Although instigated by a comic, the now annual event has gained some resonance.

I, for one, am old enough to recall the real meaning of the word “friend” and know that having any more than six real friends is a right pain.

Before email, mobiles and social networks, friends were really high maintenance. Organising nights out, drinking with them on regularly basis, then in later life, having them round for dinner, pretending you liked their new spouse and remembering the names of their kids etc. was a commitment best not duplicated above double figures.

I’d actually postulate that the number of real friends a person can maintain is a function of their liver’s capacity to regenerate. The average Facebooker has 130 ‘friends’  - which is clearly beyond the capacity or the any human renal organ.

Facebook knows this too and has created functions to allow us to separate friends, acquaintances and people we don’t actually recall meeting.

You can ‘unsubscribe’ people from your newsfeeds and effectively never hear from them again, save the embarrassment of ‘unfriending’. I call this “tidying up my Facebook newsfeed” which should indeed be an annual event for everyone.

Unfortunately, I’ve fallen behind with Twitter.  The noise from those I’ve politely “Followed” back is completely blocking out the tweets from those I want to read.

As a rule, I need to unfollow anyone who tweets about food more than once. I have a similar intolerance to Tweets of babies and allegedly cute pet pictures.  But mainly people who don’t consider their wider audience and Tweet about things irrelevant to me – like how great their social life is (see six friend rule above).

I’d like to suggest a simple solution called “Unfollow Friday” (#UFF).

Traditionally Friday has been the day to recommend Tweeters, (#FollowFriday or #FF for short).  However using the #UFF tag we can collectively remove the boring, the unfunny and the self-deluded, from our timelines for the collective good of Twitter.

Ever wondered what happens to your Facebook profile when you die?’

Don’t worry, I’m in good health, my morbid fascination is prompted by Facebook’s, soon to be released ‘TimeLine’ feature, currently in Beta.

TimeLine produces a sort of scrapbook of everything that has happened to you since you joined Facebook, at the press of a button.

To see a chronology of your life, automatically generated, is a spooky reminder of just how much data is kept about our online activity and is more than a bit creepy.

Prior to the invention of social media, you needed to write an actual book to leave a lasting mark on the records of humanity. But now we all leave digital footprints online that may last longer than those left by the dinosaurs in the prehistoric mud!

Not just active social media users either. I’d bet that everyone alive today, with or without their knowledge, appears somewhere or other in a YouTube clip or uploaded photograph.

And every columnist or a blogger who pens an opinion, however misguided, is now digitally entombed with their words.  In fact, if you are reading this online and its 2050, I’ve just proved my point from the grave!

Even when you ‘checked-out’ for the last time your digital assets can still be of value.  You could have a cool domain name or a following on Twitter large enough to be of commercial interest!

As a member of the .com generation and likely to kick the e-bucket first, I may need to consider this in my will. Who will I leave my Avatar to and who will inherit my eBay sellers rating?

More importantly, how will I change my Facebook status to “dead” after the event, assuming there is no WiFi access where I’m going?

Turns out Facebook will do it for me on request from my next of kin. After seeing the paperwork (proving someone is dead is still an offline process) they will “memorialise” my profile.  This means only existing ‘friends’ can read and post eulogies to my Wall, and presumably be able to see my TimeLine; a lasting epitaph, of every ‘like’, LOL and OMG I ever posted.

One month after its launch and still no invite to join Google Plus!

Its hard to believe, I know, that a key online influencer like me has been left out of the party, but it seems I’m persona non grata at Google.

Google’s latest attempt at creating a social network to rival Facebook appears to be off to a flying start with 25m users signed up so far – yet no one has thought to invite me!

Apparently Lady Gaga is on there along with Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Oprah Winfrey and even William Shatner who is presumably now exploring cyberspace, the final frontier.

The G+ project as it’s known, is currently an invite-only social network. Only people already on G+ can invite others to join which, by accident or genius, has turned into a brilliant marketing ploy.

Google’s last two attempts to create a social network, Wave and Buzz, petered out quickly, some say through lack of truly innovative features. However, Google has worked out that “celebrity acquisition” is key to success this time.

But which of the celebs already acquired are actually posting for themselves or indeed phony? I’ve been told that Jesus Christ turned up as a user, prompting Google to only allow real names on the network, although it’s not clear how they will be validated (It’s notoriously hard to prove you’re the messiah).

At this point I would have liked to review the network itself; its clever friend Circles, Hangout and Huddle concepts designed to make our online social lives easier – but as you now know, I’m NFI, and have no access.

