So, in a determined effort not to become one of those stats, I thought I’d update it today with my to do list so that when I am reclining on a beach (in winter) in Queensland in a couple of months, I can look back here and see why I needed a break!

Here we go – between now and June 26th:

• phone the design agency to see when they want me to start

• land the first phase of a big site refresh project at work – new global navigation and stuff, folks

• line up a couple of web agencies in Sydney to work with on a site rebuild

• do the paperwork for the local fete which I am organising for September – and line up events and entertainers etc

• finish painting the front of the house

• try and get another new idea for londonforfree off the ground

• plan my trip to Oz – internal flights and so on

• finish Grown Up Digital and become an active member of the twittersphere again

Will I get it all done before the end of June??? Probably, hopefully…… then I will definitely need a nice break in Oz

I read somewhere recently that its the fastest growing website at the moment so I wanted to figure out how it works and why it is so popular – and also how it really differs from social networks like Facebook.

And how organisations could make use of it.

Then yesterday I saw that Stephen Fry tweets obsessively. So I decided to follow him. That’s what you do with Twitter. Rather than invite your friends (as in Facebook), you “tweet” (read “post a status update”) and if people choose to, they can simply follow you and see all your posts.

And its true, he does tweet a lot (Stephen, I mean – he feels like a friend now, or am I a stalker??).

Now I’m a huge fan of Facebook, I absolutely love it, but that’s probably because I just love talking to people, making friends with folks from all walks of life, keeping in contact with mates from previous jobs – and I’ve had quite a few of those lately – exchanging laughs, info, links, ideas, generally chatting, learning and sharing both the good times and the bad.

Facebook is a great tool for doing all this stuff – but it requires a bit of effort to upload photos, add links, and do anything beyond status updating to keep your profile pages fresh and interesting. Not that many people bother doing this, of course.

Some people just do status updates, if anything at all.

Ah yes, the famous Status Update. One of the most interesting aspects of it, I think. But the problem with updating your status is that if you do it too often it can feel as if you are dominating the conversation. It does to me, anyway.

Not with Twitter. The more tweets you post the more fun it is. Hourly tweets, even minute by minute (see Stephen Fry’s).

And that’s pretty much it with Twitter. Some call it microblogging, but you can’t – as far as I can tell – do anything around or beyond the “blogging” part. No sharing photos, adding sidebars for links, widgets and so on.

Short and simple – but constant. One to many – but pull rather than push when it comes to reader consumption.

I can see loads of use cases for enterprises when it comes to Twitter. Informing customers of “flash” sales and events (food tasting anyone?), “use within the hour” promotion codes, urgent product recalls, store temporary closures, news flashes, the list is endless.

And if you look at the public timeline you can see loads of examples.

I have now come to love Twitter. I still love Facebook too. So I’ve brought them together but its a one way relationship. My Facebook updates appear in Twitter – but only updates on Facebook appear on Facebook. I don’t want to spam people or crowd the conversation.

Right, I guess its time for my next tweet. See you there!

Some people are generally curious about the whole idea of them and want to learn more, others see them as a waste of time and potentially dangerous. But for every conversation I have with someone (such as my partner) trying to warn me about the trouble they have caused and why I shouldn’t write it , I have another with someone else who thinks they are great and that I should keep on writing.

So why do I do it? Here’s why.

• I write it so I can learn about it, so I can understand this thing called blogging

• I write it because I can – I am privileged to live in a country which supports freedom of the press and free speech

• I write it because I believe in the voice of the everyday person needing to be heard for political, social and cultural reasons, no matter how inane the conversation

• I write it because I enjoy sharing knowledge, always have, always will – I’ve learned loads from the web and this is my small way of giving something back

• I write it because its an easier and more accessible way of communicating what I am up to with a wide group of family and friends than by email

And yes, I fully appreciate the dangers of not only blogs but of social media in general (people being sacked for their Facebook comments and so on). Naturally I don’t wish to be sacked, sued or assaulted, or to offend any individual or group as a result of what I might write – ok, except for George Bush, child abusers, racists, homophobes and bigots. You can all feel free to be as offended as you like, the more the better.

But I will continue writing my blog until I run out of things to say. And people who know me might appreciate that that day is some time away.

If you have good content to film, of course. And that’s the problem with user-generated content. The web is filled with rubbish – videos of pets (like my first VADO production), pointless blogs (er….. moving right along),  inane comments and so on.

Its not that the technology isn’t there to support the creation of great user-generated content – the current version of WordPress truly means anyone can create and manage their own stuff these days. And the changes proposed with the new HTML 5 standard will make it even easier for webmasters to enable it on commercial sites.

Its all about what’s published. And has been ever since the web really took hold in the late 90′s. Back then the mantra was CONTENT IS KING and its still the same today.

The big difference is that in these web 2.0 days, the “content” in question is far more likely to be user-generated.

USER-GENERATED CONTENT IS KING. I predict that will be the emerging message for 2009.

And that presents interesting challenges but also opportunities for organisations that work to embrace user-generated content on their own platforms for commercial gain.

Just how exactly to make money from it.

It requires innovative thinking – the idea of simply building your own community and hoping users will populate it and stick around has proven to be difficult for all but niche organisations. And adding ratings and reviews tools to sites is also now so commonplace as not to provide commercial advantage anymore.

There are some good examples of using user-generated content in non commercial organisations such as change.org. But I’ve not seen that many on commercial sites.

However, ideas such as inviting guest bloggers to post (Jamie Oliver perhaps, on a cookery site), and encouraging user collaboration around producing a film script (e.g. which a tv site could then fund the production of) might be worth exploring.

Basically targeting certain users as content creators or guiding users as a group through creating content that an organisation can then add the final touches to, to monetarise.

Just a thought. Right, better get on with publishing my next bad video to YouTube.