Even if you have been staring at your computer screen all day, you've likely figured out it's a scary world out there right now. Scads of people are being laid off, in practically every market - including, very likely, people you know, work with, or even you.

Companies that you used to rely on as a standard are begging for bailout money, going out of business, or being purchased at prices well below what they would have received six months or six years ago. Savings and investment accounts are being decimated as credit card debt rises and retirement plans are mere fractions of what they used to be. And all that bad news piles up - making some of the more frivolous things we do online seem even less important than they used to be, giving some of us a sharper edge and making us a lot more irritable. The result can send some folks into what I'm calling social network depression - the manifestation of these frustrations, spilling over from the real world and into the virtual world.

There are many different ways you can see social networking depression illustrate itself. Here are a few cases:

1) The Depression of Getting Less Attention

The individual will claim to see less activity on a site than there used to be, even if they haven't changed the way they use it. (Example)

This suggests that the site itself might not be growing, that other users are spending time elsewhere, or that the service may have peaked, starting its inevitable slide downward. What as the interpretation is subjective, it may be random, incorrect, or the result of other areas on the site being more interesting.

2) The Depression of Repetition

The individual will grow bored of a network, saying the newness has worn off as the same jokes, stories and pictures get spread time and again. (Example)

The suggestion could be that as people fall into a routine, their sheer repetitiveness grows dull, and the social aspects are diminished. But it is not clear if the individual themselves is seeing shifting tastes or if external pressures are changing their outlook.

3) The Depression Of Despised Popularity

The individual can start to question whether what we do online is more a herd mentality than one derived based on our own preferences, and questions the popular users' value. (Example)

The suggestion is that as lists are created, the same names are repeated time and again - whether they are bringing real value, or not adding much from their presumed areas of expertise. But as with #2, even if a person's original value was extremely clear, by the time you've run into them multiple times, across networks, their own value to you is likely diminished.

4) The Depression of False Prophets

The individual will openly complain about some of the social aspects themselves, such as popularity contests and self-proclaimed experts. (Example)

That popularity contests were annoying in high school doesn't mean they don't replicate themselves online. But, depending on the month, the individual complaining probably participated, or would do so more often if they were included or winning.

5) The Depression of Absence

The individual can take a self-imposed vacation from social networking, or can turn their blog over to the resume gods, hoping to land a job, instead of landing the next dozen followers and friend connections.

6) The Depression of Lost Focus

The individual can claim that all social networking tools are distractions and should be turned off, to maintain focus on "real work". (Example)

The updating "ping" of TweetDeck can be a big draw for the popular Twitter user. But there is the potential to operate under what I've termed continuous parallel attention, letting you complete your work tasks, stay on top of social aspects, and listen to music all at once.

7) The Depression of Snarkiness

The individual can change the tone of their comment streams on Twitter and other networks, moving away from promoting people, sites and links, to instead, getting sarcastic, passing around the meme of the day, and generally acting in contrary to their typical personality.

8) The Depression of Lost Value

The individual can declare the world of social networking and social media a waste of time, and swear they're quitting, to focus on things with "real value".

So what can you do? Maybe you've suffered a hint of social networking depression yourself, and find you are blogging less, sharing less, commenting less and simply having less fun online than you used to. Maybe instead you've seen your friends go through various stages - taking what used to be a fun, collaborative environment, and make it something where you can hardly tolerate what they've become.

In my opinion, the very worst aspects of social networking come from the very things we of course enjoy, leaderboards and statistics. In August I asked bloggers to relax, saying "nobody is keeping score", warning of blogging burnout and the self-imposed guilt that comes from gaps. The same push to relax should be applied with social networking.

Why did you start social networking in the first place? It wasn't to count friends or to participate in memes of the day, I would bet. Instead, it was more likely to find out news quickly, and find people with whom you share common interests. Now that times are tough, and people are questioning how they are spending their time, offline and online, it's no surprise that those things which don't have a clear, defined, line to revenue are being discarded, or at least, seeing strain.

The truth is that the social networks are mirrors for ourselves. When we are stressed about work, about money, about relationships, these strains will impact who were online as well.

