here.  How are you?

And then things got, in my opinion, a little bit weird.  No, "hey, how've you been?" or "whatever happened to so and so...?"  Instead, Michael said,

"ok cool, I know this is random, but i want you to try something real quick"

First of all, I know this is chat and Facebook and the age of instant messaging, but I'd like to think that a fellow adult who shared the same quality New York City Public High School education that I had would be a cut above using limited punctuation and all lower case letters when typing anything. I continued, tentatively...

"ok..."

And then "Michael" asked me to take some crazy IQ test.  An IQ test?  A guy I haven't seen or spoken to in decades out of the blue sends me a link to take an online IQ test?  WTF?  I didn't have to be a CSI to know that something was amiss.  I've been fooled before, but I won't get fooled again! (Yeah, all this High School talk brings back memories of THE WHO...).  So, clever me asks,

"How do I know this is you and not a bot?"

And of course I get a reply that has no relationship whatsoever to the question I just asked.  In my mind I hit Bot Bingo... no way this was really Michael!  And just to be sure, I go ahead and play the human card.  I want him to prove he's the guy I went to Forest Hills High with...

"Tell me something personal so I know it is really you..."

Silence.  No answer.  The chat is over.  Score: Human 1, Bot 0.  Chalk one up for the sentient beings!  I beat the bot!

What do you do when faced with an apparent bot? Do you try to beat it at its own game by asking questions only a human could answer?  Please share your bot beating techniques in the comments.

(P.S. I sent the real Michael N. a message that his FB account may have been hacked...  No reply so far.  He probably thinks the note from me is spam!)

Bot Photo Credit: © iBamboo3106 - Fotolia.com

Location ROI: The Relevance of Interruption

Location, Location, Location...  

William Shakespeare once said that "all the world's a stage" and we are merely players... That 
was then and this is now.  Now all the world's a location waiting to be "checked in" to...  Our modern lives are nothing more than a growing trail of digital breadcrumbs as we actively and passively record and broadcast our every move to friends and strangers alike.  Despite the fallout over Facebook and the perils of privacy (or the lack thereof) our liberation of our location is not necessarily the epitome of evil.  There can be benefits to location awareness, if we are just aware of them.

Bring On The Marketers

Last month Jay Berkowitz invited me to speak on a "Location Super Panel" at the 2010 SFIMA Summit held at Nova University, headlined by a great Keynote by blogger, podcaster and all around mensch, Mitch Joel, of the highly regarded Agency TwistImage and author of the bestselling "Six Pixels Of Separation."  An engaging speaker, Mitch set the tone for a day of sharing and learning, and it was my pleasure to contribute a few pixels of my own.  I was asked to prepare a short presentation on location and given the influence of my own experiences and employment in the mobile content industry I gave some thought to the influence of location on mobile content and marketing.  Key points of my talk include:

• We live in a mobile world. 
• In a mobile world, location creates context.
• Context, not content, is King!
• Context creates relevance.
• Relevance determines the impact and success of marketing and advertising.
• Mobile advertising is an interruption.
• Successful Mobile advertising is gauged by the ROI: the Relevance Of Interruption.
• Location Aware Content personalizes your experience.

My slides, and a video of the presentation (courtesy of @iamjeffcohen) are embedded below.


Myxer's Jeff Sass Talks Mobile, Location & Content at the 2010 SFIMA SUMMIT from Jeffrey Sass on Vimeo.

YOU ARE HERE! Myxer's Jeff Sass at SFIMA Summit 2010
 

Do you agree with where we location is taking us?  I'd love to hear your thoughts and views in the comments.

Posted via email from Kiss My SASS!

Is That A Phone In Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Enjoying 140conf?

