Trying to keep up-to-date with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. is not a new problem.  There are entire desktop applications dedicated to aggregating this content for your consumption. Still I find myself drowned by the noise. It would be optimistic to say that a quarter of this social stream directly interests me. Additionally this content is decoupled from other forms of communication (i.e. SMS / e-mail).  These are some of the reasons why I am excited about the prospects of Google Wave.

Last week Google announced what can best be described as a communications platform.  It mixes traditional e-mail with a slew of modern features.  Real-time collaborative editing, event planning, and a game of chess are just a few of the tasks you can carry out from within the platform. — Anyone used SubEthaEdit? — The engineers developed Wave by asking themselves what e-mail would look like if it were invented today. The result is e-mail on steroids.

Where Facebook presents a view of the conversations from your hundreds of contacts, Wave focuses on conversations that you are directly involved with. You will even be able to branch new (private) conversations with whomever you wish. Conversations can be played back so late-comers can see how they evolved. How many times have you received a forward with broken fragments of conversation and you are supposed to understand all the context around it? No more my friends!

Concurrent rich-text editing in Wave

Much of Wave will be embeddable as well.  An example was shown of blog authoring from Wave.  Edits are published in real-time.  Comments on the blog are also pushed back to the wave interface in real-time. A blog author could immediately start up a conversation with a complete stranger who posts a comment on their article if they both happen to be online at the same time.

You are not bound to Google's Wave.

Another interesting note is that Google Wave is indeed a platform. An entire protocol is being developed so anyone can host their own Wave Server. Entire conversation can be held without leaving your intranet. Information only leaves your Wave host when outsiders are brought into the conversation. Still, parts of the wave that occur internally will stay internal. This platform also means we won’t be forced to consume ads down the road and we truly own the content.

If you have 80 minutes and a tolerance for poor presentation style, feel free to watch the announcement from Google I/O.

Web 2.0 logos from Flickr user stabilo boss

Lucky for me, social media has become an integral part of the way museums create an interactive experience for the museum visitor, especially here at the IMA.

That said, we at the IMA would like to invite all our blog readers and fellow bloggers to peel your eyes from the computer screens for one night, and put a face to the local blogs you love to read. (Don’t worry, we’ll have wi-fi so you can live-blog and tweet to your heart’s content!)

Come one, come all...

And now, just for fun, The top signs you have a Blogging Problem: {Comment below with your own (probably more) witty ‘top signs…’}

• After 5 minutes of meeting someone you ask, “So… do you blog?”
• You make plans and decision based on whether they are ‘blog-worthy’
• You get more “approve this comment” e-mail messages than spam
• You only stay at hotels with broadband or with a Starbucks within 3 blocks
• People worry about you when you do not post for a day
• You’ve started to resemble this guy:

RSS feed tattoo from Flickr user shizhao

For more absurd blogger tattoos, click here. Obsessed with Facebook? In need of a Twittervention? You’re invited too… See you on Friday!

Our timing could of probably been better considering the outlandish and annoying mainstream media coverage over these past few weeks. Just last Friday, Twitter almost had the Best Week Ever (@BWEtv), it was featured on a segment of the Daily Show, and you can’t seem to turn on the news with out hearing a lame joke about tweeting. Don’t be surprised if your grandma starts following you!

The problem I see now is that every organization is jumping in and using it as a marketing tool mostly. The fact is, it can be a great marketing tool, but if you abuse it for that purpose you’re probably going to lose followers in a hurry. If it didn’t work for your blog, it’s definitely not going to work on Twitter. Just my 2 cents.

I’ll be quick to admit, I didn’t get it in the beginning, and I’m sort of late on the tweet train even though I’ve had a Twitter account open for a while now. But I must say, I am a believer! I’m going to try make an effort to give a better look behind the scenes at the IMA over the next few weeks as I hone my skills.

If your not sold like I wasn’t, I’ve compiled a list of links that should give you reason enough to join in on the revolution and hopefully explain what and why better.

