Do you spend more time on the internet? I know I do. My usage has changed drastically from purely gaining information to entertainment, communication and of course yes, still information.

Social networking has been a large part of my usage and a post over at MediaPost shows some interesting internet research

• In the past three years, the average U.S. adult has nearly doubled their daily use of the Internet as the average U.S. adult spent 2.1 hours per day online in 2006, compared to 3.8 hours in 2008
• The Internet now represents 32.5% of the typical “media day” for all U.S. adults when compared to daily exposure to newspaper, radio, TV and outdoor advertising.
• Even those who are considered heavy newspaper readers spend about as much time online today as the typical U.S. adult. According to the report, heavy newspaper readers, those who spend more than an hour per day reading, currently spend 3.7 hours per day online.  In 2006 the Internet represented only 18.4% of a heavy newspaper reader’s “media day,” but today it represents 28.4%.

The question is whether the increased usage has improved our lives or has it reduced our quality of life? In many ways the internet has enhanced my world, yet I am very conscious that the internet should not replace my real world life. I try and balance my face to face intereaction with friends with my virtual relationships. However the balance becomes harder and harder to achieve….

The interaction also gives you a feel for the level of interest in the services you offer which can be measured by the amount of click through’s generated by a link on a particular topic posted or questions you get asked while your on these sites. When i weighed the time required to do this against the benefits i soon found out it was time well spent.

The challenge as always is finding the time to do this.

If you know of anyone using social media in a different way or in an unusual industry then let me know at anna@theengagingbrand.com

Guy told me this was coming a while back when I’d asked about being able to save certain feeds and rearrange them as I saw fit, so MyAlltop didn’t come as a surprise to me.

Tomorrow, the “online magazine rack”, (one which all of my sites are on!) launches MyAlltop , allowing people to create custom collections of Alltop feeds. For me, it’s basically going to be replacing Google reader - at least for the sites I read regularly for news for the sites. I also suspect I’ll discover a whole ton of new sites as well.

Alltop

Every custom MyAlltop collection is a public page which can be shared with friends and fans.

One of the things that you know i s going to happen (and what I did right away) is that people are going to grab their vanity accounts, and the floodgates open tomorrow (Tuesday).

The good news is, you can create as many accounts as you’d like - one for personal use and one for your site. I don’t think you can embed anything on your site yet, but knowing Guy, I’m sure that’s coming.

Once you’ve gotten your account set up, you’ll have a personalized URL . The sign up process is uber fast, so go now - run, don’t walk - to  My Alltop and register your name before your user name gets scooped!

Normally, planning an event can take months, sometimes as many as 12, but the Writer’s Federation and the Shabeen Club have teamed up to create an amazingly fun event in just two weeks.

That meant all of the traditional promotional methods were completely out of the question. So, instead, organizer Lorraine Murphy turned to Twitter to arrange everything. Crime Pays takes place Monday, March 16th at the Vancouver Police Museum.

“We had to do it on twitter because it all literally happened over two weeks, from getting the idea to holding the event.” said Lorraine.  “Papers need more notice than that; we didn’t even get in the event listings at the Straight! So [traditional] press releases were of limited use.”

Lorraine managed to find a free venue, “guys and dolls” to auction off and promoted the event through Twitter and Facebook. In addition, several bloggers have written about the event to assist in promotion, and arranged to have the Executive Director of the Writer’s Federation send the event out to his 2,000 strong newsletter.

Come help the Fed celebrate 32 years of getting away with murder. Whether infiltrating schools, divvying up swag, or distributing subversive publications, the Federation of BC Writers has been operating unchecked in our province for decades.

Do you enjoy the vicarious thrill of rubbing shoulder pads with the Lost Literati of the Wild West, surrounded by instruments of murder and mayhem in the cozy confines of the police museum? Do you have what it takes to make your bones as a Fed member? There’s only one way to find out! Come out to the party and make us an offer we can’t refuse. [source]

When: Monday, March 16th, 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Where: The Vancouver Police Museum, 240 East Cordova Street, Vancouver
Info: Tickets are $20, there will be refreshments, and prizes galore. Register here.

And for a little gratuitous eye candy, here are some of the guys and dolls being auctioned off.

Irwin

Terra aka Zoey Jane

Kris Krug & Raul (aka Hummingbird604)

Caroline

All these fine folk and more are being auctioned off - including a real live fictional character! (How perfect could that be? A date with a fictional character, for a writer?!)

It’s very cool to know that social media made this entire event possible. Without the ability to connect immediately, this never would have come together.

[all images provided by Lorraine Murphy]

You’d have to have been either on vacation on a tiny island with no internet access at all or be living under a rock not to know about the web’s latest love-fest, The Shiba Inu Puppy Cam.

People have complained about losing all productivity after finding out about the puppies - people stopped working almost entirely to watch the puppies sleep. I know at least an hour or two of my own productivity got sucked away by the little, adorable furballs, even if they were just sleeping.

You know something has become popular, or dare I say it, even an overnight sensation when it starts to get spoofed. First, Rob Cottingham of Noise to Signal released this:

and now, there’s a YouTube video as well:

We really should just band together and stop watching these damn dog…… awwww! They’re playing!!!!