The state of NOW, not later, was the focus of Jeff Pulver's inspiring Los Angeles edition of his 140conf. While the inaugural 140conf in New York this summer was very clearly inspired by Twitter and the character limit of a tweet, in Hollywood the spirit of the conference was more clearly about the character of the 140 characters who took the stage over the two days. The famed Kodak Theatre was the home to 140 speakers that ranged from comedians to cancer patients, from homeless to household names, from business leaders to folks trying to give us the business. Those in attendance laughed, cried, and more importantly, connected, and brought their online lives into a real time environment. It was a thought provoking, invigorating, inspiring event, as evidenced by the continued conversation on Twitter.

My own small contribution to the event was called "Is That A Phone In Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Enjoying The Show?" in which I tried to highlight both the benefits, and some of the downsides to our always on, always connected lives, thanks to our ever-present mobile devices. In a nutshell, while it is truly amazing to have instant access to our Facebook friends, our Twitter stream and virtually all of the information on the Internet in the palms of our hands, we too often "tune out" to tune in to our phones. In the end, we should make sure our constant access to "real time" information doesn't ruin our "real time" engaging with the people around us. What do you think?

Here is my short presentation, and thanks again to Jeff for welcoming me as a character at 140conf LA.

Posted via email from Kiss My SASS!

A Pikchur Is Worth 1,000 Words...

"Share, and share alike" could be the mantra for our age, as every one of us now has the tools and means to create and share media, anytime, anywhere, with or without a reason or purpose. Sometimes we post words, sometimes we post video, sometimes we post images. It does not matter. What matters is that everyone of us can create and share content whenever and wherever the mood may strike, and what we share, has instant global distribution.

Lights... CAMERA PHONE... Action!

If digital photography represented an evolution in photography, then camera phones represent a revolution! Now almost everyone ALWAYS has a camera at our immediate disposal. Even more impactful is the fact that with a camera phone, not only is it ridiculously easy to capture an image anywhere and everywhere, but it is also just as easy to post that instant image to the Internet and share it with the world.

FLICKR, PIKCHUR, TWITPIC And Other Made-up Words...

I have always enjoyed photography and can still remember the excitement of my first SLR camera (and the challenges of properly loading a roll of film without "exposing" it). That said, the best pictures I have ever taken have all been taken since the "digital" age, and many of them were taken with a camera phone. I travel a lot, and try to memorialize my trips with pictures, and through sharing those pictures on services like FLICKR, TWITPIC and PIKCHUR. I have previously had two pictures I posted on FLICKR used in other publications as a result of posting them there. This picture of my (former) boat after Hurricane Wilma was used in the GULF STATES MARINE FISHERIES COMMISSION Annual Report to Congress on the storms of 2005. This picture I took in Colonial Williamsburg was used in the official SCHMAP!! East Coast Guide of Parks & Gardens.

A Phone Picture Of A Phoney Phone...

By far the most widely seen of my posted photos has been the photo above of a Kyocera "concept phone" that was on display at the CTIA show in Las Vegas. I took the picture in the Kyocera booth with my phone, a Sprint HTC Touch Pro, and promptly posted it to PIKCHUR.com, so that it would instantaneously be sent to my Twitter stream and posted to both my Facebook and Flickr accounts. (I have met some of the Pikchur team, including Emmanuel Pozo and Peter Martinez, at various South Florida Tech events, and, happy to support the local team, I have been using their slick service to share my images). What I never expected was that this image would be picked up by numerous blogs, including ENGADGET, as part of their CTIA coverage, and in all cases, I was happily given "photo credit" linking back to the image on Pikchur. With all the blogs using that image it was one Pikchur that was worth well more than 1,000 words!

How about you? What media have you created that was unexpectedly spread? Please add links to your sharing successes in the comments! (Oh, and feel free to share this post too!)

It's A (Social Media) Jungle Out There!

This morning I had the pleasure of shooting the breeze over bagels with Jeff Pulver. Among many other accomplishments, Jeff has recently made a name for himself as the host of more than 30 breakfasts in 17 cities around the world this year. Although he has thousands of followers on Social Networks such as Facebook and Twitter, Jeff has cleverly brought the engagement and interactivity of "tagging," "poking" and "writing on one's wall" to the off-line "real" world at his live breakfast events.

