My Mom is so encouraging and positive. She has lived her life to be a pioneer. Early on, she showed signs that she would not go through life silently. She excelled at school, became the first female draftsperson in Maine, and did all kinds of cool jobs thereafter, including radio DJ, force manager for the phone company, and other little tidbits.

What comes to mind with my Mom is that she’s forever been one of my top supporters. She’s given me tons of advice throughout the years, and has been there for my triumphs my tragedies. Now, she’s giving my children her attention and encouragement, and they flourish under it.

Mom has her own custom jewelry business, by the way. Some interesting stuff there. (Dad helps!)

Katrina is the hot molten core of my life. On one hand, she raises me up when I’m feeling horrible and low. On the other, she’s the first to pop my ego bubble when I’m acting full of myself. Since the moment I met her, she’s challenged me to grow, and encouraged me when I leap.

Oh, and she’s a really great Mom to those two weirdos cool kids in my house.

Happy Mother’s Day, you two. And thanks for how you contribute to my world.

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Early Adopters: Advertising, PR and Marketing

First to market with actual paying jobs in social media are public relations and marketing firms. Why? Because if you squint your eyes, the tools are the same thing: a means for communicating professionally. Is that wrong? I don’t think so, provided we don’t lose ground with regards to how these new tools re-humanize technology-assisted communication.

Using social media for “viral” advertising is popular, but mostly because it’s low-cost, low-barrier technology that permits folks to get a message across through different channels. Will that last? I can’t see why we’d go back to $100,000 spots, when we can create the media and distribute it for free, especially where the world is shifting to those free methods, too.

Business Users

I’m not sure what department an internal corporate social media practitioner would fall into. Project management makes sense, because inside the firewall, these tools facilitate collaboration, status messages, data sharing, and other uses that would work well for facilitating projects. Product management and R&D might adopt the tools as well, but there probably wouldn’t be a pre-defined role for someone who simply knows how to use the tools.

Comparing the Two Most Likely Businesses

On one side, we have obvious jobs: PR, marketing, advertising. On the other, we have a potential role for daring companies, or a more likely future of an adoption of the tools by several people after receiving training from a more expert user. So, there are two options.

Which makes more sense? On one side, you have a mountain of communications companies hoping to adapt quickly. On the other side, you have businesses who aren’t as motivated to change their internal processes. But will there be a point where businesses take back their external arms for outreach to their customers? In a world where companies talk directly to their customers, the media, and prospects, will the business of communications go in-house?

Not Necessarily a Primary Business

We’re all jumping up and down and excited about social media and what these tools can do for us. WHAT, exactly, do these tools do for us that translates into a business directly? My answer: for lots of people, they don’t.

Looking for a career in social media would be like seeking a career in email. Instead, use these skills to cultivate another ability of yours. If you’re a salesperson, use social media tools to build leads, understand need, get the word out about your products. If you’re a nonprofit professional, you’ve already figured this out, and use these tools to aid in awareness, fundraising, communication, and more.

Instead of focusing on how these tools will become a career, focus on how you can equip others with these tools. THAT, I believe, is the business, in the short term. But even that will be the short term.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree? What’s your take?

Photo credit, Greg Westfall

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.

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• Submit stories or parts of stories.
• Collaborate on other people’s stories.
• Comment.
• Vote.
• Add friends.

It’s nicely made, has some reasonably interesting features, and if you’re a writer, it’s worth checking out.

And Yet

I want more. I want lots more. No, don’t come comment on my post and tell me that it’s coming. It’s not your fault, but here’s the thing.

We have the baseline functionality of account, friends, comments, voting, etc. That’s all done. There are hundreds of implementations of it. We get it.

At this point, I want someone to get smart like the ZLoop guys and figure out a centralized social networking profile repository that permits us to have multiple iterations, depending on the network.

For a site about stories and writing, I want MUCH more specialized tools. Maybe a floating ajax thesaurus. Could there be a visual storytelling tool that lets writers branch the story in multiple ways like a choose-your-own-adventure book? I want mark-ups and overlay editing features so that others can come in and give you edits and annotation to your stories.

For a site about music, maybe it would be different tools. Come to think of it, Flickr should buy Aviary and roll Picnik in tighter so that we get specialized tools there, too.

I think professional networks have the most opportunity in this regard. Businesses and professional organizations need tools that go beyond what LinkedIn have offered to date. We’re actually looking into that at CrossTech Partners, researching toolsets and building use cases for how professional networks can evolve.

If You’re Developing a Network

Don’t stop at the basics. Don’t just give me another place to make a profile and add friends. It has to give me much more than that before I care. And I think I’m speaking for the user base in general at this point.

Consider what might really make the software valuable and useful. Consider ways in which your targeted users might want to interact. Specialize instead of generalize. Give us VERY specific tools. What would librarians find interesting? What would educators need to take time away from their typical haunts?

And as for YOU, what do you want in your specialized social network? What can you imagine being a set of tools for growing out your human relationships?

Love your thoughts on some variations on the theme.