Weather G+ succeeds in toppling Facebook, without my help, is yet to be decided. Facebook took 3 years to reach 25m users, Twitter took only 30 months, yet despite being invite-only G+ has passed this milestone in a few short weeks and could be here to stay.

So if you are one of the chosen few, I’d really appreciate an invite?

Sadly my newfound popularity cannot be attributed to increase in wealth or influence or in deed cosmetic surgery but a recent resurgence of the business networking website.

Usually, when LinkedIn informs me someone has updated their profile, I assume they are looking for a new job, but now it seems people are discovered the wealth of business opportunity LinkedIn can provide and have other reasons for optimising their profiles.

LinkedIn has actually been around longer than Facebook and Twitter but never made it big until now.

This, in part, is due to a raft of new features that mirror the most popular functions of the other big social networks.  For instance you can now “post” statuses, like you can on Facebook  and  “follow” people and companies like you can on Twitter.

It could be that the current surge in LinkedIn usage is down to the publicity surrounding its successful float last May or perhaps LinkedIn has finally managed to appeal to a the raft of diehard tie wearing social media marketing sceptics.

Most business people are now convinced that social media marketing can work for brands targeting consumers (B2C), but few consider it as an effective B2B marketing channel – until now that is.

However “in-bound” marketing strategies are now all the rage (as is the term) and being found on LinkedIn is central to most of them.

Interestingly, as LinkedIn usage rockets Facebook usage is plateauing. Which should come as a surprise given saturation had to come sooner or later in the US and UK, but Facebook wouldn’t be the first social network to have its bubble burst by mass migration.

It could be that social networkers have just matured or perhaps it just my peers and I that are getting too old for Facebook. Its often been said that cool kids don’t want to be on the same social networks as their parents. Perhaps it parents now, who don’t want that either!

Resisting the temptation to explain why they are not and possibly send this column down an un-publishable route, I must clarify that it is Facebook ‘likes’, for their clients fan pages, they are after.

According to the poll, undertaken by digital media pundit Mashable, an overwhelming number of marketers consider social media to be integral to their strategies and 70% plan to increase their social media budget by more than 10% this year.

The primary social media marketing objective, amongst the top US brands that took part, was is to increase Facebook “likes”.

Given that, thanks to mass media, politics is now just a popularity pole, perhaps the UK could setup a much more cost effective alternative voting (AV) system than currently being proposed by the Liberals.

Whichever local candidate has the most Facebook ‘likes’ on Election Day get to the seat in Westminster?

You may be interested (as you’re still reading this) to note that currently the Labour Party Page have 99K likes, the Liberal’s 93K and Conservative a whopping 136K which, in my opinion giving them a clear mandate to govern!

But I digress, if only to illustrate that ‘likes’ are no real measure of approval or real brand engagement.  Facebook now provide many more sophisticated insights such as  ‘interactions’ and ‘active users’ to indicate if you’re really getting through to your audiences.

Recently Facebook improved the capability of brands to interact with their consumers on its social network. Yet it also reduced the chance of fans reading their messages.  Now, by default, users only see posts from brands and people for that matter, who they regularly interact with. (Many are campaign to get this changed!)

So soliciting input from ‘fans’ is more important the building large database of ‘likes’.

Like real life, counting the number of likes/friends you have on Facebook, is not a real measure of success, or so I keep telling myself!

By adding new features to its business pages, Facebook now allows brand to participate more interactively with their fans and other business pages.

But in this uber social online world, is hiding behind a brand a good thing?

Considering Facebook was invented for Harvard student use only and spent much of it formative years preventing commercial entities from using it services, these new brand friendly features show how far it has come from its origins.

Many users threatened to leave Facebook when it introduced banner advertising back in 2007, but now this “social advertising” is accepted as a necessary evil needed to fund the free service.

Essentially brand can now use Facebook on more equal terms with users, leaving comments and ‘Likes’ on users profile walls and other business pages.

Note: they cannot initiate posts on profile walls; they can only comment/like on existing posts and users can prevent this from happening by adjusting there security setting – but few people will.

This means, businesses can now proactively use Facebook, participating in conversations it thinks are relevant to its products/services in an attempt to raise brand awareness.

But who wants to have a conversation with a brand?  Not me!

One of the business benefits of using social media is that it allows consumers to penetrate large, often faceless organizations and deal directly with individualswithin them.  Empowering your staff to us social media to interact with consumers is a powerful way to build customer loyalty.

Thanks to social media the old adage that “people do business with people” has never been more accurate. So I would recommend signing any comments you make on behalf of your brand personally.