Today it was just us Jeffs so we dispensed with the need for name tags (especially since they both would have said "Jeff") and we dove right into a healthy discussion about life, liberty and the pursuit of social media happiness.

Jeff is planning his first "SOCIAL MEDIA JUNGLE" event in Melville, Long Island in November and I asked him to talk a little about why it is a jungle out there and how his events can help us on our own expeditions.



What do you think? Do you need to be Tarzan to succeed in the Social Media Jungle?

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Social Media: I Can See Clearly How Blurry It Is!

It's all getting blurry... In the world of social media, our network(s) become our friends and our friends become our network(s). The business of social networking becomes the socializing of our business. It is increasingly difficult to separate who we are from what we do or whom we work for. After all, if you embrace the transparency that makes the web work so much better, it is nearly impossible to lead a double life online. We are who we are, and all of our Blog posts, Twitter Tweets, Facebook Updates, Utterz utters, Seesmic and YouTube Videos, Flickr photos and the entirety of our daily digital droppings shapes our persona in the eyes of "the community." The lines between personal and professional are dotted and not solid. This is not a bad thing. After all, we spend the majority of our adult lives working and our life's work experience invariably helps shape who we are and how we behave.

A SEPARATE PIECE?

It was not too long ago that I tried to keep my personal online presence separate from my professional online presence. While I did not hide the fact that I work at Myxer, when I did Myxer stuff online I felt I should keep it separate from this personal blog, and vice versa. Little by little, as I found my social network expanding I increasingly encountered people that, aside from being "social" with, I could actually be doing business with. I realized that there were potential partners in them thar social networking woods! So slowly but surely, I have eased a little more of my work life into my social networking and without question my social networking life has eased its way into my business. This has been encouraging, fun and productive on both sides of the fence as I continue to explore ways to appropriately use social media to expand my business, and at the same time leverage my business to expand my social network.

WORK'S A BEACH!

Most recently, I have been having a lot of fun creating short videos as part of my social networking. Whether posting them on Facebook, Utterz, Seesmic, YouTube, or my Social Networking Rehab parody blog, I have been finding video to be a great way to satisfy some of my creative urges. Along the same lines, the other day I took a short video on the beach with my Treo smartphone, and turned it into a silly "recruitment" video for Myxer, since we are actively hiring. On a whim, I posted the video on YouTube and sent the link out on my Twitter stream. Within minutes, in addition to some encouraging comments, I actually received resumes sent to the "HR" email address at the end of the video. A social media video, posted to the Twitter stream, proved to actually be an effective tool to attract potential employees. The lines may be blurred but the results are clear: Social Media and business can and do work together!

How have you incorporated your social media life into your business (or your business into your social media life)?

Send "Work's A Beach" To Your Phone. Click the button >

Video by Sass. Photo Credit: GJS - Fotolia.com

You're So Vain (You Probably Think This Blog Is About You)

Variety may be the spice of life, but VANITY is the spice that seasons the blogosphere. Face it, you can't spell B L O G G E R without E G O! It takes a certain amount of self-love, self-confidence and self-centeredness to put your words out there for the world to see. Frankly, few of us would be doing it if we didn't have enough of an ego to believe our words, thoughts, creativity, opinions and observations were worthy of note by others. We want to be noticed, recognized (literally and figuratively) and we want to be heard.

Thanks to technology advances an individual's ability to create and distribute their own content has been democratized. It is the proverbial power of the pen and press on steroids. Whereas man has always been able to create with a scroll and ink or a canvas and paint, the audience was limited. Today, with the same ease we can create something that can literally have infinite global reach. Someone in Australia can read this right now, as simply as someone in the house next door (of course the person in the house next door is probably stealing my Wi-Fi signal. My Mate in Australia is a "legitimate" reader!)

