About a month ago, career coach Jefferey Ward offered young Federal employees some advice on maintaining their social network presence (e.g., Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn).

Federal Computer Week writer Florence Olsen offered this summary of his advice:

If you are a young federal employee with ambitions to become a government leader, do yourself a career favor: Don’t let any wild party pictures or other unprofessional-looking content taint your Facebook profile and, possibly, your career.

Olsen followed up by paraphrasing an additional Ward prediction that fledging Federal employees would do well to weigh:

Young feds often hear that many opportunities for advancement and leadership will open up in the federal government any time now as the large baby boom generation begins to retire in record numbers. But Ward told a different story. He said many senior employees who are eligible for retirement are not retiring, for various reasons.

This doesn’t mean that opportunities to advance won’t abound as Boomers step down, but it does mean that it’s not going to be as easy as you might hope. The search for standout talent is on, and posting a photo of yourself in your Tinkerbell Halloween costume might give the tie to another equally qualified candidate who doesn’t spend his or her time trying on tights and waving magic wands (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Ward is essentially acknowledging that Government agencies (i.e., employers) are not only familiar with the social networking phenomenon, they are actually paying attention to its implementation. If you’re job hunting in the Federal sector, it might be time to take down those frat party pics.

Blogger Seni Thomas shares some profundity at Conversation Agent about the nature of social networks in the forthcoming year.

The primary purpose of online networks, up to this point, has been to congregate around interests, hobbies, and passions to create communities. In 2008 I predict networks will become more tha[n] social. In 2008 we will see the growth of innovation networks, or i-Nets. Networks that allow ideas to attract people and people to discover ideas.

i-Nets, in a nutshell, are networks that layer advanced people search capabilities, democratic content voting, and collaborative applications over a social foundation. Think of a mash-up between Google Apps, Spock, Digg, and Facebook.

i-Nets, according to Seni, will be catalysts for strategy consolidation, allowing research, planning, design, and creative functions to work with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness. It’s the kind of prediction made at the onset of every new business year — but the explosion of social networking interconnectivity and communications suggests that this generation just might be able to follow through on the promise.

The whale-naming competition launched by Greenpeace provides a perfect example of how the participatory nature of today’s Internet is coming full circle, redefining appropriate organizational communications.

The as-yet-unnamed whale, a South Pacific humpback, is going to be named Mr. Splashy Pants—man, it’s as fun to type as it is to say—and Greenpeace has citizen-driven media to thank for it.

The name is on a list of thirty candidates that includes plenty of wholesome, heartfelt, inclusive appellations from myriad cultures and literary traditions. The overall tenor of these names is very much in the Greenpeace wheelhouse; they’re warm, reassuring and guilt-free—like an organic-wool pullover.

But some of those Rainbow Warriors must have a sense of humor, because they allowed Mr. Splashy Pants to make the list—and make it it did. It’s good to know the organization knows how to lighten up, but I’m willing to bet that they thought they were merely indulging in a good inside joke.

Then the citizen-driven Web found out about Mr. Splashy Pants. The ballot page was posted on BoingBoing, Digg, and Reddit. Those content-aggregator communities spread the word faster than you can say, “Call me Ishmael,” and everybody got to voting.

The results? Mr. Splashy Pants is out front with 71 percent support; Humphrey, a comfortably wry choice, is a very distant second with only 3 percent. The rest, from Aiko to Mira to Shanti, might as well hit the showers.

What’s the point? The people, when aligned behind a common cause, are frighteningly powerful. And this weight is not merely influencing the options organizations offer to audiences; it is changing the very way organizations communicate. Greenpeace has no choice but to respect the intent of these communities. Of deeper significance: They are tempering a relatively intense mission with a modicum of humor. And this is hardly hurting its message.

Other organizations, regardless of their political leanings or industry, should pay attention. There’s something Mr. Splashy Pants is trying to teach us.

Today’s lesson in Social Networking Intelligence: Don’t think your boss hasn’t seen your Facebook page. Witness the tale of one unlucky intern:

Kevin Colvin, an intern at Anglo Irish Bank’s North American arm, was busted when he told his manager, Paul Davis, that he’d miss work due to a “family emergency”. Davis turned up the photo [below], freshly posted to Facebook from the Halloween party Colvin apparently missed work to attend…

Kevin, send us a resume. We can’t make any promises, but we’ve been known to break out the magic wands from time to time. Looks like you have a little experience.