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Join Us To Explore The Future Of The Social Web At DevCamp East 2008

When: May 10 - All Day
Where: University of Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland

SocialDevCamp East is the Unconference for Thought Leaders of the Future Social Web

Where is the social web going? It’s going mobile, to geocentric services, and to open platforms. Join a community of like minded developers, social media gurus and thought leaders for an unconference to discuss the future of the social web.

We’re looking for thought leaders from DC to Boston to meet, forge relationships, and envision the future.

SocialDevCamp East is convenient to the entire east coast corridor via Amtrak. Just travel to Baltimore’s Penn Station — University of Baltimore is two blocks south.

NOTE: Please sign up here and on the official BarCamp Wiki.

http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/SocialDevCampEast

The password is ‘c4mp’. Thanks!

You can follow us on Twitter, also:
http://twitter.com/socialdevcamp

Please also BLOG this event. You can link to either the PBwiki page or to the Facebook page. We need to spread the word!

We are also accepting sponsors; the recommended sponsorship level is $250. Please contact us.

We’re planning an afterparty at Brewer’s Art, a short walk down the street. The party will begin at 4:30 and last til whenever. If you are interested in being an afterparty sponsor please let us know!

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Meanwhile, I’m inside at the CrossTech Partners booth with an ear infection, deaf in that ear, and thinking about what else needs doing.

Wishing you well.

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• Ann Handley

• Greg Verdino
• David Meerman Scott
• Scott Monty
• Valeria Maltoni

Tons more folks are also speaking that I’ve yet to meet.

It’s not free, but it’s reasonable for a two day event with lots of sales and marketing leadership information.

If you’re interested, check out the event page for more information.

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Some of you asked me what book it was that I read on the plane that helped me gain my most recent perspective. The book is called CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Handling Your Fast-Paced Life, by Dr Edward Hallowell (who happens to be from Massachusetts, btw). It appeals to people who want to better understand how modern living (especially all of us online) can give us true ADD-like symptoms (Attention Deficit Disorder is a medical condition, but Dr. Hallowell says we can develop symptoms that are pretty darned close to the real thing).

So, if the book seems like something you want to check out, here’s an Amazon link (or use your local library).

But I’m still here. A more thoughtful post about social media and the like comes later.

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I should state clearly that part of this stems from my eagerness to please, and my own weakness and aversion around saying no firmly.

It’s not easy to back out of things. The feeling of guilt for not completing a project is high. The sense that you’re letting someone down is a heavy lump in your belly. And yet, once one realizes that one isn’t going to be able to maintain the current pace, and that maybe one has bitten off too much, there’s really no other path (unless pure destruction is a path).

This morning, I sent notes to several people I respect and admire telling them that I had to back out of a commitment. I know that they will be disappointed. And yet, I think they’d hate it more if I put them in a rough spot closer to their deadline.

How to Assess Your Priorities

It should seem easy to know what’s important. Your family is important. Your job is important. But once you get beyond those two, how do you assess what you do for passion, for community, and for self-fulfillment? That’s where the confusion gets strongest. In my case, I did the following:

• Made a conscious commitment to the work I’m doing for salary.
• Made a conscious commitment to find more family time.
• Made a conscious commitment to the book I’m writing with Julien Smith.
• Made a conscious commitment to the community I started with Christopher S. Penn.
• Re-assessed which projects I was doing for business development.
• Re-assessed which projects I was doing for larger community.
• Re-assessed all the “can you just take a look at this?” projects I have in queue.

What I’ve decided in my assessment was this:

• My relationship with my company is going well and I want to try some more things with them. We’re working on new projects that I find challenging and interesting (which is what motivates me).
• PodCamp still has lots of evolution left in it, and I like working with Christopher S. Penn and Whitney Hoffman.
• Julien and I worked on the book while in Chicago, and now we’re REALLY excited about what we have.
• I will still evaluate speaking and private education opportunities for companies, but will have to better assess how that impacts my travel schedule and my family commitments.
• Where I’m stuck in the weeds is with all the “can you take a look at this” types of opportunities.

What Comes Next

It’s not like I’m closing shop or not interested in hearing from you. It’s not like I want to go into a cave and just work on my job, my book, and my family. But I will be a lot more clever in how I respond to the opportunities that come across my path. That’s where I should make a clear assessment and then move on with that decision in mind.

I’m still going to attend several events over the coming year. I’ll still be active in the social media scene. I’m still working on delivering quality information based on learning, execution, and extrapolation. I’m just going to work harder on being more fair to the primary commitments in my life.

Thank You

I’m forever grateful for the support of the community at large, and for all the wonderful people who like me enough to share with me their projects and passionate work. Don’t go away. Stick around, and see who else speaks passionately on this site and on the Rockstars page. We’re moving towards a community of shared excellence, and I will do something in the coming months to facilitate that even further for people with professional interests in this space. (Stay tuned).

For now, thank you, and I wish you well on your projects.

Photo credit, Afroswede

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The NTEN community reached out to have me as part of their “Ask the Expert” sessions. I told them I’d give them some blogging and social media resources. So, here you are, guys.

Social Media and Social Network Starter Points

Social Media Starter Moves for Business

Writing Effective Blog Posts

Keeping the Blogging Fires Burning

Seven Blog Improvements You Can Make Today

Measuring Social Media Efforts

Oh, and I’m doing a newsletter too, if that’s useful.

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