There is a line in the Passover Seder in which a reader states of matzoh, the unleavend bread, “Lo, the is the bread of affliction.” When I was a young child, I read this aloud one year as, “Lo, this is the bread of affection.” [ed. note: always tell the truth when blogging, no matter how embarrassing] As my thoughts turn to Spring, I am thinking about affliction and affection as they relate to, yes, Social Media. And, let me throw in one more word: Effection.

The beginning of the Internet (it was capitalized in those days!) for commercial use was an era of affliction. Some readers may scoff at this, but I started a pioneering web development shop in 1995, and we used to laugh that our secret tag line was “This stuff works.” eCommerce, online banking, even internet service itself was spotty, and we began to develop a binary relationship with computers. It was either “Wow, this is so cool!” or “Dammit. What the…?”

Beginning around 1998, we started an era of effection. Things started to work, DSL was all the rage, and you could actually get information relevant to your personal and profesional life. My colleague, Steve Nelson, came up with the concept of the life “keychain.” Just as you had a key to your home, your car, your place of work, so could you come up with bookmarks representing those keys. The websites worked and you could effect transactions that increased your productivity.

Today, it’s become a bit of slide into affection. I wish I were talking about puppies, rainbows and warm rainy days, but I’m not. It’s a culture of rants. Listen, I’m among them–my wife’s Gateway FX6000 computer died (motherboard died) just over a month out of warranty, or 13 months after purchase. I am disappointed and angry about this (I think a computer should have a life of 3-5 years, period); and sadly, Gateway’s solution was to charge me $199 to ship my machine out for a couple of weeks, diagnose the problem, and tell me how much to fix it. Interestingly, I made the 5 minute drive to BestBuy and visited the GeekSquad. They identified the problem for me for free. Free as in speech. Boo Gateway. Hooray GeekSqaud. And, kudos to BestBuy, which offered me 15% of the value for new peripherals.

This is a roundabout way of arriving at why I am reading fewer and fewer blogs, more and more tweets (and following their links), and selectively following people by using ManageTwitter. The way I see it there are a few types of users out there, regardless of their social media platform.

1. The sloppy ones. These people don’t consider that different venues have different audiences. They post FourSquare updates to Facebook. I don’t know about you, but I like Facebook for maintaining personal relationships. If you are at your office or a conference, Facebook isn’t the place to post this.
2. The binary bipolars. These are the 40% on either side of the political equation supporting Olberman or Murdoch with blinders on.
3. The watercoolers. These people just seem to have “tempest in a teapot” conversations with each other, using Twitter mentions over and over as they chat in front of everyone. If this were a performance art piece about how people relate to each other, I’d be fine with it. But that isn’t often the case; it’s just self-promotion.
4. The oppressed ones. The government and large corporations are out to get these folks. They point out that CSRs say the darndest things, and that somehow, the CEO has taken each utterance to heart and is moving the corporation based on these things–especially as it reflects on them personally. I don’t need to say much more.
5. The contributors. Yes, I’m a TEDster, but I relish the idea of “ideas worth spreading.” If I tweet about TED, please take me seriously. If I tweet, period, please know that I’m not sending you to a “9 Best Social Media Ideas Ever” list.
6. The opportunists. These people heard it first and start spreading rumors and innuendos very quickly. Forget about fact-checking and integrity. BTW, this is not a comment on Arrington’s wonderful rants on PR people and embargoes. Embargoes have to go. But Arrington himself has demonstrated considerable skill at researching and conducting important investigative journalism.
7. The would-be journalists. This is someone who is thoughtful, checks facts, calls out those who perpetuate rumors, and provides important self-policing in the free speech gallery of the internet.  They hate paywalls, but love craft.
8. The participant. This is the group that is making “social business” grow up. They report in real time about real things that are happening on the ground. They participate in crowdsourcing and commenting programs with constructive comments. They share important things. I love these people the best, as they empower the best of government, medecine, everthing else 2.0.

So, while I love affection, I am against confusing affection with affectation. If you think your tweet is going to change the world, think again. But, if you think the body of your participation in social media will make a difference to people, businesses and culture, welcome to the Internet Quotient.

So, let me close with questions for anyone willing to comment.

1. Do you have another story about Gateway computers, positive or negative?
2. Do you trust bloggers–that is, do you think they check their facts?
3. Who do you love?