Advice about Twitter et al

There are a lot of folks who see social media--facebook, twitter, blogging, plurk, friendfeed, and more--as an opportunity to promote their businesses. I have this advice for them:

Social media is about information. If the information is valuable and interesting it will go viral. If it's transparently commercial and self-serving, it will not. In fact, it may have the opposite effect. I mentioned that in a conversation with my lovely wife and she said, "Write that down. Now."

I did.

Plurk, Today'sMeet, and Twitter!

Clif Mims in Mahmphis plurked a sweet little application a while ago. True to the micro-blog creed, it's a short one: Useful Microblog-like platform for classrooms and presentations . I'll be using this lean little backchat tool, called "Today'sMeet," perhaps with my 4th graders tomorrow, the last full day of classes b4 winter holidays :)

Sign up for Plurk here! You'll love it! It's Twitter with discussion threads!

Here's a screen grab from my plurk interface. Click for a larger version!