During these past few months, I’ve noticed Rob and most of my unemployed friends spending more and more time on Facebook. How do I know? Because my Facebook feed has been inundated with minute by minute updates on my friends’ games and quiz results.

Now for the record, there’s nothing wrong with playing a few games or answering silly quizzes on Facebook once in a while. For the most part, it’s enjoyable to do and I even find that it relieves stress on those hectic workdays. But I knew Rob was too engrossed in Facebook quizzes when I found out he would make a fine “Hitler” by participating in “What Dictator are You?”

Like some of you, I’ve bought into the idea that Facebook was more than just a site for college students to upload pictures of them hanging out and being “cool.” I believed users would use Facebook as a platform for job placement and professional networking, especially during the recession.

However, what I find is that Rob and most of my unemployed friends are using Facebook to pass the time and satiate the boredom that comes from unemployment.

So beware young recessionites! Spend most of your time on Craigslist searching for jobs and spend less time on Facebook. Instead of being a fictional character and racking up fake money, wouldn’t you rather be what you majored for and start receiving a real salary?

Of course, those familiar with China’s policies of restricting unapproved information and communication will not be surprised. Just two weeks ago, the central government had already banned access to most Google services, including Gmail, Google Apps, and Google Talk, claiming Google’s search engine spread “vulgar” content.

The people of Iran face a similar struggle. After Ahmadinejad’s much contested victory, riots broke out across town centers and suburbs. The Iranian government responded pretty much the same way as their Chinese counterparts did. Authorities blocked foreign websites, dissidents’ blogs, Twitter, and Facebook or anywhere criticisms of Iran’s political leaders may arise.

The situation on the use of social media is much different here in the U.S.; we have access to all social media tools, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We can freely contribute content on websites and blogs. We can search for information that may be critical of our government, institutions, and ourselves. We can socialize and connect with whoever we want, whenever we want.

However, that same “whatever we want, whenever we want” mentality seems to diminish the importance of social media. Our free access to all things digital has turned us into modern-day Caligulas. On a whim, we can see babies and cats dancing on YouTube, or read up on celebrity non-news. We participate in the most narcissistic of activities like “25 things you didn’t know about me” letter on Facebook, not to mention MySpace is a personal shrine dedicated to ourselves.

Do we deserve social media when our intent of use seems much less noble than our Iranian and Chinese counterparts? Do we deserve Twitter when we tweet about that state of our clothes, as opposed to the state of a nation? Is social media a right or a privilege?

Before that, emotional context was best expressed with arcane techniques such as using ALL CAPS!!! or Emoticons : ). In the absence of face-to-face contact however, these techniques are woefully inadequate as tools of true human expression.

The advent of MySpace, Facebook, Linked-In and the like opened the flood gates of virtual expression to the masses. While blogs gave users a platform to express themselves, it was (and still is) at its core a one-way medium. The true power of a social network is it’s ability to rapidly exponentiate ideas by linking friends with friends with friends, dynamically in real-time.

This sea of interlinked relationship data is a fascinating achievement in and of itself but it has had the unintended consequence of diluting the meaning of a relationship. “Friends” are now defined blandly by one’s willingness to accept someone into his or her network. In fact, a “Friend” need not be a person at all. It can be a brand or an idea. And while this is a boon, and arguably the missing power tool, to the web marketers arsenal, it still lacks the humanity and emotional resonance that defines what a true connection is in the real world.

I have seen things in recent months that tell me that tools for providing this type of emotional context are coming. This tool called Moody allows users to rate their iTunes library in a color-grid whereby colors correspond to emotion. As more and more songs get tagged in this way, users have the ability to dynamically create on-the-fly play lists by mood.

This is incredibly cool but also incredibly personal.

The real untapped power in social networks is the ability to leverage this type of emotional context by qualifying the bonds we create in social media spaces. Until now, quantity has been the measurement of social success on sites like facebook where the winner is the one with the most friends. People collect friends as if they were assets not people. The lack of an ability to qualify relationships is a serious shortcoming. And this is especially true in sites like Linked In who’s core purpose is to facilitate professional relationships.

