Social-media technologies are subordinate (by a long shot) to business relationship goals, alluded my friend Peter Kim, who's building a consultancy focused on "enterprise social computing." And he's right. However, if you're building an online community, technology is inevitable. That's why it was reaffirming that Forrester Research's new evaluation of online community technology platforms rated Telligent Systems as among the top two. Last year, with far less third-party market intelligence available, my team adopted Telligent's Community Server to power our customer community and team blog.

Like many of you, I took some time over the holidays to read a book or two while unwinding and enjoying my leisure. For me, one of those books was Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers." Since I had already had several friends tell me about the book, I generally knew its basic premise before reading it: research demonstrates that many successful people owe their unique success more to being in the right place at the right time than to their talent. Happily, once I'd read the book, I realized that I was wrong.

Enough is enough already! If you're anything like me, you're getting a little tired of hearing how bad things are with the economy right now. I think it's about time that we start focusing on solutions and the positive trends in the marketplace rather than continuing to restate the obvious issues and challenges. After all, it's a new year and a fresh start! Let's look at what we do have going for us right now.

The forced, painful user experience that is watching TV though a cable set-top box is no different from the recording industry circa 1999. We all know how much better the experience could be, we have watched television content using TiVo, Hulu and downloaded content (legally and illegally), and yet to say innovation in cable viewing is lacking would be a mammoth understatement.

For some time now, I have been thinking about that imperative of listening to new people I mentioned last week. It's mind-altering to remain cognizant of this mantra whenever you fall into cycles of not doing so. Break the pattern when you can; it's a valuable habit-buster. This thought relates to a practical market theme I think we should all spend some time addressing: a collective commitment to fresh, meaningful programming of conference content and general association activities.

Wired editor and "The Long Tail" author Chris Anderson introduces the Conservation Law of Transparency -- meaning you can't be open in all things all the time. While that may be true, his argument subtly implies that transparency is an absolute. I'm not sure if that was intended, but it's a false and important assumption to address within an otherwise interesting concept.

I am not going to write about newspapers anymore. Over the past three or four years, I have devoted quite a number of my columns to issues in the newspaper industry. No more. I no longer believe that the industry is very relevant to the future and things digital. Since I prefer to write about those topics, and am also becoming more interested lately in how the Internet will reshape the television and video industries, I plan to focus my attention there. However, since I am preparing for a talk I am giving next week to a number of newspaper …

It's my first post of the new year, and I have to say I'm pretty optimistic! I know the economy sucks, and most media pundits are forecasting 2009 and possibly 2010 will be a down period for everything, but I was thinking about it -- and I think we do our best work in a recession. I know I do!

The way people use Facebook is changing. What's more, something very significant is happening in the way people are communicating through social media in general. More and more, folks are sharing videos as a means of personal communication. What this means is that video is coming to Facebook in a big way, but it will not look like the video we have seen on such social media platforms as YouTube and MySpace

Unsure if this will surprise you, but I have never been one for New Year's resolutions. At least not in the classical sense: marking sins to rectify, wrongs to atone, goals to draft, and thresholds to bump up -- with New Year's Eve standing vigil.