Last week, Twitter finally announced the news the world had been waiting for: a revenue stream model. People were speculating for months how the social networking phenomenon would monetize itself, with hopes that there would be a profitable plan other than online advertising. Well, fanboys, you can put that dream to rest.

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Image by Bizzia.com

I can’t emphasize the value of creating your online identity.  I totally respect those who want to keep things private, but there is a way to balance privacy and making sure you are your identity is kosher.  Especially in this digital age, it is important to develop your identity, then control what is being shared.  Luckily, we have so many resources to make this possible.

On the other hand, there are way too many sites to manage.  LinkedIn.  Facebook.  Twitter.  MySpace… you name it.  I can’t even keep track anymore.  But I do know that if I don’t take ownership of my identity, chances are someone else will do it for me, whether they do it deliberately or not.  How many times have you found pictures of yourself on social networking sites that others posted?  Or how about information about you that is shared because you were “just part of the story”?  Whether you like it or not, social networks are successful because of their transparency, and there’s no changing the truth behind that reality.  The irony of not being (somewhat) transparent about yourself is that you actually end up losing control of your privacy.

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If you have heard about #AmazonFail, #Oprah, #HudsonRiverCrash in the past few months, you probably fall into one of these categories:

• Taking the leap onto the Twitter bandwagon
• On the cusp of joining Twitter but don’t want to manage another social networking site
• Maybe considering it, but still too much effort to tell if I’ll be onboard
• Twitter still sucks

Haters, don’t say I didn’t warn you. But thanks for keep me motivated.

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve been trying to save some cash during this economic crisis, downturn, whatever you call it.  In fact, my friend and I were recently talking about how we need to take on window shopping as a new hobby.  Well, here’s a cheap (free) way to cure our shopping blues since being broke is the new black.

Meet Kashless.  If Craigslist and Twitter had a love child, this site would be it.  It is the first online marketplace to solely offer postings of free items in the Seattle area.  You can either post directly with Kashless or via third party listings from sites such as Craigslist or Freecycle.  Using their microblogging design, you can search by categories, by neighborhood, or by distance.  They make the process seamless from bookmarking options to e-mail notifications, but the unique aspect of Kashless is their ability to narrow down your product and save your search preferences.  That’s target advertising (without really being advertising) at its best!

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Image by Geek and Poke

I’m a huge fan of leveraging web resources, especially the new ones like social media that have popped up in within the past decade.  But, I’m going to play devil’s advocate.  I don’t think we know enough about social to solely rely on them for lead generation and monetization.  I believe that social media provides a platform to develop conversations that create relationships, which eventually may help generate leads.

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Image by Brad Fitzpatrick

As a digital media nerd, I have no problem managing a billion different accounts on the Internet.  From social networking sites to bank accounts, I’ve accumulated about 30-40 different logins from the past 5 years.  I’m definitely not a pack rat by any means, but I’m starting to feel like I have too much junk in my (digital) trunk. 

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This week, I started using Twitter after almost a year long hiatus with a few attempts in between.  And now, I’m absolutely hooked.

During my first class in the MCDM program, my professor encouraged us to play around with Twitter.  As a long time social networking site user and a web 2.0 advocate, I’d self proclaimed myself as an early adopter to new tools and gadgets. 

Boy, was I wrong. 

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Posted by Annie Lee:

check out this blog: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_fork_in_the_road_for_social_media.php

I know I’ve discussed this in class before, but since I came across this blog, I want to formally write a little more about the topic of social networking sites and the questions arise from it:

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