Just as it’s useful to qualify music by how it makes me feel. It’s also useful to qualify the dynamics of my relationships with others.

The idea of “qualifying” a relationship should not be a strange one to anyone who has ever done anything in sales. Leads have been qualified by Hot and Cold since forever. A colleague of mine in the mid-90’s developed a more personal rating system for his contact database that went beyond traditional Hot-Cold sales ratings though. Instead, he would place his contacts on  a 10-point scale from: “This is some one I never met in-person” (cold)  to: “This is somebody who would come to visit me in the hospital even if I didn’t ask” (Hot … as close as family). In the middle were descriptors such as: “I could call this person and go to a movie whenever” and “This person would take a lunch with me” on the med-high end and, “I know this person but haven’t spoken to them in a year or more” on the med-low end.

Imagine the power of exposing the context of relationships before asking for an introduction. Imagine overlaying these qualities with “friends in common.” You could very quickly paint a snapshot of somebody’s TRUE circle of friends. You would see if I were the kind of personality who is a rolodex collector with dozens of business cards I never use, or whether I am somebody who forms deep bonds within a smaller group.

And here is where we get into sticky territory.

The very idea of publicly qualifying relationships is, I suspect inherently frightening to many. On the one hand, openness and knowledge sharing behind is at the very core of the spirit of the web. On the other hand, do people really want to know how others define their relationships with them? I might be unpleasantly surprised to learn that I rated a long-time friend on the very high-end of my sliding scale, only to find that he had a very different opinion of me. It could be a real Pandora’s box with the potential to create tension that is the stuff great reality TV is made of. But it might also end up being an incredibly powerful tool and in the end a, more accurate representation of what friendships mean on the web.

I’m sure you all have seen those ubiquitous “25 things you didn’t know about me” lists that are clogging everyone’s Facebook feed. What, if anything, is their significance?

My feelings are that initially, the lists seem harmless and fun, because they enhance the very voyeuristic quality that makes Facebook so addictive in the first place. The lists are surprisingly candid, and it’s nice to get a peek into someone’s pyche beyond the canned-sounded items usually included in favorite book and movie lists.

But! But, there is something deep inside of me that knows that this heralds the beginning of the end for Facebook, if not in terms of mass popularity at least in terms of coolness. There is a short life expectancy for cool things on the Internet, and one could argue Facebooks’s demise began when it began allowing Baby-Boomer-age parents and middle schoolers to sign up. Or, one might argue that Facebook’s popularity has if anything just begun to plateau, since only last month did they officially catch up to MySpace in terms of site traffic.

But the creepy, chain-lettery lists are, to me, at least a signal that Facebook is becoming way too cheesy, prosaic and dare I say, Friendster-y for the cool kids to stick around much longer. Where they will go next, I cannot say.

But Facebook, your days are numbered.

In the summertime, when flipping on the TV means exposing oneself to a depressing array of bad reality programs and reruns, obsessive fans of some of the best shows on TV can find comfort on the internet. A small trend of brilliant fan-fiction-y blogs is on the rise, and they will keep even the most fanatical TV viewers entertained until September.

All the Sad Young Gossip Girls is one such blog. Its format, similar to that of Found magazine, features (fictional) notes, lists, forms, boarding school applications, Facebook pages and other pieces of ‘evidence’ about Gossip Girl characters, with each post extrapolating on a plotline or character. It is truly a masterpiece of fan fiction, and also an interesting extension of the show’s premise, which itself revolves around a blog.

Similarly, a crop of Mad Men-inspired blogs have recently begun, all in Q&A format. Each blog is told from the perspective of a Mad Men character: there’s What Would Roger Sterling Do?, which quotes the slick, slimy old boss of the Sterling Cooper ad agency, and What Would Don Draper Do?, which dispenses the wisdom of the agency’s troubled creative director.

Then, there’s What Would Joan Do?, told from the perspective of Joan Holloway, the agency’s resident femme fatale/objectified woman. Joan’s blog is particularly funny because she (having been around the proverbial block a time or two) is known for often dispensing advice to the office’s more naive secretaries. The blog really captures her matter-of-fact tone and is sprinkled with some of her best lines from the show in response to queries like “What’s the best cigarette a lady can smoke?”

