Observing the fluctuations and unpredictability of social media can leave you breathless, dizzy, or entertained – according to personal tendencies.

We thought, a season or two ago, that Google+ was taking over the world. Many still anticipate that will happen. But look at that smooth operator, Pinterest, sneaking into everyone’s heart. Which platform, do you think, is more worthy of your time?

This article about Facebook’s failure as a storefront suggests a cloud over the whole idea of doing business via the SM giant. If customers are not, after all, interested in purchasing from FB … Gee, I guess, we have to use that platform for dialog and engagement outside sales. Still a difficult concept for so many to grasp.

Here’s another one: when QR Codes came on the scene, I was thrilled with its in-person, right now interface of public and website. But as this article shows, there’s a far better technology coming down the pike.

It’s a daily circus, complete with clowns and heroes. It’s in the same category as reading the news always was, except these powers closely affect our daily lives. But don’t panic; let it flow. Detached, slightly amused calm will serve you well online.

Like many of my clients, I’m an introvert. Therefore I both celebrate and abuse social media.

My essentially antisocial nature adores the internet’s offer of endless learning and infinite resources without having to participate in the F2F world.

But here’s the dark side: I am too often here to consume, not to contribute.

Online, declining to contribute is tantamount to abuse. Your consumption isn’t compensated; content consumed doesn’t result in energy. It’s eaten, and turned to waste.

An example: We set up a LinkedIn group for a local business roundtable. Of 20+ participants in the meetings, less than half contribute to discussions. I suspect the others are lurking, with nothing to say. Discussion threads are built by the same few group members, and then abandoned for lack of interest. It’s a shame!

I wonder what the overall membership to participant ratio is for LinkedIn groups.

Why do we elect to stay mum? Either we have no opinion, or we don’t care about the issue, or we aren’t willing to write and identify ourselves, or … ?

Sure, it’s difficult to comment, to contribute, to create and publish with confidence. The web has enabled us only marginally to express more freely.

If there’s one thing that irks me, it’s intimidation. When someone addresses a group, wagging a finger and pontificating about something that every one present should be doing, I cringe.

Unfortunately, the knowledge gap when it comes to social media and inbound marketing provides many opportunities for people who like to preach, threaten, and intimidate.

Businesses do need to get on the internet bus. If you want/need to sell to others for just about any purpose, it’s certainly true that the web is the way. It may even be true that there’s some urgency: not taking advantage of the internet could leave you invisible.

But once we agree on that basic concept, there is no use of the web that works for everyone.

If you dictate that blogs, videos, Twitter, LinkedIn, emails, or any other single tool (or specific combination of tools) in the immense array of available technologies is essential to internet success, you’re selling snake oil. Every situation is unique; every set of tools must be custom-selected.

Traditional marketing relied on intimidation, but the internet demands more of us. It’s too obvious when you’re trying to intimidate. The web works best when we humanely help. Whole different ballgame.

Another True Confessions Time.

I belong to multiple groups on LinkedIn, and have set them to email me with summaries of posts. Which they do. But I only glance at about three of the couple-dozen groups. The rest I ignore completely.

On the other hand, I have actually at times resumed reading the posts in some groups that I previously shelved. It all depends on the circumstances.

It’s as if, for instance, I was a gardener and I joined thirty groups who discuss gardening, but I only participate in two or three of them. Then, for whatever reason, a group called Fungus Cultivators surfaces as a useful tool in a project I’m doing currently. So of course I step up my participation there.

When the project’s done, I may slack off again and contribute little for an extended period. This does not at all mean I have dropped the Group from my list. It remains an important resource for me.

So when do you delete a contact or purge an entry from your lists? After ten months of inactivity or three years? How long has it been since you cleaned up your bookmarks? How much useless baggage is lying around?

Sometimes I wonder if the term, social media is a misnomer. When I first encountered it, I thought the label sounded frivolous. According to Wikipedia, ”Businesses may refer to social media as consumer-generated media (CGM).”

Many of us used to suffer under the delusion that SM was expressly not about business, it was where we could ‘be ourselves’ and ‘share with friends.’  But that was far more hype than truth. For one thing, you have to be guarded about everything you say online, lest it come back to haunt you. And for another, sharing with ‘friends’ is now cast in terms of power and influence instead of giving and receiving with care.

SM is about consumers more than friends.  It’s a way to supply business with data, proof, and connection. With print processes impossibly expensive on every level, without SM, business could no longer market or communicate.

Before you attack such statements, understand that this is not a bad thing. I’m not saying that we’ve simply been manipulated by evil corporations. I am saying we agreed to take responsibility for making our world. We entered into dialog with not only business but one another. Social media is about social re-organization.

Of course, I don’t like the new Facebook timeline design. It would be un-American to accept it unconditionally! But it truly does seem cluttered and hard to read.

