Untapped opportunities in social media

Now, I know all about social media.  I’m on the Facebook, I read the Twitter, I blog, and under my bed is the President’s nuclear football which I came by via – well, never you mind. The point is I’m a pretty tech saavy guy. I am also as poor as America is gullible, so today I’m devoting my considerable(y) mental powers to the discovery of new and exciting ways you can make the surge in social media work for you. Why, you ask? To be honest, entrepreneurship sounds like a lot of work.  I’d rather print out this time-stamped blog post and after a good five years come after you in the courts and give your clock a hardcore cleaning.

Twittergrams!

Because I’m very relevant and hip I saw Valentine’s Day the second weekend in March. And let me tell you, I loved it. It was like The Devil Wears Prada crossed with The Shining. But the entire film was very old-fashioned. Everybody was getting each other flowers and going out to dinner and having phone sex. I mean, phone sex? 1995 called. It wants its $19.95 back.

So I figured I’d create the new phone sex. However several exhaustive(ing) searches of the internet lead me to believe that somebody else already has. Again and again and again, in fact. Perhaps everything that can be invented already has – but then I thought, “Hey, there are things that make money that don’t involve sex.” Like pizza. Mostly.

So I turned my attention to amore instead, and asked the question twitterpated young men and women have for millennia: how do I monetize love? But of course, the answer was in the question. It’s easy peasy titty squeazy.

People are always sending their beloveds little notes. Cards, candygrams, valentines. But why express yourself when you can e-xpress yourself???? That’s where my twittergrams come in. Nothing says “I love you” like an unrelated third party saying “I love you,” and the strict requirement for 140 characters or less means that you get all of the romance with none of the hand-wringing over saying the perfect thing. There simply isn’t room!

You can identify yourself (unless you’re Greek – the names simply use up too much of the available space) or you can be an anonymous suitor routing your love through an intermediary like a drug lord engaged in a complex international money laundering scheme. And believe you me, nothing says eligible bachelor quite like money laundering. Add to that a variety of messages, from a classic “I love you!” to a spastic “LOVE YOU!” to the internet-age “luv u” to custom messages with a little more personal flair. What woman could resist a man who whispers, “I wanna be with you so much we cycle together”? What man can stand the temptress who coos, “I love you like Jerry Jones loves himself”?

Baby’s first Facebook picture!

I have a very fat friend called Rich Myslinski. He’s like the Bill Belichick of up-and-coming free-market conservatism. (You may notice I’m using a good deal of football metaphors today. It’s because the kids are all into the footy. Do they call it that in this country?)

Now my fat friend Rich has a family, as many people do, and as recently as fifteen years ago this came to include a sister. The other day his mother wondered aloud to him whether she should be allowed to sign up for a Facebook account. Rich, whose heart is as big and distended as the rest of him, told them that yes, a Facebook account would do her no harm. But he was taken aback by her next question: should she take his sister to have her picture taken for it?

Why, yes. Yes she should.

You know working parents this day in age have so much to worry about. Kids grow up so fast, and they’re making choices every day that go far beyond what children faced in the simpler times of their youth. Decisions they make at age 16 can effect the rest of their lives and nowhere is that more true than on social media. So often, though, our little angels just don’t realize this. Do you want this to be what your child shows society?

Maybe

But the culturally sensitive people of the modern day will realize that child or not, a Facebook photo is a really specific creature, requiring just the right mix of verve, playfulness and reserve to paint a delicate picture of the complex milieux of your life. Your profile pictures need to show just enough individuality to communicate your key life-message without Facebook deleting your account for suspected pedophilia. Do you think this photo strikes that delicate balance?

Not unless you're Ellen DeGeneres

That’s where my professional Facebook photography firm can help. Our trained professionals know exactly what to do if you want a picture that says “A student,” “bored housewife,” “slightly-creepy high school teacher” or “GILF.” Only people from the internet generation can truly understand what you need to give your social networking profile that extra bit of oomph, which is why we employ no one but under-25s with absolutely no training in portrait photography. I can make your Facebook shout “Friend me!”, your YouTube cry “Subscribe!” or your Twitter squeal “I’ve got twats!” Because real class doesn’t come from the inside. It can only be bought. Just ask our celebrity endorsement:

QUILF Rania of Jordan

A dating site for armchair political extremists

Is that an IED in your pocket?

Two uses of the internet predate all others: clandestine communications between the undesirable and clandestine communications between the unmarriageable.  Why is it that we’ve still not combined the two? Thanks to the Tea Party and Pennsylvania’s own Jihad Jane, the venting your shrill frustration with the political process in a consequence-free environment has never been easier – or hotter!

Sure, you could meet that special someone at a rally of the urban proletariat or a secret meeting of the local Klan, but with the economy knee-deep in recession many of us just don’t have the time for the kind of rabble-rousing that makes both the Earth and your knees shake.  NutNet can not only ensure that your love life doesn’t suffer the same isolation that comes with the righteous conviction that the government is controlled by a Papist plot. It can also enhance the strength and durability of your revolutionary vanguard by creating cadres of like-minded cells distributed all over the country and the world! And with the increased potential for future little black blockers, this is one specter of Marx that everyone can get in on.

Good luck, go-getting Yankee capitalists! My lawyers and I wait with bated breath and bared fangs.