POSTPONED Continuing the focus on hyper local learning and real time reaching out, we are starting Lunch and Learn sessions on some of the topics we get asked about the most. The first of these is on April 18th at Rick’s Pond View (no walk ins, EventBrite signup or email me if you need to pay cash at the door), and is a class on how to keep your kids safe online. (Hashtag #KIDSAFENH)

Also in the hyper local category is the next Social Media Breakfast NH on April 17th (no walk ins, EventBrite signup only). University of New Hampshire (UNH) has generously offered to sponsor this event. This, the third Social Media Breakfast NH, is all about education and social media. We will have two speakers, and then instead of a third speaker we’ll do an open Q&A that will allow the educators present to pick our brains and learn from us in real time. (Hashtag #SMBNH)

Another upcoming event is the next podcast: Topics on Fire, Episode 15: Inbound/Viral Marketing. That will be on TalkShoe next Sunday 4/19 at 10:00PM EDT. You can follow the call here to get a reminder when it will start sent to your email inbox. (Hashtag #TOF)Last Topics on Fire Episode was on Music and Social Media. Have a listen:

There are more classes in the lunch and learn series coming, and more events planned. Stay tuned as we keep finding ways to share knowledge with you and foster connections.

I use the link in your profile page to make decisions that your existing interaction level can’t answer. Others who are newer to social media use it to decide your trustworthiness and online value, or how interesting you are. Following someone has a bit of a cost to it as far as time – the landing page you link to in your profile let’s new followers know you are worth their time.

Many people panic when I tell them they need a link to a landing page. They don’t want to start a blog or host a web site. They don’t want to sell products online or fuss with a CMS system. They prefer more lightweight interaction online and don’t see the point in committing at that level. You know what? That is totally fine. Even so, you still need a place people can go to see another facet of who you are.

So how do you have a social media landing page if you don’t want to have a blog or web site? That’s easy – cross link to your other social media profiles, or to a social content site or social network instead.

Social content is probably the best way to handle the lack of a dedicated web site or blog. If you have a Flickr account for your photos, a Qik channel for short videos from your phone, or even something like an Utterli profile where you record your old, angst-ridden teen poetry, link to it.

If you don’t generate social content, you should. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s often free. It takes less time than a blog or web site, and it is maintained by someone else. You get a profile page in a very no fuss, no muss manner, meaning that updating feels more like play but is still effective in getting what I like to call “snackable content” out there for the masses to consume, discuss and pass along (with credit and link backs, is the hope).

If you are strictly a social network participant and have no desire (or time, in some cases) to generate any kind of social content, no matter how small, you can still make one of your social network profiles into your landing page. Just tweak the content a bit to make sure it reflects a wider amount of your personality or accomplishments, then link to the profile.

To make a FaceBook profile your landing page, you need to make the permissions on the profile public. That’s a scary thing for some people, and not without risk. If that makes you uncomfortable, you can create a fan page for yourself or your company and link there instead, thus controlling access to your private life.

Just because MySpace has lost its luster recently doesn’t mean it isn’t a great landing page, especially if you are a band/musician. The custom URL feature makes it easy, and you can upload links, content, videos, commentary and more with ease, keeping your content interesting for visitors from other sites, like Twitter.

Don’t overlook some of the lesser known or niche social networks either (iMeem, Strands, MOG, LinkedIn or even sites like FriendFeed). However you choose to get another side of your personality or your company out there, that link in your profile is key to getting more response to your social media activity. Layers are vital. Show yours off.

The platform is attractive in its simplistic presentation. When scrolling through my stream on my Macbook Pro, the application reacted smoothly, and I’ve yet to experience any hiccups or delays in any functions. One of my biggest complaints with some AIR applications, such as Twitter platform Twhirl, is that they tend to be a little slow on the pick up and reaction time. No such issues here.

The platform allows you to work in a large-screen mode or in a “widget” mode, which shrinks down the feed to the bare necessities. Coming to my first issue with the platform, the smaller widget really isn’t what you’d call small. Though you can change the height of the window, the width is fixed. That wouldn’t be a big deal if the widget mode changed the size of each update displayed, but it doesn’t…and each update is sizable in display.

In fact, the whole platform, for all its clean simplicity, is a bit bulky in its presentation. There’s a lot of unused space that could be eliminated, making the platform more streamlined and aesthetically-appealing. For those of us with limited screen real estate, using every centimeter of space is crucial. Skimmer doesn’t have any skin or display options to change; if it did, I’d love it. But on a positive note, that’s my biggest gripe with the platform.

