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Food blogs, amirite?  Those magical web portals that lure you in with their tempting photos and delicious titles, and then trap you amongst their pages for hours on end.  Don’t pretend you don’t love them. If you can honestly say you don’t, you must only be looking at the worst ones, like Oat Bran Daily and Fun With Kale! (Turns out, 365 Days of Kale does exist, if you’re into that sort of thing.)  The problem here is that it is impossible to remain hung up on one bad blog when there are so many good ones begging too be looked at.  Far too many, actually.

The typical wasted hours spent food blog-hopping go a little something like this:

Music and social media were surely destined to be together. Music is just way more fun when it’s shared. The perfect summary of this is the . We love digging the same stuff, arguing over tastes, showing off just how musically savvy we are. Turntable is the first music site that gets this right and does High Fidelity one better: it kicks out that smug asshole behind the counter and puts the record decks in the hands of everyone. Play with Turntable a bit and you’ll soon realize this is a quantum leap forward in the quest to capture the real essence of being a music fan online.

It’s a quest that has been afoot since the web got 2.0’d and, in my opinion, can be split into 3 waves. Fan sites and MySpace helped change the game of music online in the first wave of social music sites. Suddenly there was a chance to comment on your favorite music with fellow fans, reach artists more directly and possibly even help shape who makes it big. Internet radio was just coming on the scene and you could easily hear programmers with much broader tastes than the evil overlords at Clear Channel Corp Inc. Radio looked like it was in trouble.

Twitter and pro sports have had a tumultuous love affair.  On one hand, .  On the other hand, Larry Johnson.

At one point in 2009, it looked like Twitter and professional sports would never get along.  Teams and media properties were .

Thankfully, we’re to a point now where enough .  Teams are able to give players social media training.  They have gone from blanket banning to friendly warning if a player gets a little liberal with their tweets.  The change has been great for fans as we can get news and insider views like no other generation of sports fan before us.

Tonight will hopefully be the next step in the evolution of how we view sports.

After participating in a weekly experiment with Sarah Chiappetta for , I was able to uncover a few simple tweaks that anyone can implement to their own Twitter page. I describe them in this month’s community management article, covering “makeover” tips such as experimenting with new venues for creative expression, writing less characters for more quality, and involving more brands and influencers in conversation.

at ClickZ, and catch up on previous community management topics:

• 5 Things to Listen for in Your Community
• When Is It Time To Join The Conversation?
• Trolls Are Inevitable; Here’s How to Deal With Them
• Building a Community Management Team

Design by Sarah Chiappetta.

We live in a world where parents name their children after social actions, where social media can , and where consumers have the ability to alter brand decisions. With such great influence and power, social media creates limitless opportunities for both consumers and brands. Too often for brands, however, the end game for their efforts is simply earning a certain number of likes, followers or views instead of the larger consumer connection.

Human connections range in the types and length of value they provide. Some connections can be short-lived while others are more sustained, and the level of impact can vary across both (think of the difference between someone handing you a flyer for a free cup of coffee vs. the barista who makes your coffee for you every morning). However, all meaningful connections, whether they occur in person or via social media, are grounded in value. So before brands start a new social program, revamp their Facebook page or extend a current campaign to the social space, they need to take a step back and examine their overall purpose and the value they can create.