Oh, Pinterest. I heart you, but you’re dangerous because it is way too easy for me to wind up wasting crazy amounts of time on your site. All it takes is one result for Christian Louboutin shoes, or glittery nail polish, and that’s it – I’m off like a race horse, searching for things to pin and browsing existing pins and re-pinning pins and sorting my boards and then re-sorting them.

Are you on Pinterest? If so, look me up! I’m kissmykitty. Need an invite? Leave a comment, and I’ll send one to you!

This morning I found out about Connect.me from Nile. I joined, but unfortunately I need to be vouched for before I can complete my sign-up. That’s a little ironic, seeing as how I joined just so I could vouch for Nile. Heh. Oh well – at some point there’ll be somebody on Connect.me who’ll vouch for me, right? But that begs the question: exactly who is on Connect.me to vouch for others when they haven’t been vouched for themselves?

I’m thinking Connect.me might eventually become more company-oriented, with companies that sell quality, popular items like titanium wedding bands being “verified” and approved prior to personal users like Nile and I.

I am obsessed with the amazing social bookmarking/sharing goodness that is Pinterest (find me here: kissmykitty). I have found SO. MANY. AWESOME. THINGS. on Pinterest. Everything from Deborah Lippman (creator of a very awesom collection of glittery nail polishes) to ornate wedding rings to short prom dresses to home organization ideas to recipes. Of course I use Pinterest to share things, too – and to bookmark things for me to check back with later.

Are you on Pinterest? If so, add me, and I’ll add you back!

Yesterday Crissy announced the birth of her second baby on Twitter, and I couldn’t help but think about how different things are nowadays. When I had Alyssa in October of 2004, nobody knew until Dan came home and wrote on my blog about it. In 2006 things weren’t much different, though I did text a few friends to give them the good news. Now, with smart phones and Facebook and Twitter and plenty of mobile options for them, it would be almost weird to not use them to announce good news – or any type of exciting news. For instance, when I had surgery three weeks ago, I tweeted a few times in pre-op, then tweeted several hours after surgery to let everyone know I survived, heh.

It’s amazing how social media has really shaped our everyday lives!

I never really made a connection between Facebook and search engine optimization, but as it turns out, you can certainly optimize your Facebook page so that it reaps SEO benefits, just as a regular website or blog does. Why might you want to optimize your Facebook page? Well, an SEO-optimized Facebook page can help bring more traffic to it, which can lead to an increase in fans, and an increase in visitors — and possible partnerships or consumers — to your website.

Here’s an example of an optimized Facebook page: site:www.facebook.com/mashable
And here is an example of an un-optimized Facebook page: site:www.facebook.com/inmybagdotcom

See the difference? The first Facebook page – Mashable’s – is indexed. The second page – In My Bag’s – is not.

Without further ado, here are eight great tips you can easily and efficiently implement in order to improve the SEO of your Facebook page:

1. Choose a keyword-rich name. Use your website or company’s name as the name of your Facebook page.
2. Use a relevant vanity URL. Make sure that your vanity URL (example: facebook.com/jenndotnu; facebook.com/mashable; facebook.com/inmybagdotcom) matches the name that you chose for your Facebook page.
3. Create a custom landing page (tab). Use the static FBML application provided by Facebook in order to create a custom landing page for your Facebook page. By default all users will be directed here, so take advantage of this short-term captive audience by making your custom landing page not only SEO friendly (keyword-rich is key), but also engaging for any potential audience.
4. Fill out the About box. The About box is a small blurb featured on the upper left-hand side of your Facebook page. Only a few hundred characters are allowed, so make them count by including just 1-3 rich keywords along with a description.
5. Fill out the Info tab. The Info tab gives you yet another opportunity to dump rich keywords onto your Facebook page. Make sure your Info tab is up to date, since its information will allow visitors to get in touch with you.
6. Insert keywords into photo and video descriptions. If you upload media to your Facebook page, make sure you add appropriate titles, captions and descriptions.
7. Encourage visitor interaction. Each “like” you get is a lot like a back link. The more people who not only become a fan of your page but also interact on your page by liking content and making their own contribution via comments, the more “worthy” your Facebook page will be considered in the eyes of search engines.
8. Build incoming links. Increase the number of “back links” to your Facebook page by building your fan base — each like can be considered a link! Also, increase back links offsite wherever possible: on your website, on your blog, even on other social networks.

Last winter I discovered Instagram, an awesome social photo sharing service that many of my friends on Twitter were using. The major downside to Instagram was that it was — and still is — for the Apple iPad/iPhone/iPod platform only. And while I do have an iPod Touch, it doesn’t have 3g, so I could only upload photos through the service when I was at home. So while I’ve used Instagram off and on, I never got into it regularly, since I was limited to at-home use only.

However, I’ve recently discovered PicPlz, and I love it so much that I don’t even really care that Instagram is coming to Android. PicPlz is like Instagram, but better, because:

• It’s available for Android (duh)!
• Plenty of photo filters are available
• Social networks including Facebook and Twitter can be notified of every photo upload
• It offers users their own profile URLs
• Comments, ratings and likes can be left on photos
• Users can share photos they like on Facebook and Twitter

Here are just a few of the photos I’ve taken with PicPlz:

Too many people think blogs and social media networks are two separate entities. While it’s true that both function independently, it’s also true that they function quite well together. Take this blog for instance. Blogging Girl is powered by WordPress, and is set up as a traditional blog. Yet I can share my tweets from Twitter right here on this blog – and conversely, I can also send new post notifications to my Twitter account (handy if I write about composter — don’t wait for the email notification to show up in your inbox; simply follow me on Twitter and you’re good to go!).

Blog <-> Twitter

That’s just one example. You can also integrate your blog with Facebook, your blog with YouTube, your blog with Flickr, and with many, many more social networks!

DailyBooth is probably my third-favorite social networking site (the first being Twitter and the second being Facebook). While Twitter allows you to share status updates, follow other users and communicate with them, DailyBooth allows you to share daily updates in the form of photos. I generally just do one photo a day, but you can send in as many as you want. However, since the site is named DailyBooth, I tend to just do one per day. I recently uploaded my 1,000th photo – awesome, no?

Here is today’s photo:

If you do decide to become a DailyBoother, don’t worry about trying to get rid of pimples overnight. Webcams aren’t often of the most stellar quality, and if you up the contrast a bit you’ll have perfectly blemish-free skin. Besides, the popular thing to do these days is to let it all hang out – pimples and all!

I love social bookmarking sites. They’re great for sharing blog posts on, finding articles on Kameleon jewelry, or just seeing what’s new and exciting on the interwebs. So without further ado, here’s a list of social bookmarking sites that I like to use:

• BuddyMarks
• Delicious
• Digg
• Faves
• Kaboodle
• StumbleUpon

For those of you who use Twitter with a religious fervor (just make sure you don’t use herbal sleep aids with such a fervor, as they can be habit-forming), what is your preferred app or software for it? For the longest time I accessed things directly from Twitter.com. Then I discovered Twhirl, and that’s pretty much all I have used since. I downloaded Seesmic Desktop recently, but I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it for long. It’s almost too bloated, you know?

Let me know what you use! I’m always up for trying something new.