Amazon recently announced that, for the holiday season, they are going to serve up videos to accompany the listings of 450 top toys. So what qualifies a toy for the top? Sales, reviews, or maybe payola from the manufacturer. Speaking of manufacturers, according the Publish World Update, an e-newsletter from Publish.com, where I read the news:

“It’s unclear whether the videos were produced by Amazon or the manufacturers of the products—although the guess is that it’s the manufacturers, to start. But the power of this video effort from Amazon will depend on the content as well as the continuing volume. Will these videos mostly be commercials, demos or candid reviews? Based on the initial few videos on the site—and not all links worked—they’re commercials, and not especially informative ones at that.”

Here’s what I found…commercial indeed.

Amazon, what are you thinking? You guys were one of the first big guns to offer customer reviews, and that social networking aspect of your super store is a big hit with me. Based on how many reviews I see when I visit, it’s big with others, too. Why not stick to that approach?

Rather than slap up commercials, how about letting visitors submit video reviews? You do? Oh.

So, I’m writing this post and I scroll WAY down the Spidey page to see if they offer written reviews to counter the commercial. Damn if I don’t see:

New feature! Amazon now allows customers to upload product video reviews. Use a webcam or video camera to record and upload reviews to Amazon.

OK, then that’s cool. Now all we’re talking about is real estate. So the Spidey commercial gets sweet placement on the page, but at least savvy Amazoners know to scroll WAY down, where they’ll find video reviews. Nice. Sing it, Spidey!

I love how Amazon artfully walks the line to appease manufacturers and consumers alike. They may be offering support for certain “top toys” via manufacturer-produced commercials, but they’re continuing to elevate the way in which consumers can voice their opinions. Manufacturers just better hope their “top toy” is indeed top in the eyes of the consumer, because glossy commercials just don’t win the game these days.

Asus recently began selling a $399 Linux Laptop, the EeePC (on sale here), with a $299 version to be launched soon. That’s a very low price for a 2 lb., 7″ display machine—usually ultra-portables belong to a high-end and expensive category. The Toshiba Portege R500, for example, retails for $2000 or more.

The EeePC is getting great reviews and apparently has been selling one every two seconds in Taiwan. It isn’t the only affordable Linux machine making mainstream inroads—Dell has been selling Linux Unbuntu systems, and Everex just started selling a sub-$200 Unbuntu machine at Wal-Mart. But the EeePC is the first cheap ultra-portable to be marketed to a new niche—not business travelers with money to spend, but average computer users who want an affordable way to take the Internet with them. (The only affordable laptops with a similar form-factor, and perhaps Asus’ inspiration, are those in production for the One Laptop per Child project).

Asus is achieving success in a traditionally perilous niche. UMPCs, for instance, failed to catch on: they were too expensive. And while devices like the Pepperpad are less expensive, they are not cheap enough to capture the market. Tapping this niche isn’t just about creating the right Internet device; it’s also about breaking a certain price barrier. Asus is breaking that barrier both by offering Linux instead of Windows and by eliminating a regular hard drive in favor of 4GB of Flash storage.

Flash storage certainly helps reduce price, but why so few gigabytes? The idea is that customers are doing more of their work and storing more of their data online. With this fact in mind, the EeePC includes links to Google Docs and other online applications (although it also includes the free Microsoft Office-compatible OpenOffice.org suite). Here’s a user review that I think captures the essence of the need that the EeePC satisfies: “Good form factor. Basic apps are all I need. Browser very fast. Boot in a little less than 15 seconds.”

There are a few industry lessons here. The first is that hardware devices are becoming commoditized because of the predominance of Web applications. More and more, such devices are not the endpoint for users, but merely (preferably lightweight and fast) tools to reach the place they really want to be—online.

Here’s the take of Tom Krazit of Cnet:

“End users desire the ability to take the full Internet with them, the experience they have on their PC, in a nomadic or mobile fashion,” said Gary Willihnganz, director of marketing in Intel’s mobile group. That’s language straight from the playbooks of Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Eric Schmidt, both of whom this year have emphasized their commitment to delivering a PC-like Internet experience on a handheld device.

Tim O’Reilly also puts it well:

We are starting to see the real blurring of handhelds, cell phones, cameras, and other consumer devices. Everything is becoming connected, and computing truly is becoming pervasive…. As people get seamlessly connected, wherever they are, devices become less important, even throwaway, and the continuity of the user’s data becomes most important.

O’Reilly’s conclusions are borne out by the PC market decline in Japan in favor of smaller devices. They are also borne out by the recent entry of Apple and Google into the mobile phone market. In fact, Google Android could drastically change the phone market by leading the market toward open source, unlocked phones that allow developers to bring wireless devices to the next level by giving users more choices when it comes to applications. It’s a move similar to the opening up of the Facebook API (with new competitor OpenSocial in pursuit) to allow a greater level of connectedness over the Web—not just via links, but via data exchange and functionality. The point is to bring state of mobile phone technology up to speed with the latest developments in Web applications, and that means especially making them more compatible with social networking and video-sharing applications.

