But, as for FunnyorDie? Well, I liked The Landlord as well, but I didn’t think Good Cop, Baby Cop was all that great. My PROBLEM with the site is that they claim that The Landlord is the most popular online video ever (or something like that), BUT, having embedded the video on my own personal blog, I noted that it played automatically every time I landed on the home page — when it was on the home page. And YouTube videos don’t do that. As far as I am concerned, that’s cheating. And social media isn’t about cheating.

The reason being this: The only things that I am going to pass along are things that have an impact on me. Things that are remarkable to me. I can use a video or news article or blog post to make a connection with another individual, and in a way, albeit sometimes small and unnoticable, I can strengthen that relationship. Corny as it sounds, that’s the beauty of social media.

oh, and here’s another remarkable clip for your viewing pleasure…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ0k3XnLzMM

In “Freakonomics,” which is a fantastic read, the authors boil down the logic of incentives and map it to everything we humans do. And they suggest that there are at least three types of incentive that motivate human action: economic, social, and moral. They also note that moral incentives can be a lot more powerful than economic and social incentives in specific circumstances.

Take, for example, their discussion of the case of Israeli day care centers that hired an economist to help them figure out how to solve the problem of parents arriving late to pick up their kids. The economist tried an interim solution: apply a $3 fine per late pickup. And what happened? Late pickups increased dramatically. Why? Because the day care center replaced a moral incentive (feeling guilty about leaving the day care center employees in the lurch) with an economic incentive (an affordable $3 fine).

I think that one of the things about social media that “makes it go” links back to my first post: it goes because it is “social,” it does have a moral code of interaction, and it is based on a kind of personal relationship that is mediated by the quick-paced interactivity of the digital space. Mark, I felt guilt about not replying to you because we were engaged in a free-flowing, open, social conversation. And I also felt guilty because I didn’t think I had anything to add to the conversation for a good day. Which goes to show that social incentives can be just as compelling and creative as economic incentives.

And i really think that’s the key here. Know your audience, don’t paint everyone with the same brush. Pretty much a rule to live by when you present any information to any audience in any context, I suppose.

I think it’s worth mentioning, though, that my forwarding to friends tends to be much more segmented than my forwarding to colleagues. I forward things to two different families - my own blue-state blood relatives and my wife’s red-state family. What both families find funny, interesting, and relevant is radically different, and I have to stay mindful of that all the time. (My wife is the key translator/facilitator here.) I also have a circle of college friends, and our forwards have evolved over the past decade from happy hour plans to baby pictures. And then there are former colleagues from past jobs and past lives. Each of these ongoing conversations has its own subset of relevant material, and that material defines and sustains my relationships with people who are very important to me in very different ways.