Here is a list of things I want to see changed on the Web:

Social Networking
Blogrolls
RSS feeds
email

It helps to think conceptually of the commonalities in these items. Primarily, I’m concerned about how we manage information flow. In the future, sociologists will look at our nascent digital culture as a clumsy initial attempt to acquire and manage useful information and relationships. Our current clumsiness is resulting in information overload. Our feeble attempts at keeping up with information flow is leading to new symptoms of “digital addiction” for which we have few remedies …

Social networking has thus far been primarily about connecting with lost friends, playing simple games, and gawking at strangers. Aside from the amazing ability to reconnect with buddies from middle school, the rest of social networking mirrors normal human behavior in real life. Lots of people need an avenue for rest and relaxation. Dumb games like Pirates vs. Ninjas on Facebook replaces old time-wasters like watching TV. Who hasn’t been to the mall or the park watching people pass by? We’re all voyeurs to some degree but social networks like …

Jesse Stay, my partner in SocialOptimize, just made the big time in terms of exposure. The New York Times (NYT) just referenced the book he co-authored with Jason Alba, I’m on Facebook – Now What?, in one of its career-oriented articles. Jesse’s success as an author of this timely book and a very well-written blog about social networking technology has paid dividends for our business. We have performed no advertising since founding the new media branding and development agency a few months ago, yet we get several …

Since my current work is in new media and social networking, I am keenly interested in the turbulence facing the newspaper industry. Clients, ranging from Fortune 2000 companies to small innovative startups, come to my team at SocialOptimize to gain an understanding of the new media landscape and to develop an actionable strategy for building a meaningful presence in social networks. They ask about their traditional marketing budgets and I tell them that we will see the disappearance of many old model newspaper, radio, and television companies as they struggle …