I have used an iPhone for a couple of weeks now, using it mostly as an online social media device, and pausing sporadically to make a phone call on it. Generally speaking, it is a good device for connecting with friends on the major online social media networks. Of course there are some pitfalls, too.

The good:
Facebook
MySpace
LinkedIn
Pandora

The bad:
YouTube
Last.fm
Flickr

The ugly:
Twitter
Blogging

First, let’s talk about the Good. The free proprietary applications for Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn are all fantastic. All three provide an easy way to quickly update your status, check and send email, and connect with friends. Facebook even provides a way to chat.

Pandora’s app is simple, intuitive, and offers all the functionality of the Pandora website. One bad thing about this app is that the application closes and the music stops playing when you press the home button. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the iPhone operating system, itself, or if this is a programming issue. But the iPod app continues playing until I manually close it or press “pause”. It would be nice for Pandora to have that functionality as well.

Now, for the Bad. The biggest disappointment, by far, is the YouTube application that comes pre-installed on the iPhone. It sucks. It is fine for playing videos, but it lacks all of the features that make YouTube a great online social media environment. You can’t view user profiles, post comments, make friends, send email, or really do anything at all, except watch videos.

Flickr does not have an official iPhone app. This is a bit of a black eye for this giant of the online social media world. True, you can still post photos to your Flickr account by taking advantage of Flickr’s “post by email” capabilities, but without the ability to comment on others’ photos and check my Flickr email, and see what my friends are saying about my newly-posted photos, what is the point?

Last.fm’s iphone app doesn’t do anything except stream music, making it a clone of Pandora’s app. Without the ability to check your neighborhood, your recommendations, etc., Last.fm is merely another online radio station.

Finally, we reach the Ugly. The iPhone app store is saturated with Twitter clients of varying abilities. I have only used two free ones – Twitfire and Twitteriffic. As I have said before, Twitfire is great if you just want to send a quick Tweet with a combination of text, location, and photo. But it does not have the capability of viewing other’s tweets. Twitteriffic provides a fantastic interface for viewing tweets en-masse and for sending tweets. Unfortunately, it does not provide a way to track specific friends in the timeline. Also, there is no way to find specific friends via a search. So, these applications are good at what they do, but have significant room for improvement.

Blogging on the iPhone is mainly limited by the keypad. The iPhone is great for short text messages and tweets, but it’s keypad makes it too cumbersome to write anything more than a sentence or two. There are probably kids who can type 60 words per minute on the iPhone, but I am not one of them. In fact, I am lucky if I get 20 words written in a minute. That said, the WordPress application is a gem! From time-to-time, I post short blogs with photos, which works exceptionally well. Also, the next iteration of the WordPress app will include a landscape (horizontal) typing feature, which might increase typing efficiency.

So, that is my experience with online social media and the iPhone so far. Please comment if you have anything to add!

(Photo taken with my iPhone)

I broke down and bought the iPhone a week ago for a number of reasons, but the main reason was for its online social media capabilities.  The tools that I use regularly include Twitter, WordPress, Facebook, and MySpace.  For the last few weeks, I have also been text-messaging (SMS) quite a bit.  Here are the free online social media-related iPhone applications that I use:

• Twitfire
• Twitteriffic (free version)
• WordPress for iPhone
• Facebook for iPhone
• MySpace for iPhone

Twitfire (a Twitter application): Of all my online social media-related iPhone applications, I use Twitfire the most.  I tried out Twitterific before I tried Twitfire, and based on my experience, Twitfire is much more stable.  Using Twitfire, I am able to quickly send tweets containing my current location, post photos (either from library or taken at time of posting), and do “@” replies.  Utilizing all of these features is quite intuitive, though the usability is a bit clunky. For example, the posting of photos takes a few minutes, and the “@” address book doesn’t have all of my contacts listed.  Twitfire has a built-in web browser that converts links into shortened links and allows me to easily place them into tweets.  One HUGE downside to Twitfire is that you cannot read others’ tweets.  To phrase that last sentence differently, Twitfire is used ONLY for posting tweets and NEVER for reading tweets. (Video review)

Twitteriffic is much more robust than Twitfire, but it hasn’t been very reliable, in my experience.  That is, it doesn’t load up half the time when I open it.  This is frustrating.  That said, when it does work, Twitteriffic is a fantastic product that does everything Twitfire does and MORE!  In addition to being able to post photos, geolocation, and tweets, Twitteriffic has a great interface for viewing and replying to tweets.  To summarize, if you can get Twitteriffic to work consistently, it is a much better product than Twitfire.

WordPress for iPhone is simply fantastic.  If you use either self-hosted WordPress or WordPress.com software for your blog or website, then you will love this application.  The current version allows you to manage and publish posts with photos and hyperlinks.  The next version has promised expanded functionality including horizontal keyboard, posting in the future, managing comments, and managing pages.  Unfortunately, the nature of the keyboard makes it difficult to type as quick as I am used to on my home keyboard, which makes posting long posts such as this one difficult to stomach.

Facebook for iPhone is FANtastic!  From the iPhone home screen, this application’s button has a slick, little icon that tells me how many new messages are in my Facebook in-box in much the same way that my “Mail” button does.  The application has interfaces for my “News Feed”, “Notifications”, “Requests”, “Friends”, “Chat”, and “Inbox”.  I am able to view photos and respond to comments and status updates.  I am also able to write and post photos on friends’ walls.

MySpace for iPhone allows me to manage my status, view and comment on friends’ pages, view and post photos, check and send email, and view friend requests.

Some other tools that I use regularly are the Twitter SMS functionality and Flickr email functionality.  Both of these tools allow me to send photos to Twitter and Flickr, respectively, from the photo management interface on the iPhone.

I have been doing a lot of thinking on the value of online social media.  It is clear that we are still early in the game.  In fact, the game seems to be changing on a monthly basis as new tools are invented and old ones are discarded regularly.

Social Media Tools that I currently use daily include Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Youtube, and mySpace.  I also use LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and Digg with less frequency.  I tend to find value in the connections I make with people, which, so far, have not led to any direct or indirect monetary rewards.  I play chess with old and new friends on Facebook, I share music on mySpace, and I gain a lot of knowledge from other people on Twitter.  And I use Youtube to build awareness of my band.

I have been talking with clients and friends a lot about the prospect of utilizing these tools to make money.  “How do we do it?”  “Is it possible?”  That sort of thing.  Put simply – Can online social media be used to sell stuff?

In my experience, the selling of stuff using online social media is really dependent on timing.  For example, I play in a band that wanted to print t-shirts.  It just so happened that a t-shirt manufacturer emailed me on mySpace at the moment that I was looking for t-shirts.  He got my business not because he was necessarily the best, but rather because he happened to be there.  And buying t-shirts isn’t something I am all that interested in.  Put simply, he made it easy for me.  I didn’t have to shop around (or didn’t want to), and he conversed with me one-on-one via email until all the details were settled.

So, when business owners ask me how online social media can be valuable to their bottom line, my experience tells me that building an online social presence is a lot like placing ads on public tv or radio.  You don’t necessarily announce that you have a sale or a discount; rather, you are just there.  And, hopefully, you are there when people are looking to buy whatever it is that you sell. 

ADDED ON 9/29/2008: Further reading [Thanks, @CalGreg!].