Facebook have made many other changes, both cosmetic and functional, to its business pages, so now would be good time to review your Facebook marketing strategy.

Or maybe you do, if your brand has successfully built significant Facebook, Twitter and YouTube audiences and you don’t know how to keep them under control.

If so, CrowdcontrolHQ, ( invented in Birmingham no less) might be for you.

Read Chris Tomlinson latest column in the Birmingham Post to find out why.

Well in the case of a Facebook fan page this can literally be true!

Read Chris Tomlinson’s latest Birmingham Post column to find out why.

I can help but think that if Sky add three celebrity judges, a premium rate phone vote and put on a ‘results’ show, an hour later to remove the worst ‘candidate’ from the next debate- they could have a seriously good game show on their hands!

Admittedly the studio audiences are not allowed to heckle or clap, but the x-factor-meets-blind-date format is starting to disturbing me.

Judging by the subsequent plethora of posts on PR agency blogs after each debate, the election will be won and lost on the best performer in these debates.

But judging the acts, sorry I mean ‘priministerial candidate’ on how well they listened to their PR trainers is not a good way of choosing a government.

We all seem to be obsessed with discussing this charisma contest rather than the future of the country – perhaps that is because it is too hard.

Old media has long since turned elections into personal popularity polls, where the personality of the candidates and how good looking their wife is, seems to become more important factors than the policies of their parties.

Meanwhile the real political debate is happening in social media. Follow the tag #leadersdebate on Twitter before, during and after the final debate and you’ll see real enguagment and quite a few expletives too!

During last nights show alone, 117 thousand live comments were tweeted featuring the above hash tag  (source @Tweetminster).

And a real debate – i.e with more than the half dozen carefully fielded questions and only three people allowed to speak – is happening on Facebook too, but not on the parties official pages.

The Conservatives seem to be winning the Facebook war, with 53K fans to their official page, the LibDems close behind with 50K and Labour languishing with a megur 27K ( as of 22/4/2010).

It is worth visiting these pages just to see which of your friends’ mugs appear as fans divulging their political persuasion. Note: I have become a fan of all three parties while researching this blog – in case you see mine.

However, in true X-factor style the ‘We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the LibDems into office!” unofficial discussion group out trumps them all with 134K members so far, where a lively pro Nick Clegg debate is raging.

However, given that the original RATM campaign gained 500K+ followers you could say that more people cared about getting Simon Cowell off the Xmas #1 spot than getting Nick Clegg into number 10! Which is an interesting measure of the nations interest in the election outcome

(More election fun can be found at Facebook’s own ‘Democracy UK’ page where there is even an App to help you decide whom to vote for!)

With UK electoral turnouts on the decline, some argue that the TV debate will improved the population’s engagement with the political process and records turns will result on election day.

But if they are voting on superficial style, not policy, this will be a hollow victory for UK democracy.

Last week I had an encounter with ageism. This is not unusual in social media circles but for the first time, at work at least, it was aimed at me.

While introducing myself as the presenter of a social media training course, one of the attendees mused that he was expecting someone “considerably younger” than me to be doing the training!

Now its true, I’m no spring chicken and time hasn’t been particularly kind to my face, but age does not preclude a person from understanding social media.

Or even participating in social networking, as I’m about to prove.

Lets assume old is aged 45 and over (obviously I’m considerably younger than that). Well, according to the latest social networking demographic report 40% of Facebook users are over 45!  Here are the figures for the other popular sites:

YouTube:  45% of users are over 35
Facebook: 40% of users are over 45
Twitter:     63% of users are over 35
LinkedIn:  48% of users are over 45
MySpace:  28% of users are over 45

Of course we are assuming no one’s been lying. After all one of the main advantage of online socialising is that no needs to know exactly how old you actually are, unless you tell them.

As you can see, it is just about true that MySpace is still for the kids and LinkedIn is for the infirm, but YouTube and Facebook has now been infiltrated by the silver surfers.

I remember, when email was the preserve of the youth (OK , I am over 45). Now it’s a mandatory communications channel for everyone between the ages of 10 and dead.

As technology matures it will, like its users, gain a middle age spread.

My sarcastic student was only joking and wasn’t that much younger than me. He, after all, had signed up for a social media training course rather than being of an age where its benefits were inherent.

Having spent much of my early working life trying to convince crusty business people that online should be taken seriously as a marketing channel I found his comments ironic.

My much fresher face and its implied inexperience was a barrier to credibility then but now the older version was a liability too!

But ageists and marketers need to take note; the inhabitance of social networks may not be as youthful as you might think.