I don't often say this, but: oh man, is this hip. It brings together, like, so many hip trends it threatens to create a black hole of hipness that sucks all the hipness out of the rest of the universe. Here it is: Conan O'Brien (who is hip) is Tweeting (that's even hipper) on digital billboards nationwide (a hipness trifecta) courtesy of billboard owner Lamar.

At the order of the Obama administration, the Federal government has adopted a policy that will make it much easier for Federal agencies to use social media, according to OMBWatch, a site which follows the doings of the Office of Management and Budget. This is another, major step forward for officialdom in the social media arena -- and more proof that even the biggest, most risk-averse organizations can find value in social media strategies. Basically, the OMB has issued a memo which waives cumbersome paperwork requirements for government communications that solicit or enable responses or feedback from private citizens. This …

I've always prided myself on not giving a darn about celebrity infidelities, and I have just about zero interest in golf -- but I will admit to being morbidly fascinated by the priapic saga of Tiger Woods: I guess it was something about the bizarre, inept lie at the beginning (your wife was trying to rescue you by breaking the back window of your SUV with a golf club after a walking speed collision? Really? Really?) and then of course the sheer scale of Wood's catastrophic fall. So it's interesting to note that the world of hardcore -- er, serious …

I never thought I'd say it, but: poor Google! The search giant, so easy to loathe for its overwhelming dominance of search marketing, burned its paws with its misguided introduction of its new social tool, Google Buzz. Now it is learning that recovering from this kind of misstep is a tricky, difficult process -- and thankless, did I mention thankless?

Nothing tends to elicit yawns like the words "municipal government," but on the other hand, as the most local level of inept faceless bureaucracy we deal with in our day-to-day lives, it's infuriatingly important. At this very moment I'm trying, and failing, to reason my way out of jury duty in Los Angeles; my first mistake was probably the "reason" approach, but I also find myself wishing the Powers That Leave at Three had some kind of online presence where I could get information about rules and procedures and email my silly reasons for wanting out of jury. Instead, I …

Chatroulette, one of the edgier new social media services to hit the Web in recent months, is a challenging proposition for marketers. Matching live video chat users at random, it's gained a large following of more adventurous chat users despite (or perhaps because) of the high frequency of exhibitionism -- read, some guy you don't know whippin' it out. On one hand, it's got all the makings of a good ad medium: a sizeable, engaged user base of almost a million users, who are by definition fairly receptive to whatever messages someone wants to deliver to them. On the other …

Like other big, risk-averse organizations, the U.S. military's first encounter with social media was marked by outright rejection: Just thinking about all that unstructured, chaotic communication probably gave some senior officers a rash, especially when it carried with it the possibility of security breaches. But in another sign that there is social media hope for even the most curmudgeonly of institutions, the military has changed its tune, according to the Frederick News Post (located in Frederick, Maryland, just a few miles from the U.S. Army's Fort Detrick).

Recently Facebook has undertaken yet another retooling of the site with a number of changes to make it more attractive to advertisers. Some of the troubling privacy implications of the multifaceted revamp were expertly laid out, as always, by MediaPost's Wendy Davis last week. Since then a memo to advertisers has been leaked detailing planned changes to the way brand profiles appear on Facebook. While seemingly more innocuous than the ones revealed last week, these changes also threaten to alter user experience for the worse.

The social media revolution has produced a lot of amazing services and capabilities, especially as it intersects with the world of mobile devices -- but inevitably there is a lot of chaff to be separated from the wheat, as programmers combine various hot concepts seemingly at random (just imagine: DogSpark, a new service that lets your dog "sign in" at the dog park! BoobTube, a ChatRoulette service for breastfeeding women!). Throw an Apple product into the mix, and you get a positive frenzy of gratuitous app-making.

A few days ago I wrote about the challenges faced by employers whose employees post offensive content or comments on social media sites, potentially damaging the company's image. How, I wondered, might employers attempt to manage employees' social media use, given the sheer number of sites and complexity of the emerging landscape? Well, now I know: a syndicated online service, of course!