(image source: (CC) Noise to Signal. Video Source Gonzoprm)

This is a guest post by my new BFF, Shannon. OMG, I can’t tell you how much she and me connect. Seriously. It’s ridiculous. We were born 9 days apart. We’re the same age. The difference? She’s American and I am Canadian, and she has kids, (and gets to be married to the GM of Morton’s!) and I am 33, with no kids, and am married to a roadie.

***

Last night, I had an eight-some.  That’s right; Seven chicks, one guy, two hours. You see, I am a mommy blogger. *ducks* 

I take almost no shame in that fact.  None of us do, really; we just feel like we should.  That is not the point, however.  The point is, mommy bloggers, being the red-headed step sisters of the blogosphere, (ED: i hate that word!)tend to stick together.  We run in packs, simply because we don’t know where else we’d fit in.

Mommy blogging is a lot like being stuck in junior high school by request.  Everyone is uber-sensitive and wants to be liked.  Having a post with no comments is just as bad as having a yearbook with no signatures in the jacket.  No one is sure quite how to navigate through the whole system, since there are no rules to this gig yet, and we tend to go to extremes in our life online.

Some of us are flirts.  Some of us take that to a trampy, shock-value level.  Some of us are reserved and demure.  Some of us are Fuck-You bloggers, always in your face, ready to fight at the drop of a hat.  Some of us are merely trolls, looking to find fault with every other mom out there, and in that we validate our own parenting.  Some of us want to be Dooce.  All of us are on Plurk.

Sites like Plurk and Twitter are great for the mom blog set, because it gives us the chance to be women, lovers, humans; anything but moms for five minutes.  Our blogs are all about our kids, and many of us forgot to include ourselves in them.  Get us on Twitter, though, and we can laugh at ourselves, cry with each other and learn about another level of each other, one the blogs we keep may not let come through.

Last night, I checked in on my Plurk site.  Now, I know that Colleen will stone me dead for cheating on Twitter behind her back, but I’m coming clean.  I popped in and a few moms were hanging around.  One asked if we wanted to play Truth or Dare (see paragraph above, i.e. Junior High.)  Seven of us said yes.

Two hours later and one private Sex 101 plurk thread later, I closed the laptop having revealed things I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone.  I learned things about a group of bloggers whom I spend every morning with through their blogs and couldn’t have guessed if you paid me.   A blog friendship based on fluffy stories of boo-boos and marital angst turned into a real friendship based on actual, real-life similarities.

If you would have told me five year ago that a friendship could be built through a keyboard and some cleverly coded flash, I would have laughed you out of the room.

If you would have told me five years ago that I would someday spend two hours in a chat room talking about very nitty, gritty details of my sex life with seven people I have never met in person, I would have A) asked you what a chat room was and B) slapped you fairly hard across your face.

Have you ever had that moment online, the moment that changed your view of the internet?  You know, when you realized it was good for more than scrabble and porn?  Do tell…..

Is it just me, or are timelines in the new social media world, MUCH shorter than regular timelines? It’s kinda like dog years. Every year is, apparently, 7 dog years, so my 3 year old is 21. In the social media world, things that are talked about or that happen a week or two ago are already old news. It takes no time at all for time to pass in a social media world.

Case in point. I twittered about my dinner at Morton’s last week. It was amazing, and I’m putting a review up shortly. But, I’d tweeted that I offered to marry the general manager, Josh. His wife, (ooops) tweeted back that all I had to do is flirt with him. (so I did :D)

She and I have since discovered a ridiculous amount of commonalities. So many so that we’re planning to meet for a drink over the weekend.

What hit me most about this entire situation, is that I feel like I’ve known her for ages. In reality, it’s been about…. oh, a week. Maybe two. ish.

Things that happen six months ago, which in real life, seem like some time has passed, in the social media world, a few months is a lifetime.

Think about it. We’re not talking about, or being, Rick Rolled anymore. We’re not talking about stuff that happened a month ago. Or even 2 weeks ago.

The social media time line is short. Turnover is rapid. A few days can equal a few months in the social media world.

This epitomizes exactly why I love SxSW, and why I can’t wait to go next year.

Johnny Goldstein, rocking the mic like a vandal.

Everyone knows Guy Kawasaki. He’s pretty much a rockstar in the social media world and everyone wants a piece of him. I met him at the BlogHaus at SXSW this year, albeit briefly. I had to fight my way through the crowd gathered around him to introduce myself. It was quick and dirty, but it did the trick.

Guy has added to his internet empire and launched Alltop. An Alltop site is basically a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. At each Alltop site, they display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page. They call it “single-page aggregation.”

Through the power of Twitter, not only have I had several conversations with Guy, I’ve also gotten three sites on Alltop. I’m part of the Twitterati, my personal blog is on the Life page, and I’m pleased to announce that as of this afternoon, BuzzNetworker is now on the Social Media page!

I’m very proud that all three of my main sites are in the Alltop world. If it’s like anything else that Guy touches, Alltop will be turning to gold shortly.

(image source, me on Flickr. Image: @pistachio, @guykawasaki and @queenofspain) 

I found this over on my favorite entertainment and pop culture news blog Pop Candy about the new movie “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and their viral campaign. You can read the post here.

I have to say I have been enjoying this campaign and checking out the various pages. Movies and television shows have been doing a better job with the viral campaigns but this one so far might be my favorite.