While I was reading Paul Carr‘s blog post, “Thnks Fr Th Mmrs: The Rise Of Microblogging, The Death Of Posterity,” I had a flash back. The quote the stuck out for me was this:

“… in an age when everyone and their dog is sharing every aspect of their life, being a digital recluse is the new “Internet famous”.

It reminded me of a golf outing where I was invited to play at an very exclusive club in North Scottsdale. One of the members of our foursome arrived at the course and headed to the range to warm up. While there, this player’s cell phone, that was in a pocket on his golf bag, began to ring. Of course he walked over to answer. About that time, the member who invited us quickly took action. It was against club rules to USE a cell phone on the course–and he needed to shut down this guy before things reflected badly on him. You see, in the world of exclusivity, the cell phone that once was the fashion statement for success had become commonplace–everyone had one now. The new exclusivity was to NOT be reachable–of course this was 8 years ago, way back in 2002.

Now people are beginning to feel the exhaustion of social networks. The active personal branding is now creating a compulsive need to “report” on the important things, places, and people that you near. This is the one thing about Twitter and Facebook updates and Google Buzz that drives me crazy. People are more concerned about what others might “think” about their social status. In a world where narcissism rules, Twitter is the ultimate outlet for self marketing. But as Carr mentions, it might be done in vain–Leo Laporte had thousands of people unaware of his social updates for weeks, and NO ONE missed them.

This post will be mentioned on Twitter. But to be honest, I don’t know why. Like Carr, I finding less and less value in the narcissistic posts people publish. A few–like @humancell, however, continue to be the same person I began following years ago. Others, say little about themselves UNLESS it includes other important people and places–like the where some follower mentions their @name and then RTs to show that they have important followers. Complete narcissism.

Now I don’t feel so bad for being a recluse for the past 18 months. I was just ahead of my time and didn’t realize it.

Posted via email from Brad Baldwin’s Posterous

“There was a “gateway timeout – HTTP 503 response” error while communicating with Twitter. This is a problem with their server, so contact Twitter at http://twitter.com/help if the problem persists.”

Despite its regular outages that would have crushed any other Web business (1.0 or 2.0), I come back and everyone else I know is still is there too. We complain. We get frustrated. But we still post messages. Why? The power of Twitter’s connected network of users keeps people coming back.

Like a hot 50′s burger joint that doubles as the night spot, Twitter is the place to be seen and heard. Even when it’s down (closed), we still attempt a drive-by to see who’s there. As soon as it’s back up, there we are posting away.

Jeremiah Owyang, social media analyst at Forrester and former PodTecher, comments today that he “signed the customer company pact,” basically telling Twitter he’d “be patient, understanding, and to show the company the same respect” that he’d want shown to him.

While the customer company pact is good, getting people to shift to another service will depend entirely upon the community it’s built on. I still prefer Flickr, PodTech, Utah Bloggers, etc. over others because of community. There is sticking-power when the community is there.

Twitter is still interesting to me, but there is so much self promotion and people trying to figure out how to use the medium that it’s getting tiring. I do like keeping touch on people and their efforts. Personally, I need to use the medium to get more information back rather than shouting out.

Recent Videos and Marketing Power
I’m really happy that the video I produced for Footnote.com‘s launch of the Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial has been well received. Footnote used the video to attract attention with “old media” newspaper and television companies. It was cool to see my video I created being used inside a news piece on MSNBC.

I joined Robert Merrill, Thom Allen, and Michael Reinbold to talk about the forming of Rocky Mountain Voices, social media, and the future of marketing via social mediums. I even go out on a limb and talk about how marketing agencies will rise to the occasion and excel at social media.

Thanks for including me on the CouchCast.

I was able to meet Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Automattic and the person behind, WordPress, the same software you are using right now on House of Baldwin.com. Matt is a great guy. He has a lot going for him. And at 24, he has a lot ahead of him. It’s always fun to share a moment with young entrepreneurs that are changing the way we interact and communicate

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“It’s been a busy few weeks,” Matt Mullenweg said with a grin in response to the question about Automattic’s recent $29M funding round. Interestingly enough, this funding trails the initial investment of $1M that wasn’t fully expended.

Mullenweg talks with Brad Baldwin while visiting Park City, Utah (shhh…remember Matt you promised not to tell anyone about how great it is here) about their development team, projects, the open source community and revenue models at Automattic. Mullenweg shares some of the features and enhancements that will appear in WordPress 2.5 to be released in March 2008.

Download This: iPod

Joseph Scott arranges a visit by Matt Mullenweg of Automattic, makers of WordPress. Mullenweg comes down from Park City and joins a bunch of the Utah Geeks at a spicy Indian restaurant.

Seen in this quick pan shot video (sorry to miss some of you I don’t know):

• Thom Allen
• Tyler Whitaker
• Jeff Norris
• Matt Mullenweg
• Sheri Bigelow
• Janet Myers
• Shahar and Nashlah Boyayan
• Scott Lemon
• Jesse Stay
• Justin Ball
• Allan Young
• Joseph Scott
• Matthew Reinbold
• Laura and Michael Moncur