Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about so-called “social media”, and the way it scares The Man. Obviously, we need to stop scaring him. It’s not good for any of us.

Here’s the thing: It doesn’t actually scare The Man. He only thinks he’s scared of it. (Trust me. I know The Man.)

The Man hates Twitter, Facebook and blogs. But he’s ALL about the Internet. So we need to stop using words that freak him out; words like “RSS”, “comments” and “podcast”. Instead, we need to start using words that will allow us to get the job done.

The Man hates blogs. He hates them with a passion. They are for losers who sit in their basements. Instead, The Man wants to have a website that’s updated frequently. So for pete’s sake, just give him a website that’s updated frequently. You know, like this one.

Another thing The Man despises is RSS. But you know what he loves? Automatic notifications. Yep, that’s right up his alley. So when you’re building your website that’s updated frequently, make sure people can get automatic notifications of all of the updates.

Twitter sucks. That should be obvious to everyone who’s serious about anything. Instead, Serious People like headlines. So get yourself a headline writer and start sending headlines out. Find a way to distribute them to people who’ve signed up to receive them. You’re smart; I’m sure you can figure something out.

Podcasts, too. Those are for losers. Instead, consider doing short radio shows and posting them on your website. OH MY GOSH. I just had an idea. What if you set it up so that people could sign up to get your radio shows automatically? Get someone on that.

We all know that comments on websites are dangerous. Anyone could say anything. But I heard a rumour that all of the kids like it when websites are interactive. They want to be able to send you their opinions and have you respond. This website you’re designing — bear with me on this — can it have a “What Do You Think?” section?

Wikis aren’t for serious people like The Man. I mean, what a stupid-sounding word. Wiki. Wiki. It’s obviously a time-wasting game for kids. But it sure would be nice if we could get other people to help with that document over there. And, geez, is anyone else having trouble with version control? I have an idea. Let’s set this up so there’s only ONE copy of the document, and then we’re not spending hours trying to merge different edited versions. I bet we can even have a rollback feature in case someone makes changes we don’t like. Yeah, let’s do that.

And, obviously, Facebook groups suck. What we really need is a way to set up a forum where people have to use their real names to comment. And we could make it invitation-only. Those are the big problems with forums, I think you’ll agree. Hold on. I just had an idea. It would really be ideal if this forum could be attached to a website people are using all the time anyway. Can someone do some research on this, please?