Five balloons, six balloons, seven balloons, more!

I probably spend more time using Twitter's search function than most people. I like to know what people are talking about and I find it easier to isolate the conversations of interest to me by searching for the relevant keyword or hashtag. Essential online resource for me personally at this point.

I'm of two minds on Facebook privacy. On the one hand, I thought it absolutely critical that we steer people in the direction of the privacy settings for this exercise. And I keep my profile very locked down and reveal very little to people who I don't consider friends.

On the other hand, I'm of the mindset that online privacy is a myth. You don't really have any. If you don't want what you say to be used against you, don't say it. Facebook provides information to vendors all the time. They could also be hacked. Your friends could decide they aren't your friends and exploit the personal information that you've given them via your profile. And so on and so on.

And yet, I choose to live a pretty high profile online life in general. I embrace all the things that come with being highly connected in the profession and amongst my social groups. I'm more hesitant about dragging my children into that high profile existence, so I tend to post pictures more guardedly and just about never use their names.

I'm not someone who necessarily thinks we need to know everything about every emerging technology that comes along, but Facebook is so pervasive amongst our patrons, that to ignore it is to position ourselves to provide poor service. And that shouldn't be acceptable.

Social networking? I mostly love it. I've had to dial it back to be a better father and husband. But the pull is still pretty strong for me, since my friends are scattered across the globe.