10 things to make you a Twitter rock star (in no particular order):

• Just Tweet It – Find other Twitter users like you! You can search directories and add your name to the pool of users as well.
• Mr. Tweet – Your personal Twitter networking assistant. Follow @MrTweet and watch your followers grow.
• TweetDeck – This is an amazing free Adobe Air application. If your checking tweets on the internet, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This desktop app takes tweets to another level.
• 12seconds – Well, they say tweeting is micro-blogging, so this micro-video site is a great companion if you want to share micro-videos via Twitter.
• Nearby Tweets – A great tool to see what people near you in proximity are tweeting about. This might creep some people out, but I love it.
• Twitter Backgrounds Gallery – Show off your design skills or get inspiration from this showcase site of unique Twitter backgrounds.
• Cligs – Short URLs with analytics!
• The ReTweetability Index – A list of users based on infectious power of their tweets.
• Twitter Grader – Get your Twitter ranking.
• Twitter Start Pack – Your Starter Pack for great marketing, advertising, PR and social media people to follow on Twitter.

Be sure to read Phil’s post from last week on the subject.

What am I missing here? Comment or tweet at me, @mattgipson. This is my first and last post on Twitter… I promise.

As of this month, at the ripe old age of five, it’s ancient in Web 2.0 terms. But for being a senior citizen of the web, Facebook sure has managed to stay fresh and relevant. What started as a social experiment in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room has grown to capture over 150 million users.

icanhascheezburger.com

Here are some ways Facebook has managed to grow and adapt so far…

-  its supernatural ability to help you reconnect with old high school buddies, network  professionally (ahem), plan killer bashes, and showcase your wit via status message

- the ever-growing collection of third-party Facebook applications, integration with Twitter, built-in Instant Messaging, blog importation capability, and more

These all allow users to express themselves in a rather addictive way.

Here at the IMA, we utilize Social Networking to reach a more diverse and (presumably) younger audience.  And, like any institution, we are always looking for ways to stay fresh and relevant.

However, TIME ’s tech writer, Lev Grossman makes a humorous argument as to why Facebook is for ‘Old Fogies.’  After all, Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic are those 30+. Could this be the kiss-of-death?

Illustration by John Cuneo for TIME

Others are predicting Facebook’s demise. Blogger Devin Johnston argues that unless Facebook changes drastically, it will fizzle out in just three years.

Sites like Facebook are doomed unless they radically alter their business and development models to reflect the needs, interests, and capabilities of internet users. There is room for Facebook to move away from providing service and toward assembling the services of others in a single location. Frankly, I think that this is the only way that Facebook will survive the coming revolution in social computing.

That’s a lot to ask of a five year old.

Do YOU think Facebook’s days are numbered? Will it continue to adapt, or be wiped out by something better-faster-stronger?

Did you know 73% of Americans use the internet at least occasionally? That is a lot of people! So using texting, email, blogs, social networks, etc. for politics was an obvious and very smart decision.

One of the untold stories of our new President Elect, imho, is the fact that for the first time in 8 years, we have a leader who embraces and, more importantly, actually uses & understands the same technology as you and me.

Technology, specifically the Internet (not Internets!), has never played a more important role in the campaign for an American President. The list of internet technologies I could find which President Obama utilized were, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, MyBatanga, FaithBase and his very own social networking site MyBarackObama. And, I’m sure there are several more I’m missing!

More importantly, President Obama compiled an email list of over 10 million supporters according to Wired. And even more exciting, this list will live on beyond the campaign trail!

As part of the presidential transition, Obama officials are looking to add a significant “new media” component to the White House communications operation. The campaign employed 95 people in its Internet operation, building a user-friendly Web site that served as a platform for grass-roots activities and distributed statements, policy positions and footage of Obama events. The White House Web operation will follow a similar but probably more ambitious path, transition officials said. – Wired

I think the significance of using these new mediums to deliver a political message is that they have the ability to bypass traditional slanted media outlets and the message can be more pure as it can be delivered directly to the people, therefore bypassing the Sean Hannitys of the world. Trust me, that’s a win for both Republicans and Democrats.

