My latest for iMedia Connection. Go read it if you’re curious about zombie social networks. Really, they exist and they offer serious business opportunities. If I were laughing, it might not be so funny.

Special thanks to all the people who helped out: Benjamin Christie of Gourmet Ads, Greg March of Wieden+Kennedy, Larry Weintraub of Fanscape, Ryan Stoner and Shervin Samari of OMELET, Doug Schumacher and Jennifer Sparks of Basement Inc, and of course my very understanding editor, Lori Luetchtefeld.

Here’s my latest for iMedia Connection, the online trade covering the marketing and advertising industries. It’s the first article I ever pitched (not counting little things) that I got approved, wrote, and then published. I’m pretty proud of that. The article is a quick look at a couple of different ways companies are trying to monetize the micro-blogging service. Here’s an excerpt:

Like MySpace and Facebook, the young social networking tool has to grow up, move out of its parents’ house, and probably engage in a little youthful experimentation.

Is Twitter for marketing? Bringing in customers? Developing a brand? Improving company performance in other ways? Since Twitter is such an open-ended tool, there’s no obvious approach to using those 140 characters to benefit your business, but many companies have been willing to take a chance and see what it can deliver. That means trying new things and diving in without a life preserver.

Read the rest right here.

Molly Schoemann posted today on exactly why she left facebook. So much of it, yes, rings true. It can be graveyard of failed relationships, friendships, and acquaintances, so few of them that you actually care about. So many friends on your network, so many photos, so many comments, so many tiny pieces of information that are simply not relevant to your normal day.

But I think Molly’s point isn’t relevant to everyone. For people who don’t accept every invitation they receive, for people who don’t click “maybe” to events they’ll never attend, for people with the self-confidence to let their friend-list languish under one hundred people? These people can say no to all the nonsense and ignore all the blather. They can ignore the random comments, posted items, events, application invites, and drunk photos in favor of using the social networking tool for what it was designed for: keeping connected with people who matter.

Just recently, I started up a conversation with a good friend who is posted overseas in Kuwait. The email I had didn’t work anymore for him so I used Facebook to find him. Turns out he has wireless internet in his tent occasionally. Without Facebook, that wouldn’t have been possible. I probably would have had to wait until he returned to the states in nine months, after his current experiences had lost their vivid edge. With Facebook, I get to hear about it as it happens.

This is what I say to people who get frustrated by Facebook, with its thousands of useless applications, friends, and other random crap: simplify. Just ignore it. You can use the phone and email, despite the telemarketers and spammers, right? Facebook is a tool with an original use, and if you cut out all the extremities, you can still find that same useful tool.