You Cast No Shadow

A funny piece in the May 11 edition of New York Post entitled The True Marks of Prestige: wiki entries, MySpace pals" does a nice job on online social networks where "today's world of who's who is one where the established pop brand of, say, Carmen Electra is going head-to-head with a sassy young thing with a relentless pursuit of the "add."

For marketers the concern, as I highlighted earlier , is what does it all mean? Is it any more than ample-bosomed females being lusted after by boys and bizarrely idolised by girls? Can it really be monetised or will such attempts cause it to implode or, more likely, evolve into loose connections of much smaller networks where the connections are genuine and have traction?

The article also cites comic Demetri Martin (who seems to be of a similar mind to me) as having written a song with the lyrics, "I got 9,000 friends yeah on MySpace/ and I cannot keep up with all these friends/oh no not face to face." and who after performing it on the Jon Stewart show "got all these friend requests so quickly, my hand started to hurt. It's kind of a pathetic injury. You're just sitting there, clicking approve over and over again and thinking, 'OK, I guess this is a good use of my time. I'm pretty sure it is. I could be outside, but OK. Sure.' "

One of my life dictums is to make at least one new friend a year and thus reinvigorate my social circle with new ideas and recommendations, but one a year not thousands! Then again I'm not MySpace royalty like 24-year-old Tila Tequila, who had 1,027,770 friends as of press time and "gets let into a lot of clubs and free clothes, too." and has a different world vision.

"I can get a free case of Red Bull whenever, I can get it like five times a day if I want."