Lately on my Facebook account – and I know I’m not alone – I’ve been getting tons of requests to join this cause that has nothing to do with me or my life experience, to be a fan of that brand I’ve never heard of, or to attend an event for some acoustic guitar performance in a town 500 miles away put on by some guy who knew a girl I may have taken a class with my junior year of high school…  No thank you, ladies and gentlemen.  Facebook enemies “friends“ who engage in this kind of Fb invite spam: cut the crap, please.

And to help with the crap cutting, here’s what I propose.  If you invite me to join your page, group, game, app, quiz, etc., three times (um, clearly I rejected the first two invitations, genius, and I’m not interested), I’ll be de-friending you, plain and simple.  And the thing is, we likely don’t know each other at all anyway, so I probably shouldn’t have been Facebook friends with you in the first place.

If you’re reading this, I encourage everyone to enforce the Facebook 3-Strike Rule with me.  There are enough annoying things in everybody’s day, so come on, I really do not need to log into Facebook to see yet another invitation to the Oh Nuts! fan page that has no relevance to me – and if it for some reason does, I couldn’t see it because the sender gave zero context.

When it comes to Facebook, always remember:

• Be polite
• Respect people’s Facebook pages
• Do not blindly invite your friend list to be a fan of your project
• Friend-request people with whom you have a reason to connect

What do you guys think?  Helpful rule?

Then I hop from the glossy to the screen.

While I’m not exactly giving up fashion magazines (Hell no–a girl can dream!), I get a healthy dose of fabulous from LOOKBOOK.nu each day.  The site celebrates real people and their style, and showcases homegrown photo shoots from fashionistas around the world.  It’s all about sharing your style inspiration with a hip and happenin’ web-based community.  There’s something very poetic about it.

If you think you’ve got the hotness, apply to join the community–and subscribe to get the goodness.

For me, moving has always seemed like a bit of a crapshoot. You MIGHT like the neighborhood, you MIGHT like the building, you MIGHT not hate your neighbors, but you’re really jumping into a new living situation blindly. And that’s the problem RentWiki.com hopes to solve.

RentWiki.com recently announced the official launch of its site, which serves to help apartment hunters learn more about rental properties and the culture of different neighborhoods through a social networking community. While the site still lacks a deep level of content for most cities, RentWiki.com has the potential to be a great resource for anyone looking to rent property in a new neighborhood.

The site aims to offer a look at daily life at the neighborhood level in a wiki format via locally contributed content, neighborhood reviews, pros and cons, and renter recommendations. As the site and its content grow, RentWiki.com has promise to become a tool that will help people find an apartment, condo or neighborhood to fit their personal style, taste and financial needs through seeing what people who actually live there have to say about the area.

Time will tell if people jump on this idea and contribute their thoughts to the site–I’m certainly interested to see how the Boston content develops. Would you utilize a resource like this?

For many women, shopping out in the real world is a social activity that involves a variety of human interactions.  But with online shopping, it’s usually a solitary delight.  But ShopStyle makes online shopping a social slice of heaven with a vast collection of shoes, handbags, clothing, accessories and more.

On ShopStyle, lovers of “pretty things” can create a profile and build their own stylebook.  You can spend hours surfing around, favoriting all sorts of gorgeous and ridiculously expensive things that you’d want in your closet if you had an unlimited budget.  From your stylebook, you can create individual looks where you combine specific items, that you can then share to ShopStyle groups and members.  And if you’re really proud of your stylebook and looks, you can create a customized blog widget to share with your friends and readers.

Gone are the days of flipping through a glossy mag for fashion ideas–you can check out what people are pairing, mixing and matching on ShopStyle any time of day, any day of the week.  While you’re browsing groups like Wear to Work or Express Yourself, you can rate members’ looks and save items from their ensembles to your own stylebook.  It’s sort of a style-building collaboration, or having a patient, quiet, fashionable friend with you in the store.

If you’re in the mood to update your closet, get some new style ideas or pretend you can afford a huge and  super-luxurious wardrobe, I’d suggest creating a profile and poking around the site.  And once you join, follow my stylebook to see what looks I’m lusting after and share your must-have picks.

Happy styling!

With tomorrow’s election as the backdrop, Don brings up some good points about how we as a generation tend to behave and think. He’s right–we multi-task like crazy and we prefer to learn through collaboration rather than lectures. And in my own experience, young people definitely have a tremendous ability and affinity for uniting in groups online, whether it’s around a common interest, political event or social community.