Finally, Washington gets it. Can you imagine getting an important real-time text message from your government? Now if only I had an iPhone. This is way too good to be true… somebody pinch me.

And speaking of the 125th Gala, we uploaded images from this incredible event to our Flickr account.  Have fun.

Some of you know that I sit directly across from the my brilliant colleague Despi.  The other day we were discussing the amount of social networking sites we find ourselves updating and following (and we’re not sure why).  Aside from our IMA specific efforts, we’re personally on Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and now thanks to Richard and the recent mass museum frenzy  – Twitter.

I really want to talk about Twitter today.  In the past couple of weeks I’ve heard Twitter mentioned more than anything around the IMA – “When is the IMA going to start twittering?”.  My answer is always this – we’re not going to copy another museum here – it needs to be original (we’ll get to that shortly).  To be perfectly honest, I’m not sold on Twitter.  I wonder if it has peaked as a social networking tool?  For instance, the always innovative Brooklyn Museum has been laying down the tweet, going on two years!  What do you think?

Here are some of the IMA Twitter ideas, so far  -

• Maxwell Anderson, The Melvin and Bren Simon Director and CEO twittering (he’s way too busy)
• A work of art twittering (undergoing conservation, installation and then staring at visitors)
• The Nugget Factory twittering (would be lots of fun, but might get yanked)
• A general IMA update Twitter
• 100 Acres Twitter

That’s it for now.  Have an opinion on Twitter?  Have an IMA Twitter idea?  I’ll buy lunch for whoever leaves the best comment (Richard excluded from lunch, but definitely not commenting).

Instead of continuing with our speculation, I thought it might be cool to ask you, our readers, what you think. So tell us, what is most compelling about our blog, and what is lacking?

We began with a few writers and over time have added more in an effort to up the quality of the content, diversify the topics we cover and well represent many areas of work at IMA.

Over time we have noticed our Google analytics numbers going steadily up. This makes people happy, in the simple “more is better” way. But we know that this is not always true…sometimes less is more. Right?

So, lately we have started getting feedback that the voice of the blog has become too fractured by the large number of regular contributors. This feedback was unexpected at first, and seemingly in opposition to our growing readership, but as we grapple with it, the juxtaposition makes more sense now…

So before we go and change things again, we thought we would ask you to weigh in and let us know if you are dying to read more from a particular author, want to see more in-depth category pages, or if you just want us to shut up about it already and write something good. So let us have it!

I must admit that I was a very reluctant convert to this world. I am a member of the usual 20-something demographic, but just felt my life was “too busy” for a virtual version. But alas, I have discovered that I really like Facebook, and I have created my own Flickr account, too, though it is admittedly a bit neglected. It has gone so far that I have become a total Facebook snob, refusing to admit there is any usefulness left for MySpace. Honestly, who doesn’t agree that MySpace is over? Now we need to be concerned about what the next big thing will be. (If you happen to know, give me a hint in your comment.)

Museums as a whole are struggling to keep up, usually moving just one sad step behind trends. There are a few exceptions. Among the best are the Brooklyn Museum (that’s in New York) and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Both have managed to maintain online activities that support real communities mostly due to brilliant content and savvy audience development. We ogle their sites and the amazing dialogue their work creates and daydream about creating the same in our community.

This admiration and envy is definitely the reason why IMA has given so much time and attention to the revision of our blog, creating an IMA Facebook page and integrating social networking into upcoming IMA exhibition websites. (Breaking the Mode will be the first, launching in February 2008.) You will see us making genuine efforts to use these tools in ways that are fun and relevant, and we hope you will join us as we do it. In the meantime, I hope you will visit IMA’s Facebook page and if you think it is lame (or awesome) say so, then visit mine, which naturally, ROCKS!