THIS TIME ITS PERSONAL

We have entered the age of Personal Brands, where being master of your domain (name) is as important as your wardrobe and hygiene choices. Parents are choosing child names based on the availability of theirkid.com (and I used to think "GoDADDY" was an odd name for a Domain Registrar... Bob Parsons is a genius!) Contrary to popular belief, we are NOT what we eat. We ARE what shows up when we Google our names! Lifestreaming, Liveblogging, JustinTV, just in time to make an inordinate amount of content available using cool, free and easy tools.

Micro-blogging is making Macro changes to the what, where, why, when and how we communicate and share our opinions and our lives. In social media, everyone is like your first college roommate... a stranger whose life is suddenly exposed to you bit by bit as you spend more time together, sharing more and more tidbits of both the mundane and the meaningful. Over time, the bits (and in our case, bytes) of information shape your perception of the person and make them "real" and before long that stranger is no longer strange, and in fact, has become a friend. Is that any different than what happens on Twitter and Facebook? By the time you go to an event or a "Tweet Up" and meet someone you have been following or have befriended for a while, you are already virtual roommates and well on your way to becoming true friends.

TREES FALLING IN THE WOODS

Now that we have such a powerful and simple ability to reach an audience (and an audience is someone who is listening to YOU, whether it is one person or one thousand). If you write in a blog, Tweet something, or Utter something, or post a video on Seesmic or YouTube or Write on a Wall on Facebook and SOMEONE responds, then you have succeeded and your ego will have been stroked. But is Social Media like trees falling in the woods? If you post something on your blog and the comment meter remains on "0" does that mean nobody can hear it? How does that make you feel? Do you gauge your Twitter tweets by how many @yourname responses you get? Do you feel disappointed or even slighted if you craft a clever 140 character mini-manifesto and see it drift away with the current of the Twitter stream without making a single @you ripple? Honestly... I do! Thanks to our egos I think we all crave feedback. Perhaps even a negative comment is more satisfying than silence. Perhaps it is our ego driven nature that has unconsciously built the infrastructure of Social Media and on-line "community" around channels of linking, commenting, tracking, sharing and re-posting. What do you think?

So, now that we are "roommates," please feel free to stroke my ego by commenting on this blog post and sharing and linking to your heart's delight! And yes, this blog IS about you!

Photo Credit: Albo - Fotolia.com

Face It, Facebook Works Well As A People Directory!

As you may know if you go back earlier in this blog, I live in South Florida and used to be an avid sailor until Wicked Hurricane Wilma wrecked my boat... Back at the time I posted a bunch of photos of the storm's damage to my home and boat on Flickr and tagged them "Wicked Wilma."

I recently received the following message through Facebook from someone who I don't know and who is not a Facebook friend:

Jeff, I sent you a message already on Flickr but I am trying to get in touch with you seeking permission to use one of your photos in our 2005 Annual Report to Congress. I am trying to find a photo from hurricane Wilma to include in our pub. Please let me know if you are interested.

I thought it was telling that I noticed the message via Facebook, long before I received the email through Flickr. My Flickr account is tied to a Yahoo Mail address that I hardly check on. Facebook, on the other hand, is always open in a browser tab, and has an extremely efficient mobile alert piece that forwards messages right to my Treo via SMS.

The Real Story

More telling was the fact that the person trying to reach me figured out that, when he received no reply to his message via Flickr, he could potentially find me through Facebook. And he did, successfully. The picture above is the image that prompted the search for Sass.

In business, it is often difficult to find a working email address for someone you don't know, and many of the services that do provide contact info, do so for a fee. Facebook provides an easy and open means of making contact with its members. A powerful feature when properly used and not abused.

Have you been contacted randomly through Facebook? Have you successfully made contact with someone you were trying to reach through Facebook? Do all these questions make this sound like one of Chris Brogan's blog posts???

Facebook Is Viral Viagra

The infamous blue pill may get things going in the bedroom, but if you want to get things going in Cyberspace it seems all you need is to get some Facetime on Facebook!

