Call it edgy, call it innovative, call it forward-thinking, call it whatever you want -- I'm going to call it stupid. The French Connection has generated a lot of puzz (that's publicity + buzz, if you are not a regular reader) with a new promotion in the UK using Chatroulette, the site which randomly pairs video chat users, promising $375 worth of vouchers for whoever can set up a date on Chatroulette first.

It's natural to befriend bosses and coworkers, or at least be on friendly terms with them, since you spend so much time around them. But work friendships have their own set of rules, enforced by normative corporate culture that has evolved over decades of office cohabitation. And the advent of social networks has introduced a whole new dimension, which seems to be confusing a lot of people. Why they are confused is itself more than a little confusing.

Recently I saw more data documenting increasing use of mobile devices to access social networks. This time around the data is from comScore, which found that the number of visits to Facebook via mobile browsers increased 112% over the last year, while visits to Twitter via mobile devices increased 347%. In terms of raw numbers, these figures represent an increase from 11.8 million mobile access users in January 2009 to 25.1 million in January 2010 for Facebook, and an increase from 1 million to 4.7 million for Twitter over the same period.

"Live-tweeting" the Oscars, if you are just watching it on TV, is an excellent exercise in redundancy. Anybody who "misses" anything that happens during the three-hour-long marathon likely does so intentionally. But there are those who seek to attach themselves to an event everyone is a part of, even if they have nothing to add really. The hashtag allows the attention starved to do this. It also allows marketers to push their message to what they hope may be a willing audience. But, come on, Harvard, this is beneath you.

Behavioral differences between the gender are inherently interesting, and doubly so for people trying to make money on 'em. In that spirit, an interesting new study from Nielsen found that women use mobile devices to get on the Internet for social media purposes 10% more than men, including "tweeting" or checking into social networks like Facebook or MySpace. Nielsen found Women's mobile social network usage led men's 55%-45%.

From all the press coverage, it seems like 2010 is going to be the year of social media in terms of online advertising, and especially social networks -- most prominently Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. But a look at recent ad revenue forecasts definitely tempers the cheery outlook somewhat: Yes, there will be sustained growth over the next couple years, but it will be in relatively small increments, and social network advertising will remain a small -- in fact, decreasing -- part of total online advertising. This naturally leads me to wonder: What's holding social network advertising back?

A few weeks ago Facebook fouled up in a big way by misdirecting private messages to the wrong recipients, revealing a random and riveting slice of life to members who found their inboxes full of love notes for teenagers in other states (or countries), the jealous rants of spurned lovers, ho-hum planning for family events, menacing hate mail, updates on accidents and illness... the list goes on. The story was first reported by a Wall Street Journal reporter who happened to be one of the mixed-up recipients, and posted some excerpts from the misdirected missives. Today Gawker.com has posted a …

Coincidentally, on the subject of whimsy: just a few days after I wrote about the Facebook fan page for the Norwegian Men's Curling Team's pants, Facebook has ventured into censorship territory again -- this time with political overtones. The whimsical victim of political repression: a Facebook page called "Can this poodle wearing a tinfoil hat get more fans than Glenn Beck?" I told you it was whimsical.

Here's something I never gave much thought to, but should have: the Food and Drug Administration is looking at the role of social media in advertising over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, and is considering standards for a code of conduct for social media marketers. In response, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association has submitted its own suggestions for voluntary standards, which touches on a handful of interesting issues.

As a platform for user-generated content (where'd that catchphrase ever go?) one of the main attractions of social media, in my opinion, is that it serves as a forum for whimsy -- the errata and marginal enthusiasms that are uncovered when people become their own media sources, or create ad hoc organizations devoted to the absurd. But the human capacity for whimsy, being unlimited, also threatens to dilute social media's basic value to users by cluttering it with a bunch of weird crap. So where should the line be drawn? All this occurred to me when reading about Facebook's decision …