Musing about how my generation organizes online, I can’t help but think of my friend Jessica. In late August, one of my best childhood friends was in a horrific car crash. Within what felt like minutes, a Facebook group was created, where hundreds of Jessica’s friends joined together to receive updates on her condition, upload photos, and leave messages of strength and love. When Jess passed away a few days later, the group transformed into an active tribute, and the page filled with memories and I miss yous. This sort of digital community grieving has never existed before. And this type of organization online extends to all kinds of human interaction, from conversation, education, and celebration.

One thing I guess I find strange is the idea that this generation spans ages 11-31. I think with the way social, information and entertainment technology are evolving at the speed of light, generations might need to be separated more. Within the Net Generation, there are probably three or more sub-generations that have grown up and experience mobile and the Web differently from each other.

Let’s keep talking about Facebook. For instance, my class year in school was the first to start college with Facebook. Facebook was a huge defining part of my college experience, start to finish. Someone who is 31 has probably only used the site as a professional and most likely has a different experience with it. And then someone who is 11 technically can’t use Facebook yet, and who knows what his or her experience will be. Maybe for these kids, Facebook will be a central element to their adolescence, or maybe by that time, this site and sites like it will be too saturated with “old people” and Facebook will take on a different meaning for this age group. I understand there are differences within every traditional generation, but I think the reality today is generations are getting smaller as technology and society move faster.

In any case, I’m really looking forward to reading the forthcoming seven articles in Don’s series. Give this one a read and let’s talk about it.

One of those changes is that I’m not letting myself order delivery and takeout every day anymore. It’s easy, it’s comfortable, it’s familiar–but it’s an expensive and calorie-filled habit that isn’t helping me reach any fitness goals. The solution? I have to prepare some of my own meals. Ummm, easier said than done, Amanda.

I have no idea how to make food. I can use a microwave and I can open pints of sherbet. It’s a very special day if I make an omelette. But that’s the extent of my skills. The thought of having to prepare my own food is daunting to say the least. But I’ve found some helpful resources out there on the social web that I’ll be playing with as I explore the many unfamiliar appliances and utensils in my kitchen.

Zeer is a resource to help nutritards like me learn more about what you’re buying at the store, and what you’re putting in your body. The site’s community feature enables members to share advice and information about various food products related to specific lifestyles or grub preferences. You can also browse through huge lists of products to find better or tastier choices for yourself. This is a valuable tool: Zeer helps you shop smarter so you can eat better.

Tasty Planner seems like exactly what I need. This site allows you to search for new recipes based on keywords or choices from a tag cloud, and has Recipe Box and Weekly Planner functions to help you along the way. Once you find a recipe you like, you can add it to your Recipe Box so that it’s saved, and you can go a step further by adding it to a Weekly Planner that helps you outline your meals and nutrition for the week. For someone who hasn’t planned a meal in her life, Tasty Planner seems like a great, easy way to get a healthy diet underway.

SuperCook is an interesting concept. You enter what foods you already have in your kitchen, and the site will generate recipes for you based on those ingredients. For someone who really has no creative cooking skills to fall back on, and for someone who is pretty lazy when it comes to trekking out to the grocery store on the train (it’s so hard to get your grocery shopping done without a car!), this resource may come in handy. It’s sort of like a Top Chef challenge without having to think about anything.

Cookthink is all about cravings, which can be a girl’s worst enemy. This site lets you find recipes that may satisfy your various cravings, and you can search by entering a keyword, choosing an ingredient, picking a dish, selecting a cuisine, or focusing on a mood. Based on the cravings you enter, Cookthink gives you a list of recipes that will probably make your tummy growl and send you running to the kitchen.

FoodFeed is a strange creature. It’s like Twitter for eating. The premise is simple: you make updates to the site about what you’re having to eat and you can search for other users who have having the same thing. On the About page, the site claims that it isn’t really useful, but on some level I disagree. There’s a lot to be said about regularly, honestly, and publicly announcing what you’re eating, and that may drive you to make healthier choices so you aren’t forced to reveal that you’re having 2 Big Macs per day.

Have you tried any of these Food 2.0 sites? What are your thoughts? Are you hungry yet???

beYOU.tv is one of the rare healthy places on the Internet that isn’t all talk. It’s the kind of site that teaches you about fitness, encourages you to better yourself, and gives you tools that’ll get you off the couch and toning yourself up. It’s one part fitness and wellness motivator, one part social network, and one part health resource. The more I’m peeking around the site, the more I like their style.