I remember, maybe 15 years ago, my boss handed me a print-out of an email exchange. The thing looked so oddly formatted and full of techno-speak that I couldn’t take it seriously. Not knowing what it was, I tossed it. Peeved my boss, no doubt.

My point: new technologies require extensive assimilation time. This is why all Facebook innovations are met with immediate disgust.

And then eventually we all get used to it.

Yes, the Behemoth can count on commanding the crowd, despite complaints. Its creative license is boundless.

I suspect future FB innovations will simplify the home page while retaining the life-long perspective. As long as your entire history is there, you’re not likely to abandon the account, eh? The “too-big-to-fail” syndrome takes on mind-boggling proportions.

All this doesn’t bother me. The data is harmless enough. Much more to the point: how do we protect the integrity of this online system? How can it sustain viability as a market square/neighborhood café and avoid dissolving into useless graffiti and offensive marketing blasts?

Let’s talk Twitter for a minute. Though it’s still my staple check-in several times daily, I must scrape more vigorously for stimulating content than in the past, it seems. Or maybe my closest follows have bred my contempt through mere familiarity. Either way, I’m looking for new follows. Tired of tech talk, social media blah-blah, business advice from 25-year-old gurus.

I want to use Twitter for remarkable purposes. For poetry and adventure, inspiration, and electrifying connections. I’m adding such peeps as @arjunbasu and @duhism to the already extraordinarily delightful @dcagle and @gapingvoid. Arjun Basu’s 140-character stories are perhaps my favorite: such a productive use of the channel, to entertain, establish trust, and hone skills at the same time.

Not that all tweets have to be entertaining. You could certainly become just as beloved and successful by posting regular instructional tweets about US history or designing websites or car engine maintenance.

No links. No quotes. No RTs. Just straight-out daily offerings of original bits of stories and data. Surely this is how Twitter was first conceived, as an exchange of individual ideas. Today’s clamorous feeds look far too much like classified ads. It’s supposed to be more than that, isn’t it?

True confessions: I don’t have a Facebook Page for my business. Never have. The use of FB Pages, seems to me, is to provide a forum for fans to dialog amongst themselves and with the company. If your clientele aren’t likely to be enthusiastic about chatting with one another, why have a Page? It will just be a one-way conversation.

I also don’t have a YouTube account, but for a very different reason. I’d love to have a YouTube Channel, all gussied up and chock full of cool stuff. But then, I’d have to take the time to get a grip on making videos, creating a style and format, a list of topics, a logo, some music, la, la, la. Just ain’t happenin’. Yet.

Perhaps the ultimate confession is that though I have an account on Google+, I never ever go there. Oh, and it’s been maybe six months since I returned to Quora.

All this after more than four years in the online world. Shouldn’t I be more advanced, social media-wise? Talk about the hairdresser with messy hair …

Social media is creative self-expression.  No one formula works for all. If you’re feeling forced to comply, explore other avenues.

In the few weeks since I joined scoop.it, I’ve been trying to figure out why I like it so much.

Scoop.it gives me a slider that sits in my blog sidebar and displays articles I recommend, with title and image.

Every morning I check out Twitter, catch the best links and read them, post some to my handy little scoop.it bookmark sitting up in my bookmarks bar. Make sure I like the image, include posting to Twitter or Facebook if I want, and dispatch the lot to my slider widget.

Anyone visiting my site will see the web content I’m reading today, the level and type of my involvement, a measure of my character through the choices I make.

I prefer the app as a widget rather than the newspaper layout like paper.li.  Somehow the sidebar widget is a wholly different and very fun thing. I like that it’s not a social media update; you don’t have to click to get to it. It’s just there when you’re on my site. I like that it collects and displays my readings so simply. It shows seven of my latest reads, but my account on scoop.it archives them all.

One word. Coolness.

I’m visiting LA and rented a car for the duration of my stay. It’s a bit more upscale than my own vehicle. What that means, mostly, is that you better buckle your seat belt or that alarm will never stop. You better close the door or that beeper will make you crazy. You better start it up every day or so or the battery will drain, because the car uses energy whether or not you’re driving it. Even cars, it seems, protect us from ourselves these days.

And now Congress wants to censor the internet. It’s not easy to get a grip on exactly what the congressional bills involve, but the mere idea of control by that oh-so-out-of-touch agency is insupportable.

The internet has often been compared to the wild West, but unlike that long-ago phenomenon, the internet should never be tamed. To attempt to strap it down is like trying to control the ocean. Any effort in that direction is bound to result in nothing more than injustice and oppression.

Piracy, like shit, happens. It need not destroy, as long as we are individually vigilant. Let’s invest in individual education and wisdom, and stop shrinking our world through paranoia.