Even though Mad Men has (mercifully) begun its new season already, the Mad Men advice blogs are still a funny, fun counterpart to the show for die-hard fans. (I maintain this despite the fact that NY Magazine seems to think this trend has already lost its freshness)

The point of these blogs is (like the shows themselves) nothing but frothy, frivolous entertainment. But they do manage to maintain (or perhaps even heighten) fan interest over the long, boring summer, which is no small feat.

Last week Renee and I attended the Atlas Engagement Mapping conference in Times Square. Atlas is one of the leading ad server platforms, and the conference focused on presenting new ideas about the way online advertising is measured.

Currently, the success of online ads is measured based on the last site someone visited. For example, if I see an ad for Toyota on NYTimes.com and click on it to go to the Toyota site, NYTimes.com gets the credit for my visit to Toyota. While this method does accurately describe the successfulness of the ad placed on NYTimes.com, it fails to look at the big picture of where I may have been exposed to Toyota advertising prior to this point.

Atlas aims to address that issue, and look at the big picture. It asks that when we measure the successfulness of advertising, to also take into account other factors, such as how often a consumer saw an advertising message, the recency of those exposures, and the interaction with an ad.

While Atlas has begun to address the way we measure online advertising through engagement mapping, I think it will take awhile to evolve this process and find a way to accurately and efficiently measure the history of a consumer’s interaction with online advertising. It will also involve qualitative assessment of ads, not just the quantitative aspect to measure success. However, overall it is a good principle to keep in mind not to only focus on the conversion point of a consumer, but to think about the history and interwoven measures that bring them to a certain action.

For more information visit: www.atlasolutions.com/emap

Staying in touch with family members can be an incredibly hard task especially when you have an unfathomable large family like mine. Thankfully, my family has a website.

On here we pretty much do everything…upload pictures of the new babies, play MP3 of the latest family artist’s band, message boards ranging from what happened on desperate housewives to Heather’s new job, recipes, videos, pretty much anything you could possibly think of, we do.

The best part about this is the ability to see my cousins whom I haven’t met yet and don’t know when I will get meet, and of course the message boards. These provide entertainment for anyone I have ever met. Watching the succession of my aunts trying to decipher “ROFL” and “LMAO” is quite hilarious.

Anytime that anyone posts new materials an email is sent to all members. There is a web administrator who adds members to the group and has creative control over the website’s design.

This has been a great way to keep in touch and is easy to set up. Visit www.easysite.com for more details.

The Internet has long been a haven for those with anti-establishment leanings. One of the web’s most secretive new developments combines this counter-culture spirit with the current social-networking obsession. The site nicknamed “Cheatster” takes on the project of distributing information for the sole purpose of connecting cheaters.

Cheatster is difficult to describe because it is so elusive. Currently, it operates on a limited invite-only basis. An ever-changing IP address and anti-search engine strategy allow it to live online almost completely under the radar. Worldwide there are fewer than 1,500 users; but despite its complete lack of advertising and relative unavailability it is safe to say that it is becoming an increasingly sought-out commodity. Thus far, Cheatster has enabled hundreds of (mostly college) students to fake their way through take-home exams, term papers, presentations, and outlines covering topics on almost every subject in an undergraduate coursebook. Conveniently, the site includes an unusually accurate translating function, thus encouraging international cheating.

Unsurprisingly, a backlash from academia is arising. Professor Hellmut Spangenberg of the University of Frankfurt, Germany is one of the most outspoken opponents of the site, calling Cheatster an ‘enemy of higher learning’. Other critics have written off the site’s body of ‘expert-submitted’ essays and academic papers as nothing but a “cornucopia of mediocrity”.

Despite the alleged mediocrity of the site’s body of knowledge, Cheaster aficionados are reportedly faking their way to A’s world-wide and basking in the site’s ingeniously secretive status.

Well its not yet that time of year, and we certainly aren’t covered in paint, still, we are surrounded by Easter Eggs (of the digital sort). Extend the concept of hiding delicious goodies to the online world and we have digital Easter Eggs: a hidden form of interactive media.