So here’s how I trace these connections:

Social Networking–>Web applications predominance over client software–>Open APIs/Open Source–>Hardware lightening and commoditization in favor of social network access

That’s how I think cheap and lightweight hardware like the EeePC, the “cannibalization” of proprietary software by open source, recent developments in social networking, and Google Android are related.

Wikipedia’s recent edits page is long overdue for this mashup, which allows you to watch in real time as recent anonymous editors are located on a world map. Enjoy watching someone in the United Kingdom edit American Old West while a North Carolinian tinkers with Social Darwinism.

Reminiscent of Twittervision’s enhancement of Twitter, WikipediaVision can be surprisingly addictive. And it’s another great example of simple online applications that combine publicly available information to great effect (in this case, using the Google Maps API, hostip.info, and GoNew’s IP to country service).

In the current issue of The New Atlantis, writer Christine Rosen takes a hard look at the effect social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, et al) are having on our social interaction. Increasingly, she notes, people are giving up face-to-face relations, content to communicate through “technological surrogates.”

Although social networking sites are in their infancy, we are seeing their impact culturally: in language (where to friend is now a verb), in politics (where it is de rigueur for presidential aspirants to catalogue their virtues on MySpace), and on college campuses (where not using Facebook can be a social handicap). But we are only beginning to come to grips with the consequences of our use of these sites: for friendship, and for our notions of privacy, authenticity, community, and identity. As with any new technological advance, we must consider what type of behavior online social networking encourages.

What are the costs of our connections? How, as communities and as cultures, are our methods of interaction, even our very sense of what constitutes credible relationships, changing?

Rosen weaves an ominous note through her analysis, summed up with a foreboding consideration: “These virtual networks greatly expand our opportunities to meet others, but they might also result in our valuing less the capacity for genuine connection.”

That is a mighty big “might.” Worth considering, to be sure, but also consider that we’ve always found ways to minimize interaction when it suits us (burying our faces in books, hiding under headphones, or just zoning on the couch with our latest Netfllix delivery). It makes me wonder what constitutes Rosen’s “genuine” connection.

Is grocery shopping a genuine connection, or is the time saved using Peapod and instead taking my daughter to the park ultimately more genuine? If there’s nothing worth my two hours and ten bucks at the megaplex, why can’t I say home and watch Cool Hand Luke for the zillionth time? And isn’t someone who screens a few potential suitors using an online dating site saving his or her valuable time and actually expediting the search for Mr. or Ms. Right?

Certainly, there is risk that some might so favor their “interactive isolation” that they self-select from society. My guess, however, is that we’ll use these online means to build richer relationships that translate to more fulfilling real-world connections. And even if someone is content to camp in front of his computer, scarf delivery pizza, and play at being popular, at the end of the day, is that a horrible circumstance? Misanthropes and misfits have always had myriad non-technological retreats, and I’m not terribly interested in making their acquaintance in the first place.

The shakeout from social networking sites remains to be seen. No doubt some will use them as their sole means of interaction. I’m inclined to think, however, that most of us will see them as a way to maintain that comfortable isolation while also permitting as much interaction as we may, at any moment, care to indulge.

Of course you do. And like us, you spend a fair amount of them online.

Now, it looks like passing fixation is evolving into full-tilt addiction. Reuters reports that we’re sacrificing real-world relationships, interaction—even intimacy—for the sake of our virtual existence. According to a recent JWT survey:

More than a quarter of respondents—or 28 percent—admitted spending less time socializing face-to-face with peers because of the amount of time they spend online.

It also found that 20 percent said they spend less time having sex because they are online.

Pathetic? Perhaps to some, but also unshakable justification for building and maintaining a strong online presence, and for embracing the Web’s increasingly social nature. As one expert explained:

…online and offline lives are co-mingled and [many] would chose a Wi-Fi connection over TV any day…[t]his is how they communicate, entertain and live.

And it’s all about reaching people where they live, isn’t it?

Check out Swamble for a fun and innovative social network (sign up for the “private beta”).

Swamble makes it easy to bet on anything: without cash. Online betting is currently illegal in the United States, but as TechCrunch notes in its Swamble review, that could change soon. On the other hand, non-cash betting can force you to get pretty creative—as in one user promising to shave his head if Notre Dame wins seven games this year. Miller beer and “bragging rights” are also very popular.

See also the Swamble’s recently added pro football facebook app.