http://sidit.org

A few weeks ago I was presented with the concept of personal brand as a fad; a mere buzzword that no one would care about in a few months. I immediately shot back in defense. I mean, it would be pretty upsetting to be crafting my own brand only to have no one care, right?

Over the few years that I've been using Facebook, I've acquired quite a few likes. A few thousand to be exact. Now you might think that's a bit ridiculous, and it is, really. There's no possible way I can interact with all of those pages, and I don't.

I'm a huge fan of infographics of any kind. Whether they tell a story or convey information, it doesn't matter. While I can't create my own, I've compiled a list of awesome, interesting and fun infographics related to social media. With 2 billion people searches in 2010, Linked In is arguably one of the most used professional networking sites available.

Is being connected 24/7 a blessing or a curse? It seems that with the rise of smart phones and laptops, people can be online and connected to their favorite sources of information at anytime. Personally I think it's a curse. A miniature experiment. A few weeks back, I took a trip to the middle of nowhere Montana to disconnect and do some networking with actual people. That's right, not on Linked In, Facebook or any other online hangout -- in person. I planned on the trip being a total disconnect from my online social life and my face-to-face social life back in Ohio. I love my "friends," but I was really looking for a break. I wanted to shut off that constant connection. I went into the mountains fully expecting to lose cellphone service and not see a lick of wifi for a week. I honestly didn't want to see my iPhone for the next six days.

Social TV is an interesting term that refers to platforms that allow users to engage with each other around what they're watching on TV or in theaters. This hits home for me because I worked on a platform called ScreenTribe for six months in 2010, and I continue to support it today. The term seems to be taking on a new meaning as advertisers, marketers and developers realize there's a market that hasn't yet been capitalized on. When we began work in May/June of 2010, the space was sparse. There weren't many competitors, and the competitors that existed were far more inferior to our platform. We offered new ways to do things and different ways to experience existing functionality. Still, the term social TV applied to what we were doing. That is, engaging television and movie watchers with exclusive content and allowing them to interact with people that were watching the same things.