Come join me at the Social Media Breakfast East Bay on February 3rd. The breakfast will be held at the Buttercup Grill and Bar in Oakland, 1000 Colton Street in Oakland, just off 23rd Ave. and easily accessible from the 880. I will be speaking on social media strategies and how they need to be shaped by your brand strategy and you company strategy. We will look at some examples from my 13+ years building web communities.

It is a new year and many people are making resolutions and many bloggers are blogging about their resolutions. One effort that caught my attention is that Borders has added an area on their blog with the resolutions of 4 of their employees.

This is notable because no one mentions something obvious like “I will read more books”. Their resolutions instead are:

• I’m Going to Take the Presidential Fitness Test
• I’m going to eat only real food
• I’m Going to Give 29 Gifts
• I’m Going to Save $300 in 30 Days

Will they mention books? David, who is a book buyer, already mentioned that his resolution came from a book he read last Summer. I suspect a book or two will come up in the conversation as I suspect these 4 actually do like books and are avid readers.

Why is this significant?

Borders seems to get that a great strategy in social media is putting a face on the company. Here are 4 real people and 4 real goals. The idea is for me to identify with the people and therefore the company. Each blogger has only posted once so it is too early to predict the success of this campaign… but I will do it any way. I think this will be beneficial to Borders. I think the tone of this site is of a company that understands social media and I am interested to see what they will do next.

What is the minimum connectivity you would require from your company to keep you. Would you work for a company that did not allow you to read personal email? Would you work for a company that did not allow you to brows the web? According to a study coming out of Australia many in the younger generation would not work for a company that did not allow them to access their favorite social network.

Bosses who block access to MySpace and Facebook at work risk losing valuable staff to other companies, new research has found.

Almost half of those who use MySpace and Facebook during work hours say they would refuse a job where they were not allowed access to social networking sites, according to the study by Australian law firm Deacons.

This poses a dilemma for employers who fear the effects of social n etworking sites on productivity and privacy but need to retain staff in today’s tight jobs market.

Paul Colligan’s latest post “Would Somebody Please Let Me PAY For Service – Twitter, GrandCentral.Com, Ustream.Tv, Mogulus, Bueller, Anyone …” reminded me of an idea I had for Twitter. Twitter are you listening?

Like many people I love twitter but would love it even more if it worked on a consistent and predictable basis. My company runs large community sites and I understand how hard this can be but I also know we would be out of business… sorry, that’s a different post.

A popular business model that has been talked about for twitter is advertising mixed in with the feed. This leads many users to cringe. But it is clear that twitter has value so someone should be willing to pay for it. Who values twitter? Companies, bloggers, podcasters (like me), presidential candidates and Tv personalities all use twitter. They use twitter for:

• PR – getting or keeping their name in front of people
• Advertising – a twitter link to an audience who is interested in what you have to say is hundreds of times more efficient than an advertising campaign in my experience. A banner ad shown to thousands of strangers might get one click. A twitter post with a link to hundreds of followers can easily get a dozen click thrus because you are talking to people who already care about what you have to say.

The more followers I have the more valuable twitter is to my business or to my ego. So why not charge $1 per 100 followers per month or some similar charge. My monthly bill would be around $6 a month. Barack Obama’s would be between $400-500. If you don’t want to be charged, you could limit your followers.

Or what if it cost you something to put a link in a twitter post?

Alternatively, you could also have a charge for following more than a certain number of people per day or per week. Some people use following as a way to put their name in front of a group of people. They are not really following what all those people are saying, they are advertising. I think most people understand that advertising costs money. Maybe an interface that let companies at least be more honest about it. You would get an email that says “John Doe wants you to follow him”.

What are your ideas? What would you be willing to pay if it meant a more stable long term twitter?

If you have ever been in a foreign country you have probably had a conversation similar to this:

“You are from California? I have a friend in California, maybe you know him!”

We always laugh when this happens because California has roughly 30 million residents and is larger in size than many countries (it is about the same size as Japan).

But if you had a conversation where you told someone you belonged to a particular church, graduated a specific high school in a given year, or had worked at a small company you would not be surprised to have the same conversation. What is the difference? The difference I would suggest is that a high school class is a community but California is not.

The point my seem obvious but I am surprised that this point of view does not always carry over to the internet. I was listening to the latest live call-in show for the excellent podcast For Immediate Release when I heard a caller express a comment that people should get involved in a community like Facebook. I am not trying to pick on Shel and Neville for their excellent show, but this comment mirrors an understanding of Facebook and similar sites that I have heard expressed on many occasions.

Facebook states in their press area that they currently have 70 million active users which is more than twice the population of California. Facebook and the other social networking sites host a great number of communities but are not communities. My daughter is a member of numerous communities on facebook like her college classmates and high school classmates. My son has many of the same high school friends but is attending a college all the way across the country. Their college communities don’t overlap. They are a similar demographic of course but demographics do not a community make. I also belong to facebook but my facebook friends tend to be podcasters and Amateur Traveler podcast listeners. I could try and befriend all my daughters classmates (creepy) but I would be treated as what I am, an outsider.

The distinction here is important. Many people confuse a community with a website or with a set of features. But communities are people. They are people who share something other than bandwidth. They share values, or experiences or interests. I have seen a number of people find no value in facebook or other social networking sites until they realize that they can use it to reconnect to their high school girlfriend or college roommate. They don’t find any value in it until they find community.

I enjoyed this clever look at Facebook. I particularly enjoyed the look at what we would do if Facebook went away.