A Midwest Journal: So SU me.

If I had a dime for every "idle" thought that traipsed through my head...

Social bookmarking is bottomless, infinite, and so beyond anyone's control or harmful influence.

People will be people. They can be churlish, naive, imperious, uplifting, and downright nasty.

Does that keep you from meeting people and making friends, building a community?

No.

In life, you just keep on keeping on.

Same with social bookmarking/networking. People have different views of the various social bookmarking systems/networks. They like some, they hate some - some just don't fit their scene. And that's the core of Socials.

Can you really game these? Not really. Because you're only showing yourself for what you are. Socials are constantly evolving. Some are far more strict in what they allow. Too strict for you - don't use them anymore.

Your choice. And that's what the Socials give you - your own freedom of choice.

But will people try to game these? Sure. And if those administrators aren't on the ball, they will - for awhile. Again, those people will only be showing their true colors. If that Social accepts them and works with them - then they are fine, upstanding members. Otherwise, they'll eventually leave when they can't create an effect.

Squidoo, for instance, is built for marketers, and has internal competitions for the best sites which keep getting updated - and linking to other sites.

Digg has evolved since it started. Originally viewed (by some) as restrictive - as some could "bury" another's sites - it has grown and now you have sites which don't even get seen by others whether they "digg" them or not.

Same with StumbleUpon. The more people you get, the more varied their interests and the more Long Tail niches develop. So people get a lot more out of it, as they simply find all the stuff they want to make their world-view out of. Everyone wins.

There are now more Socials than anyone can realistically keep track of. And most people subscribe to several. And find their friends in the new one as well, or invite them there.

One blogger (and SEO expert) Michael Campbell said in a recent post:

"And finally Stumbler Danny C. revealed, 'It's my starting page and my search engine. I get the best info this way! Not just the sites that are the best SEO'd or the best at gaming Google. I get real quality sites that are recommended by my friends.'

"Beware Mr. Google you silly old hare. The race isn't over yet! There's a new turtle on the horizon and it's not the old familiar stragglers like Yahoo, MSN and AOL. It's a new self-directed, user-tagged, friend-sorted search engine… and it's sneaking up right behind you!"

And you'll see this in the Stumbleupon, Diggit and De.licio.us plug-ins which actually start to replace or upgrade the browsing experience. You'll find sites which have been Stumbled several times - or never. Something I found tonight - my SU friends are there, who stumbled what. Nice.

Added to this, there's a new browser called Flock which is an attempt to corral all this into a new type of browser. Not perfect, but hey - it's only 1.0 with the 1.1 beta just released...

So the world in front of us is evolving faster than even our best search engines can keep up with. The Socials are building on top of the search engines and even discarding them if they get in the way.

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Now, what does that mean for us left-brained types who are all creative and stuff???

Essentially - quit worrying about the Internet, it's in good hands. Concentrate on your bliss, your purpose, your dreams. Move over into what you should be working on, you know what that is.

Find your niche and build your community. That's where your support (critical or not) will come from. Either way, you'll be contributing in the best way you know how.

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