I am an avid Twitterer and a good Twitizen, but I don't get too many @sass or D sass messages. I have had a personal blog since 2004, but I rarely get even 1 comment on my posts, despite toiling over every witty and pithy sentence (at least in my mind they are witty and pithy). Yet I put a video on my Facebook profile and lo and behold, I am suddenly "viral." Granted, I put some work into the video production and I "tagged" Chris Brogan, which gave me a jump start with his active following. And now Jeff Pulver was kind enough to link to my video from his well read blog. That said, as I watch the comments grow and add many new found Facebook Friends, I can see just how well the "virality" (that's viral vitality) is built into the Facebook platform... and it really does work. When someone comments on my video it appears in their profile and news feed for all of their friends to be exposed to. If one of their friends then comments, it goes out to their circle... and on and on and on.

In many respects, this is the power of a "closed system" as opposed to the "open" Internet at large. For a "regular guy with a regular blog" like me, posting on this blog is like putting a message in a bottle, tossing it out to sea, and hoping it will drift to shore where someone may notice it and respond. Posting on Facebook is like going around your neighborhood and sticking a flyer in everyone's mailbox. The flyer in the mailbox is much more likely to be read than the message in the bottle!

Thankfully, I am not yet in need of a "virility" boost from the little blue pill, but I will happily enjoy the "virality" boost I have gotten from Facebook!

UPDATE:
(For those of you not in my neighborhood on Facebook, here is the aforementioned video)

Non-Anonymous (Say THAT 10 Times Fast!)

The times they are a changing... at least for me. I have come to realize the value of being "non-anonymous" and it has been somewhat of an awakening for me. I am learning to embrace transparency, and so far I think that's a good thing. As someone who has frequented the Internet since long before the World Wide Web (I got my first Compuserve Account in 1982, along with my Commodore 64) I was sort of weened in the ways of anonymity. Going "online" meant going online with a "screenname" (a "handle" to put it in CB Radio Terms) so that no one knew who you really were. This was especially useful when using a 300 Baud Modem to log onto a strange bulletinboard with a long distance call to San Francisco in the middle of the night (a bulletin board you found in the classified ads in the back of BYTE Magazine...) This pseudo self was very effective for flaming people on the boards with stupid and inane comments, a practice that was practically an art form in the day. Years later, upon getting divorced and finding myself suddenly single, I embraced the world of online dating... once again protected by the Scarlett Letter: In this case the "A" was for "Anonymity." I could flirt and chat and charm, all under the guise of an anonymous profile. In the business world, running several Public Companies, I further honed my skills for secrecy, with fear of "selective disclosure" training me to keep things close to the vest (even though I hadn't actually worn a vest since my Bar Mitzvah!)

Even this blog, loosely launched in 2004, was first published under my anonymous dating screenname and had no public connection to the real me. Of course that has all changed. Now you can get my contact info, my detailed bio on LinkedIN, my Twitter updates, my professional info, pictures of me and mine, and a wealth of peeks at my person that surely must border on TMI -- too much information.

Why the change?

Two words. Social Networking. To truly leverage the power of today's amazing tools of communication and connection, you cannot be nameless. You cannot make a mark if nobody can recognize your mark. With so many touchpoints and vectors, so many avenues to access -- each overlapping and interlacing in so many ways -- every blogpost, comment, update, email, IM and text message you post, leave or send, has a residual value that will only inure to your benefit if it can be attributed to YOU. If you are going to flitter on Twitter, pounce on Pownce, write Haiku on Jaiku, make facetime on Facebook, have a fling on Ning, take up space on MySpace and just be a part of the Community... then you must stand up, open up, take off the the Kimono and take CREDIT for your words, thoughts, opinions and actions. Will you make mistakes? Sure. Will you say something stupid, or overly obvious, or ten minutes after everyone else in the world has already said the same thing? Sure. But that's ok, because you will be in the game, and to be in the game that's part of the game. And in time you will gain both confidence and credibility, and the value of your connections will far surpass the fear of being non-anonymous!