A colleague of mine recently announced that he was "poking MySpace with a stick...and a full suit of gothic platemail, merged with an insane combination of a hazmat and astronaut's suit. Also, gloves." The humor is compounded by the fact that he made this announcement on Facebook.

MySpace has long been the largest social network, only recently been overtaken by Facebook. But Facebook claims that it's growing by 700.000 users a day, and my young friends have deserted MySpace in droves.

So I got on my protective gear and explored MySpace again, for the first time in a while. From a technical perspective, MySpace is quite sophisticated. It has many features that Facebook doesn't, and it has seemingly dealt with some of the privacy issues that plagued it for a while.

But what it doesn't have is activity. Among the 97 MySpace members it found in my address book, only a few seem to be actively using the service. The rest haven't logged in for weeks or months. Even friends who have accounts for business reasons seem to have given up on MySpace. And there are only a handful who don't also have accounts on Facebook and LinkedIn -- But those who do have Facebook and LinkedIn accounts seem to use much more.

I hven't yet had a chance to ask my friends why they've stopped using MySpace. Even three years ago, my high-school and college friends were telling me that MySpace was "not cool." No doubt, privacy and spam have a lot to do with it, not to mention the ads that are obnoxious even by the standards of social media sites. (If you must explore MySpace, use an ad-blocker!)

But in the end, I think too much customization has killed MySpace. As a web designer, I cringe when I see MySpace pages that are horribly laid out, have unreadable color schemes, and are larded with auto-starting music players. Even kids that are used to being bombarded with television must be thinking "this is too much."

Of course, now that Facebook has been discovered by the old fogies, it's probably only a matter of time before the kids go someplace else.

This is big news: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and their kin are reaching more people than email! Add that to the news of huge upheavals in the newspaper business.

I would argue that we're seeing the biggest change in the media landscape since the rise of cable television in the 1970s, or perhaps, even, the demise of network radio in the 1940s.

How can you take advantage of these changes? I think that it's incredibly important to:

• Have a well-crafted, attractive web site that can be changed very quickly as circumstances warrant, and
• Maintain and update presences on the social networks that can drive traffic to your web site.

Our customers seem to think so, too. People are realizing that they must have excellent web presences in order to survive and thrive in this economy. Let us know if we can help you!

UPDATE: In a related story, it's being reported that Facebook is generating more traffic to websites than Google.

UPDATE 2: American spend 6% of their total online time on Facebook.

Should photos of you and your staff be included on your corporate web site? Many say yes, especially those providing services where personal service can help your company stand out from the crowd.

Real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and insurance agents have been putting their pictures on business cards for many years. The theory is that people are more likely to do business with you if they know you, and that pictures help current and potential clients remember you.

To this point, my company has not posted pictures of our staff, although we may reconsider. But if you do decide to post photos, we recommend either:

• Action shots showing your staff at work, or
• Professionally-shot images, preferably with something a little more exciting than the standard head shot.

Digital cameras make it easy to take your own pictures, but I've seen too many amateur pictures that make the subject look as though they're in a police lineup. So in today's environment, make sure that you look good in your web presences -- your web site, social networks, and blogs. The cost is minimal and the results may surprise you.

Thanks to Facebook, some of my customers know that I am sometimes online in the wee hours. And they can see some not-so-flattering pictures of me. Nothing unprofessional, mind you, just me showing my age. (My young friends think they're a hoot.)

In spite of the occasional controversy, people are giving up their privacy voluntarily, in ways that would shock George Orwell. But businesspeople have always had to give up some privacy and talk about ourselves in order to develop business relationships. That's what chambers of commerce and the like have always existed to foster.

We are now blurring the lines between personal and business life further. We are telling the world what we are doing and thinking, through status updates on Facebook and LinkedIn, and on Twitter.

Is this a good thing? Like many people, my first reaction to Twitter was, "I really don't want to know about my business colleagues' pets." I am interested in their professinal activities, and it's nice to know that everything's okay during a natural disaster.

But as time passes, I'm discovering that people who use Twitter and status updates wisely are giving me a window into how they think -- information that may make me more likely to do business with them. Of course, I'm also seeing posts I consider offensive. Those folks won't get my business.

So I'm now of the opinion that while my participation in social networks should definitely be kept professional, a little personal information can help current and potential clients know me better.

But I need to be mindful of my audiences. In the case of Facebook and LinkedIn, I know who can read my posts, and I write them accordingly. Facebook's demographic is still much younger, although that is changing rapidly. Twitter is more problematic, as I've set the account to be open, so I need to be more careful.

And I get annoyed with people who post too often, and who always post identical comments to a number of social networks. While I do like services such as Ping.fm that allow me to post to multiple networks easily, I use these sparingly.

For me, then, effective communication on social networks is like effective communication in any setting: know your audience, stay on message, and, while a little personal information can help build relationships, don't overdo it.