Moving right along, Skimmer allows users to update their various accounts from the platform…no suprise there. But unlike some platforms, where updating your status on a platform linked to multiple accounts doesn’t allow you to update each account differently, Skimmer lets you select which account to which your update will be posted. Or, if you like, you can post the same update to all accounts. Personally, my activity on Facebook is different than it is on Twitter or Youtube, so I like to update each individually, but to each his or her own. This feature earns a big check-plus from me.

Users can also filter their feeds easily, selecting which accounts they’d like to incorporate into their streams. Sometimes I just don’t care whether my friends are updating their Facebook profiles, or what they have to say. Uncheck Facebook from your stream directly the Skimmer application, and you’re set.

I particularly like that Skimmer renders pictures and videos uploaded to all the different services it supports right in the window. I won’t drop names, but I watched a particularly..unique..rendition of the Disney song “A Whole New World,” a YouTube post, right from Skimmer. If I’d had anything constructive to say, I could have commented on the video directly from Skimmer as well. Nice.

Continuing with more cool features, you can filter your stream down by keyword, friends, and platforms. Skimmer does display your friend avatars (or profile pictures, whichever you like), and next to the images are small little platform icons, indicating which platform the update is coming from.

I’ve just started using Skimmer, so I’m certainly not fully familiar with all of the platform’s features, but I will certainly continue using it. If you’re out there, nice folks at Skimmer, you’d have one very happy customer if you let me skin the thing or make the appearance a little less bulky. Pretty please?

UPDATE: Still, I guess Skimmer is really delivering on exactly what it claims to do. As far as viewing your social stream, the platform excels. But when it comes to communicating, such as sending messages on Twitter, the app is lacking. For instance, when I received a tweet from a friend, there was no indication that the entity in my feed was in any way different from the rest of the noise. Lucky I saw the tweet as it came in; otherwise, I would have had no clue that I’d been contacted.

Skimmer is just that. But, if the team over at Skimmer was to add in a bit of functionality that focuses on communication, such as differentiated postings so users can know when they’re being contacted, then we’d have a serious application on our hands. I think it is a contender against my partner Leslie’s preferred tool, Strands, or the tech crowd’s favorite, FriendFeed.

Of course, now that I have an Apple Touch device, my first move was to jump on the Apps store and look for all the mobile social networking applications I could find.  I have to say, I was a little disappointed.  There just weren’t the plethora of applications I expected to find.

That isn’t to say I didn’t find some great tools.  First off, the Facebook app for the iPhone and iPod Touch is simply stunning.  It is far superior to its counterpart for Blackberry.  If I wasn’t already a Facebook junkie (and I was), I’m probably a lost cause, as it will now be fused to my hip in waking and sleeping.  

I also found a fantastic Twitter platform called TwitterFon, a FREE app that, in my opinion, bests any offering I’ve seen thus far either for mobile phones or computer platforms.  You’ll probably hear me harping on “free” for quite some time, as I’m sure there are many great mobile apps available for all mobile phones, but it seems some developers feel the need to charge for their creations.  I’m all for paying for apps that are well-developed, but there aren’t any trial opportunities for many apps that could be very good…in that sense, developers lose out because many won’t be willing to pay for something they’re not sure of, and consumers lose out because they’re more apt to stick with free apps than apps that might very well be superior. 

Also, I installed the Yelp! app to my iPod Touch.  Though it’s far from perfect, it’s a nice addition to anyone’s mobile device as it offers great search and localizing functionality for finding activities, restaurants and businesses in your area.  Today I searched for Starbucks, and found one 1.5 miles away; when I clicked “Google Maps” to get directions from my house, Google didn’t know the location existed.  Luckily I already knew where it was.  The point being, it isn’t perfect but it’s better than not having it.

And yet, I still find myself less than enthused with the current plight of mobile social networking.  Why?  Because, dear friends, the mobile social networking world is in serious need of multiple cross-platform social aggregators.  By cross-platform, I mean available with every major cellular carrier in the U.S, and by social aggregator, I mean a platform that ties in most of the best and most popular social networking and media sites like Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and others.  Though it’s all well and good to update each application separately, it just isn’t time effective to type out the same message for all your different services. 

I was surprised to find no evidence of a FriendFeed application for the iPhone/iPod Touch.  Though it isn’t my favorite computer-based aggregator, I think it would be a huge hit on mobile platforms. I’m familiar with what is currently the most widely-used aggregator for the iPhone, Blackberry, and other platforms — Loopt — but I find it lacking.

It does seem to be a perfectly fine social locator that integrates Facebook and Twitter, but if that’s it, there’s certainly a lot of room for improvement.  If you can use it, give it a try and see whether it fits your needs.  But it isn’t the be-all end-all to me.  

