Jeffrey Zeldman, you just made my day!

Thanks for that ‘eye opener’! I have viewed both of these as a waster of time and a way for Internet marketers to sell unnecessary products to newbies.

I will think about how to benefit from these sites in a new way…

if all you tweet about is your breakfast, fewer people will be interested in following you

Here here Marina – Content is King, and for web 2.0 especially it’s survival of the fittest, which can only be a good thing in this context.

If you build a strong community on Twitter, it’s not about “I ate toast for breakfast.” (This is a rather self-fulfilling prophecy, as if all you tweet about is your breakfast, fewer people will be interested in following you.) Instead, it’s a community and a powerful immediate feedback system.

Have a quick web site design question? Don’t dig around on Google — just ask Twitter. Need a suggestion for a place to meet a client for lunch in downtown Dallas? Ask Twitter. Limited to 140 characters a pop, you get fast, concise answers to your questions. Over time, different people become trusted sources on different things — there’s a chef on Twitter I asked to recommend a green smoothie recipe, and PHP gurus I can ask to look at a snippet of code. Everyday I see people hired for freelance (or even full-time) jobs over Twitter, and it has been a strong source of new business for my efficiency consulting, as well.

Facebook is similar — if you build your network carefully, it’s not about favorite music or Facebook Apps, but rather about who you know where. Never underestimate the power of even a “simple” lunch with someone you’ve met on Facebook — it’s a great networking and introduction tool.

There are efforts out there that fall under “good change” – such as LibraryThing – or the brand-spanking new EveryBlock – which is really a data aggregator – linking out to other social sites. I would imagine that adding a social layer would be a desirable thing to do once they reach critical mass. I also like ma.gnolia – and not just for its spiffy standards-based design.

And that is kind of the crux of the matter for me – I don’t understand the idea behind productizing some of these social sites – what is the product? It’s an aspect of the medium, not a product. When a community is actually producing something, be it a tagged library of bookmarks, an annotated collection of media, a petition to the government – then it is actually worth something. My $.02.

I’d really like to stay up with others’ lives but it seems I have to choose between biting chimps or nothing at all.

However, Facebook still grows in popularity, as does Twitter. The difference between the two is that Facebook has advertisements, sponsors, and other ways of making money (as Philip mentioned above.) Twitter, on the other hand, has none of this. I’ve never thought about how they pay for their hosting and server costs, but I certainly hope that they are able to stay afloat, even if it means changing how they do things.

Does reading multiple blog entries & responding to replies count as ‘dwindling productivity’ too?

I propose that Twitter implement some kind of Tweet Tax (tweetax?) that is donated to a cause that IS actually useful. Maybe a penny per tweet (who uses pennies these days anyways?) or a nickel or something like that.

Then again it should probably be in a currency other than the US dollar considering its downward trend recently…

So the planet warms and the Kenyans kill their neighbors and we tweet about nothing and hope the servers hold out.

I share that cynicism. I still believe the web can be a vehicle for good, and good change, but much of it is filling up with the same type of junk primetime network TV is full with. I suppose the market has spoken, we want to be distracted, not engaged.

As for me, I will continue to not use the new social media unless it falls under the category of “good change” and not “useless information.”

A couple days ago they had a “gift” for sale that was limited to 10,000 (most days, the gifts are “limited” to 500,000 or so). At $1 a pop, it sold out by mid-afternoon. $10,000 in one day from one revenue source doesn’t seem like loosing money. While that was a good gift and they probably don’t sell that many every day, they still have Facebook ads that are constantly being bought by advertising companies and FB users alike as well as “normal” ads for advert companies.

Are their expenses $300,000+ a month?

–Your final paragraph: the unfortunate truth, eh?

So far I have been able to avoid joining Facebook or MySpace. Lucky me.

You ain’t missin’ much. I’ve got one of each and rarely use either any more.