Social networking, viral marketing and the promise of coral lipstick

It's about 2:30 in the afternoon, Seattle time, when at long last I give in. I'm in a conference room at Avenue A/Razorfish, talking with Jeremy Lockhorn about "viral marketing" for a story I'm doing for a local business magazine when I realize that I have, officially, become a fuddy duddy.

"I hate blogging," I hear myself saying just moments after grilling Lockhorn about his Facebook page. "It's just that I spend the morning working on my fiction before turning into a journalist for the rest of the day." My theory is, I explain to him, that if I'm on the computer I ought to be writing something. And I don't just mean more of those witty e-mails that make my friend Kat spit cherry cola out her perky little nose.

And yet, here I am, blogging. Why? Because while I was listening to Lockhorn explain Facebook, and the concept of some cool new social aggregation tools that are just making there presence on the Web, I asked myself: What kind of journalist who claims to love writing about technology and business refuses to enter that world?

A lousy one. One that's destined to soon find herself wearing curlers and coral color lipstick while smoking Virginia Slims. Alone. Because apparently, given the spate of Facebook invites I've ignored in the past year, a lot of my "friends" are out there already. Which must be why I'm missing all the great party invites these days. If only I'd had a Facebook page, if only I'd been all a-twitter.... Well, then I might have known.

So, here goes. I'm giving in. I'm off to freshen up my Myspace page, I'm off to check out Coors "happy hour countdown" on Facebook, I'm off to tell the world that I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Ballard, writing my first blog entry. And then I'm going home and throwing away those giant rollers sitting under the sink in my bathroom.

More soon.
Julie