There are options, and mobile social networking has certainly come a long way from where it was even a couple years ago.  But competition between developers, and more so carriers, has effectively stunted the growth and restricted the adoption of universal mobile social networking.  For now, the best offerings seem to be available on the iPhone and the G1 (T-Mobile), and some of Samsung’s latest phones with the TouchWiz interface have some interesting (albeit limited) social applications.  For now, Facebook and Twitter seem to be the two big platforms, and your best bet is to find an app that suits your needs for each of those platforms.

CNN reported that on Facebook, arguably the most popular social networking site for college students and young people, Obama claimed 2.4 million followers, where John McCain pulled up the rear with a meager 624,000.  Obama’s own site was significantly more social in content, and John McCain’s team did make an effort to replicate some of the functionality Obama touted for McCain’s own site.

There is one point that I will not contend with Sanchez, that being that the GOP (and the Democratic party) should work towards reaching the young and old through social media. Social media is here to stay, and it would nothing less than irresponsible to not maintain a presence on networks and sites like Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, Twitter, Friendfeed and the like.

However, implicit to Sanchez’s article is the suggestion that if the GOP can match the Democrat’s technological savvy, they can swing a large group of young voters in the party’s favor. I respectfully disagree.

Let us consider the example of Facebook’s role in identifying each candidate’s young constituents during this latest election. A total of 3.24 million Facebook users responded to the survey, an impressive number to say the least. Though there is no way of truly knowing (without getting insider private information directly from the Facebook team) the ages of every single survey participant, I think it is fairly safe to say the majority would belong to what we would call the “young” vote. Millenials, Gen-Yers, or whatever we are called, our age group showed up in a force much larger than has been reported of previous elections.

But I don’t think that McCain or Obama’s involvement in Facebook really swayed many young voters one way or the other. After all, what exactly, aside from joining groups like “Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack),” or “1 Million Strong for McCain/Palin ‘08,” can Facebook users do to really participate and show support? I write notes from time to time, but I don’t think Palin has stopped by to read and appreciate my comments.

Youtube is more dynamic in gauging support for political candidates, in that the campaigns can produce videos to reach Youtube users, and those users can actively demonstrate their support (or dislike) for a certain candidate by responding in videos of their own. Still, the candidates themselves can’t really participate much beyond being seen in videos.

Twitter might be said to be an exception to my previous examples of candidates’ inability to connect with supporters. Barack Obama (or his right-hand team) was fairly active on the micro-messaging platform, which is more than McCain can say. However, and I say this from both being a young voter and from being surrounded by an entire campus of fellow young voters, many college-goers don’t deviate from their time-consuming addictions to Facebook and Youtube, with some still frequenting MySpace (though, for what reason I have no clue). Twitter is definitely on the radar and used heavily by those of us who love everything social media, blogosphere and internet, but we aren’t the majority. Suffice it to say that from where I stand, Obama was reaching a slightly different group than the college-going young voter on Twitter for the most part.

So, if each candidate’s participation in the most popular social networks was limited, and there was still a significant amount of support from young voters, it must be seen that the support was largely volunteered by those supportive youths, not in response to the direct involvement of each candidate.

From there, we must ask ourselves exactly why the number of constituents for each candidate was skewed so heavily in Obama’s favor. I think the answer is simple: as cliche as it sounds (and is), young people want change and believe that they (assumedly alongside Mr. Obama) can achieve it.

There are two parts to that equation. First, it is no secret that as people age, they tend towards more conservative stances. Colleges are typically the most liberal institutions, and it is visible in the mentalities of students. Being liberal is popular in college. That is because we are surrounded with fellow liberals who tend to look badly on conservative stances.

In addition, I would argue that the needs and motives of young voters are best catered to by the Democratic party. Obviously, those interests like social welfare programs, lower loan and tuition rates and minimum wage tend to give way to more conservative interests as young voters graduate and start accumulating wealth and assets of their own.

The second contributor to the political leanings of young voters, in my estimation, are the mediums through which young voters get their political information. As I previously mentioned, that includes the influences of those professors we see from day to day, and also various media channels. What college student does not enjoy the entertainment of “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” or, dare I say them, “South Park,” and “Family Guy?” If you think that those last two shows don’t play a part in the way the young voters of America perceive the government, you would be oh so wrong. Every one of those hugely popular “college” shows influence the minds of young voters, and it is safe to say those shows are far from conservative. I won’t say that basing one’s political opinions on the incredibly skewed political stances of those media outlets is wise, but to each their own.

So, as much as it would be nice to paint a picture of proper social media usage being the key to victory for the GOP with young voters, I think it will take a far sight more to win the minds of that coveted demographic. In fact, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the GOP as it currently stands, comprised of neo-conservatives and moderate-conservatives, will never really serve the immediate interests (as they will see it) of young voters. But then, this country was never intended to be controlled by two parties that are more apt to scratch each other’s back than cater to the interests of the people. Maybe it is time for a drastic changing of guards…