On Monday, I spoke with a great friend about how I'd seen them change from an aggressive go-getter and evangelist, to a bitter, depressed introvert over the space of a few months. It so happened the kids were making noise in the background of our call, and they later texted me to my iPhone:

"Just talking to you helped and hearing the kiddies. There's more to life than this crap."

And it's true! I'm lucky that I've got two built-in distractions I can come home to. Maybe you don't. But while many people are grousing about the social networks themselves, the way people behave, and rank themselves, letting the offline trials seep into their online personas, the products underneath are actually getting a lot better.

Please do question social networking in general. Try and find out what it is that you're doing online and how you are spending your time. Think about whether you have a good work/play balance, or if the time you are spending in front of your computer monitor is detrimental to your offline and online health. But be aware that if you're getting negative and lashing out at your followers, your communities, and the very platforms that let you do it, you could be exhibiting signs of social networking depression. And it's not likely the tools. It's you.

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

"They're more about keeping tabs on your friends; we focus more on community and meeting new people based on the places you go." - Brightkite

There's no doubt that mobile social networks are vying to be the next big thing for consumers as the mobile handset arena heats up. Plenty of services have gotten their feet wet, but haven't really made it outside of the early adopter crowd. So it comes as no surprise that early adopters and techies are wondering if mobiles services such as Loopt and Brightkite should be worried about Google's latest product: Google Latitude.

In one sentence, Latitude is Google's location awareness application. It's geared to take over a niche that's been dominated by other aforementioned services for quite sometime now. The million dollar bubble buster is whether the competition should be threatened. Short answer: no.


Keeping The Community: Different Strokes For Different Folks

In The Community is What Makes Social Networks Different), I said, "The community is the key to separating social networks."

This is why I'd still choose Brightkite over Latitude. For me, it's not about showing where I am to all of my friends and contacts. Quite frankly, the ones that can meet up with me are probably already there or on the way. How do I know? I checked my text messages, posted where I was going as my Facebook status, and made a few phone calls to those who could meet up. Neither I nor my friends need Latitude or Google to do this for us. Latitude might be a backwards way of being lazy if you ask me.

Brightkite introduces me to new people to hang out with. This may not be for everyone, but it's a great way for people to network right in their community. The amount of information available for specific check-in spots is amazing! I can see who's been there, how many times they've been there, check out their profile and see if we have similar interests. Hey, they might even be friends with me on Twitter! For this sole reason alone, Brightkite and other similar services have nothing to fear for now. In fact, they might want to thank Google.

Google Latitude Is Viral Marketing For The Location-Awareness Arena

Google is a worldwide brand. It's highly respected among people who would actually use Latitude. The entire situation puts way more light on mobile social networks and location awareness than the smaller players could ever do at this point. Google pushes this concept to mainstream internet users, just as Facebook has done with RSS via the News Feed. The usage of each service will be entirely different, but the concept is still the same at the core: connect wherever you are!

This could be looked at as viral marketing for location-awareness services. Google may or may not get the bigger market share, but there's no doubt that quite a few people may fill unfilled with Google Latitude and leave in search of more features or a different way of interacting with the same concept. Google could add these features in the future, but remains to be seen at this point. There's a lot of things that Google keeps putting on the backburner. In the long run Latitude could be one of them, making room for others to dominate the space.

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

By Eric Berlin of Online Media Cultist (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Most Web site publishers and bloggers are always looking for ways to add value for their readers. And smart online publishers look to add value while also marketing themselves to a larger potential audience.

Enter Pluck on Demand, "a new self-serve product that adds contextually relevant content and social media to your site, increasing pageviews and user engagement while earning you incremental revenue."


In other words, Pluck on Demand is a widget that you install on a Web page that drives contextually relevant content to your site, buffing out your site's content offerings and, in theory, also making your site more visible to search engine spiders, the almighty Google in particular. And the proverbial cherry on the top is sharing in the revenue made possible by increased page views.

Here's an interview with Eric Newman, Pluck's SVP & General Manager, who explains Pluck on Demand a little bit further.


(via Allen Weiner)

It is interesting to note that Pluck pulls content from the Blogburst network to serve to their widgets. And I also learned that Pluck was purchased by Demand Media. Thus, the name Pluck on Demand has more than one meaning, it seems!

