I have been on myspace for years with over 1500 faux friends. It's completely useless except for the dating upside since I decided to add several local members of the opposite sex. I stopped using it about a year ago.

Recently, however I joined facebook and decided I would actually only add people I know personally or friends of theirs who have a reason for being added like some interest or hobby we may have in common. This has proven very beneficial for a variety of reasons especially my personal advancement. Here is my take on all of it.

1) I do not care if the public knows I exist, in fact, I cant see a downside to it. (play nice you witty people who might feel the need to show me a downside!) I will be attending a seminar next week on marketing yourself and creating a public image to increase your personal value. That works for everyone from plumbers to producers to ubergeeks. Only good has ever come from it. I have done side gigs for the businesses or employers of many of my friends who always go to bat for me. I can broadcast my desire for a position to friends who may or may not be able to help me, but odds are always better when you try to reach out to 100 people on a networking site even if they aren't in your field, than reaching out to 0.

2) Use a gmail account if you are worried about spam. Simple and effective.

3) Do not go out with the weird guy with the van who contacts you and asks you to meet him in the park or a dark alley if you are worried about bad people! What BAD people???? You choose who you add so if there is a reason for networking with them, what's the risk? They might send you a scary photo? If your boss finds you and sees your friends and judges you, you are better off getting a paper route or becoming a telemarketer than working for an idiot like that.

4) Do not put your home address and social security information on your profile. LOL! What loss of privacy? Did you do bad things to people in your past who might be looking for you by your real name? If not, I fail to see the problem. If you are afraid karma is going to come back and bite you for something you have done, that's a different story and it's coming either way so let's hope you're a good person ;)

Perhaps this is a lesson for people who base their prices on society's willingness to pay or society's lack of fiscal intelligence in good financial times.

Bottom line is that ads are over-priced in most print media and their proposed circulation numbers don't have any relevance to how many people might actually see an ad. It's that simple. In a simple exaggeration which may not be too far off: 100,000 papers might mean 10,000 people actually read it, and less than 1000 see the page your ad is on in larger papers, and even less than 100 might actually see the ad on that page at all. If you cant get a $5000 return on a $5000 ad, what's the point? Paper owners use models from other papers to run their own, and believe advertisers will pay ridiculous amounts for tiny ads with fantasy ad view numbers... and then they believe people who dont get returns will continue advertising over time. Its simple. Paper owners are idiots.

They can however increase ad space by adding a page or even ten, and increase ad sales twenty-fold by reducing ad prices by a realistic amount of at least 50 to 80 percent. Their thinking is 10 to 20 percent of a discount is all they can do which doesn't offset the 60 to 90 percent they overcharge for with their fantasy ad viewers used in their calculations of circulation based pricing.

An honest, intelligent paper medium that bases ad costs on actual ad views will not go by the wayside. It's that simple. Possibly also offering those ads in both paper and web formats to actually benefit the advertisers that pay for the operations of the paper might help as well. But why do that when you could try to charge extra for it? Idiots.

It's a simple cleansing when idiots fall and this resets economic reality. We need more intelligent people who understand what pays for the operation and only those thinking outside the current advertising model have any chance. All of this has nothing to do with journalism or the medium in itself as a whole as many people still like to read a paper while not at a computer.

I laugh hysterically when any paper or the yellow pages people call and give my small business their ad pricing. They just can't see how overpriced they have been for years and have no clue how to make the proper adjustments.