In the past, during my brief, half-assed attempts at living a fitness-oriented lifestyle, I had used FitDay.com to journal my caloric intake and output, and avoid entering the weight data that pretty much never changed. I found the site useful, but it wasn’t motivating and it wasn’t serving as a place for me to find answers to questions or learn new ways to spice up my workouts. beYOU.tv has that. The site encourages you to “Be Healthalicious!” which to be honest, makes me feel like there’s someone on the other site of my computer who wants me to feel good about myself. I think this is a fantastic tag line–it isn’t telling me to shed pounds, it isn’t saying to look a certain way–it’s telling me to feel the way it feels when you’ve gotten into a healthy routine. And that’s a great feeling.

One feature I find really cool is the variety of workout videos available on here. You can check out tons of workouts, from bootcamps to pilates to ab blasts to dance routines and pretty much everything in between. I like that it isn’t a one-size-fits-all site, and it gives you lots of different ways to kickstart or refresh your workout routine. I’m the kind of person who gets bored easily in the gym, so this feature is right up my alley.

Another great aspect here is the beYOU.tv Magazine. For a fitness imbecile like me, it’s great to see advice from a bunch of different people in a forum where anyone can comment and have a voice. Articles range from “Change Your Mood with Food” to “Fit, Not Frail: Exercise as a Tonic for Aging,” and it’s set up in a way that isn’t intimidating or inaccessible. The focus is on improving life, and I think that’s sexy.

A few more cool things about beYOU.tv: it has listings for more than 100,000 fitness centers so you can find a place to work out, and you can download any of the videos and store them on your iPod or other mp3 player, hook them up to your TV, etc. Plus, aside from all the great workout videos, they have cooking videos for a healthy diet, too.

Look, we all could probably stand to stare at our computers less and live our lives a bit healthier and more active. Look at Jason Falls–his twit2fit lifestyle change project is totally inspiring! So, that’s it–with inspiring people and a motivation resource center at my fingertips, there’s no excuse for me not to get healthalicious. I am in no way about to blog what my scale says each morning, but I hope some of you join me in checking out beYOU.tv and maybe get a little healthier because of it.

Let’s bring healthy back.

A lot of up-and-comers are on here like Zivity, EveryZing, Vivaty, Xoopit and thousands of others. You can browse startups by categories ranging from Green Technologies to Lifestyle & Travel, Internet Video to SaaS. It’s interesting to see what’s going on out there in terms of entrepreneurial endeavors and to then see CEO videos with a boiled-down attitude, sharing enthusiasm, news and wisdom.

I recently spoke with Vator.tv CEO Bambi Francisco, who took me around the different parts of the site and got me excited about how this could be a really innovative tool for startups. From my talk with Bambi, I saw that Vator is super passionate about connecting entrepreneurs, VCs, publicists, etc. with the right people to get businesses exposure in front of audiences who are seeking what they’re saying, sharing, and selling.

If you’re working at a startup, I recommend that you check this site out. Fill out a profile, convince your CEO that uploading some sincere, off-the-cuff videos about your brand and vision are worthwhile, and invite people to your network. Chances are you’ll connect with other folks (who says ‘folks’?) who may become influential in your success. You may even learn lessons from others who are in the same boat, navigating your same choppy seas. At SHIFT I work with several emerging businesses, and I feel that sharing the energy you find at a startup (like what happens at Web Inno and similar events) in one place is so cool.

Is your startup on this site? Invite me to your network!

TotSpot is a scrapbook-like social site that allows parents to safely share all things “my cute kids” with friends and family. I obviously only got a really brief overview, but the site seems cute and certainly of interest to new and eternally excited parents. Thinking back to some of the choice photos from my early teen years, I’m thinking my parents would totally use this site to blackmail me… But oh, how I would get them back. Check the footage:

InternshipRatings.com wasn’t presenting at the event, but I’ve really enjoyed seeing Lauren Grunstein and Stephanie Gurtman, two Boston University students, take an idea and run with it over the past year. I met these two at last year’s PodCamp Boston 2 and since then they’ve launched their site and are seeing a fantastic level of participation from students across the country. The premise is that students go on this site and rate/tell all about their internship experiences at various companies across various industries. The site also serves as an advice hub for students curious about internships and career paths. Take a look:

This post can also be found on SHIFT’s blog http://snackablepr.com. (And yes, it’s important to know what people’s favorite snacks are.)

If it were you, what social networks would be chasing after you?