I like the idea of Pluck on Demand, but from the publisher perspective the first obvious questions have to do with whether or not the widget is really worth adding, is it just more widget bloat, does it truly help with increased search engine visibility, is the content truly relevant and useful in terms of what the Web site already offers, and so on.

Bill Sweetman of One Degree is impressed, at the least, writing that he has "been piloting this service on one of my sites and have already seen a 10% increase in traffic that I can directly attribute to Pluck On Demand. And that's without taking advantage of any of the social media widgets!"

I look forward to installing Pluck on Demand sometime down the road on Online Media Cultist to see the results for myself.

Read more by Eric Berlin at Online Media Cultist

With the FriendFeed co-founders' pedigrees including Google as their last stop, it has largely been presumed the team knew the value of search. In March of 2008, the online social aggregator first turned on their search engine, but as the site grew in popularity and features, many users were calling for more granularity in search - asking to see search results within a specific time period, or, more loudly, to see results from entries that had been gauged as interesting from the community, based on total likes or comments. Today, FriendFeed delivered the popularity end of the search database, and people are already diving into the data to see what they can find.

For example:

If you search for entries that have both 100 comments and 100 likes:

There are 11 total entries. The first ever was when we announced the birth of our twins. Of the other 10, see here, 4 are from Robert Scoble, and a second entry is by me, about Robert, and his potential monetization of FriendFeed. Other single entries are from Mona Nomura, Thomas Hawk, Monique, Conformist, and Akiva Moskovitz, also on the announcement of a new baby.

So yes, FriendFeed loves Scoble, tolerates me, and loves babies.
Of those 11 items, one was a tweet (mine), 7 were native FriendFeed entries, 2 were blog posts, and one was Robert's Facebook status update.

The most comments any post with the word bacon in the title has had is 80. (via Lindsay)

The most comments any post with the word sex in the title has had is 64. (via Mona)

15 Different Entries Have Been "Liked" More than 200 Times (see query)

In fact, the first entry ever to get more than 200 likes was an entry announcing a Jabber/GTalk IM bot for FriendFeed. Oddly, it got 445 likes and only 3 comments. Hmmm...

Of the 15 items, 5 were from Bret Taylor, FriendFeed co-founder, announcing new features. 3 more were fun items from Mona. Scoble only makes it once, though his note on January 10 did get 312 likes and 464 comments, which was epic.

Of the 15 items, 5 had both comments from me and likes from Robert. 4 were Bret Taylor entries. The fifth was Akiva's baby announcement. Matthew, a tad older, is already practicing his pickup lines.

Only one blog entry has ever received 150 comments on FriendFeed.

Avoiding accidental script anomalies, only one post has ever gotten 150 or more comments on FriendFeed. The conversation is completely in Italian about a cat, I assume.

Most blog posts don't get tremendous numbers of comments. (see query)

Aside from the previously mentioned Scoble monetization post, only one post I have ever made has hit 60 or more comments - a post in July on Web racism. And earlier that week, we managed 50 comments for the discussion of friending people online well outside your age range on the low side. Matt Dickman's guest post from last week also exceeded the 50 comment barrier. In contrast, Robert Scoble has six posts that reached the 50 comment mark on the site.

Also noted: 10 internal shares of mine reached 50 comments, while 46 internal shares have reached 50 likes. Of those, 26 were baby pictures of Matthew and/or Sarah. Such exploitation!

Only 4 Tweets have ever received 100 likes on FriendFeed. (see query)

Two were from me - one announcing the arrival of the twins, and the other, when my wife said she joined Facebook, but didn't add me as a friend. The other two? Akiva announcing the arrival of his baby, and Kevin Rose fooling e-mail correspondents by pretending his computer was an iPhone.

Eight FriendFeed entries with the word iPhone in the title have 50 comments. (see query)

Of those eight entries, three are from Robert, one is from Mona, and others are from Tina, Lindsay, Bret Taylor, and Chris Pirillo.

Seven entries with the word "Cat" in the title have 50+ likes. Dogs win with nine such entries.

I already predicted that search and the real-time Web, on both Twitter and FriendFeed, would be a big deal in 2009, and this step takes us even closer to being able to dig deep into the immediate (and historical) reactions of one of the Web's most unique and vibrant social communities.

You can see some more data mining fun in Scoble's feed.