The WOTY for 2009 is “Unfriend”.

Upset users took to Twitter, one of Facebook’s mortal enemies?, to write about it: “Facebook just told me to reconnect with a friend of mine who died a couple years ago. Not cool, Facebook,” one user tweeted. Another says: “One of my friends on Facebook has passed. FB keeps asking me to reconnect with her… FB will never be smart enough…” And another: “Facebook just suggested that I ‘reconnect’ with someone who passed away 2 years ago. That’s so messed up.”

So you’re out with a group of friends and meet a few random interesting people. You ask if they’re on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter….. You get round to finally trying to find them on your preferred Social Networking site and you have forgotten their name, surname or just can’t decide which John Smith they are?

I search a lot and therefore made Google my home page. And if over 70% of the worlds internet traffic is going via Google, why not make it a destination rather than a launch platform?

Watch this space peeps! I think that for those of us who are lucky enough to be a part a of a booming industry that the world has its eye one for more than one reason, the Digital Arena in SA seems to have escaped the perils of the WW recession!

Whenever I chat to people about Facebook I refer to it as a ‘Necessary Evil’ in SA. I’m not a massive fan of Facebook – it’s a ‘closed’ network and also I feel that once people have re-connected and scanned photographs they then move on. I mean, if you haven’t interacted IRL (In Real Life) with someone in 20 years then are you about to start now?

It’s been about a week now since Facebook launched their whole Vanity URL option and everybody seems to be talking about it. Everybody, that is, except your average, everyday Facebooker. The Facebookers who sneak on at work even though it’s ‘banned’. The Facebookers who aren’t particularly tech-savvy but just as into new, fun Internet-web (which is what my dad calls all this new fangled stuff) tricks. You know the ones.

With so many social networks available it’s becoming necessary to ‘own’ your brand. For brands and individuals alike it’s important to be consistent and instantly recognisable online. That’s why it’s generally better to use your own name online and to then make sure you use it on twitter, delicious etc and customise your linkedin url and flickr url instead of the standard random numbers.

The problem is that many social networks are like the ‘Hotel California’ – ‘You can check in anytime you like but you can never leave.’ For any of you who have tried to erase yourself completely from a particular social network you know sometimes just how tricky it can be.

Recently, on my way dropping my two boys of at school, I was listening to the radio. I became faintly aware of some other distracting noise in the car. Snapping back to reality I realized it was one of my sons having a full-on conversation with me about a complete different topic than what’s been discussed on radio.