Everyone knows that DVDs are often programmed with Easter Eggs, right? Encoded on the disk you may be lucky enough to find special hidden areas of otherwise suppressed material (such as the 1st Lord of the Rings DVDs - containing exclusive MTV behind-the-scenes footage). Only by clicking on a hidden button will you have access to the information. Anyway, websites have been getting in on the game for a while now too.

Numerous sites and particularly web applications have “hidden” areas, messages or tricks for users to find. Some simply act as prompts for more information. Here are a few examples:

• NYTimes.com - double clicking on any word (non-hyperlinked) will prompt a global dictionary and provide the details of that word.
• Facebook Applications - find hidden tools that allow for unique display of content or find hidden text at the bottom of the Friends pages reading “Only the craftiest of quails survive hunting season”.
• Google Earth - discover the flight simulator within Google Earth. To access it for the first time, hit CTRL+Alt+A in Windows or Command+Option+A on the Mac.

This Easter Egg content is usually not the main site feature, however, it effectively creates a connection with the user that is immeasurable. Building a site with “stickiness” and exclusivity, two attributes any site owner wishes she/he can claim, is perhaps the largest challenge in the web world. I call for more Easter Eggs. I call for Egg-mania.

Can anyone find the Easter egg on this page?? Happy hunting…

One of my favorite guilty pleasures online is scouring the section of craigslist.org called Missed Connections

Even the most mundane postings are, in my opinion, riveting.

Part of the appeal of Missed Connections is the romantic notion that you might be reconnected with someone you’ve seen in passing on a city street or random subway car, if they fatefully happen to be looking at the right site on the right day. While I’m all in favor of this romance, I am a bit dubious about the percentage of Missed Connections postings that have actually resulted in a happy union between strangers (though the site is currently compiling Missed Connections success stories, possibly for a documentary). But regardless of how effective it is in coupling people off, Missed Connections remains a fascinating phenomenon for multiple reasons:

1. In a city distinctively adorned with status symbols and frequently separated by race/class, Missed Connections transcends the boundaries of socio-economic background, sexual orientation, and even age. There are postings from every corner of every borough, some describing well-groomed Park Avenue beauties, some about Williamsburg hipsters, some written by jaded middle-aged people, some from wide-eyed twenty year olds, gay people, straight people, etc. It’s just as much a melting pot as the city itself is.
2. It’s a collective art project: some of the postings are as elegantly crafted as a haiku or limerick. It’s obvious that the authors put effort into their creations with the knowledge that the general public has access to their words, not just the object of their affection. It is a true forum for self-expression instead of just an online bathroom wall to be anonymously scrawled on.
3. Many postings are written by men and women who are utterly hopeless that their crush will ever read their piece, or by people who have no intention of ever confronting their crushes (the “You’re my married neighbor, so this would never work” or “I am your boss so this would be entirely inappropriate” category) but who are still desperate to spill their guts. So in this sense, it is a public diary where the anonymity of the Internet allows people to profess their feelings of tenderness for strangers, co-workers, ex-wives, etc. In this way, Missed Connections is a receptacle of emotion that probably helps to keep scores of edgy, repressed New Yorkers more psychologically fit than they might otherwise be. It’s like therapy, but free.
4. In a roundabout way, it promotes togetherness: although both the process of viewing Missed Connections and creating a Missed Connections post are completely anonymous, its function is to lessen the anonymity both of the city and of the Internet itself. Many popular so-called ’social-networking’ sites encourage users to bask in the anonymity of the Internet (think about how easy it is to stalk people on MySpace or Facebook from the comfort of your own home). Missed Connections does the opposite by encouraging users to leave the comfort of online interactions and venture back into the real world.

I’m considering starting to submit daily Missed Connections posts about people I encounter on my way to work. They would be more friendly than lovelorn, I think—while I don’t routinely fall in love on the subway, I am a careful observer of other people’s clothing and choice of reading material. Something along the lines of “This morning on the Q train. You: bespectacled man reading Kafka. Me: brunette in yellow blouse. I just wanted you to know I liked your bowtie”. It might be a nice way to give back to a website that has provided me with countless hours of entertainment.