Simon Dumenco started a conversation by pointing out that many users give up their privacy while on Twitter, telling people where they are and what they’re doing.  Then it’s Twitter, not necessarily the users, that profits from the information, since it’s been able to sell data to both Google and Microsoft.

Dumenco later asked, “All that time and energy spent making virtual connections with friends and strangers, tweeting ephemera, tagging pictures, etc. — does the, say, entertainment value or networking/emotional benefit (e.g., getting to feel ‘connected’) outweigh the opportunity cost (i.e., if you spend 20 hours a month on Facebook, what could you do with those 20 hours instead)?”

After all, although it can feel like you’re accomplishing a lot when sending out friend request after friend request to people you’d have trouble contacting otherwise, it’s worth considering how many sales result.  And considering how much time after the initial click you spend keeping up with the Facebook/Twitter/whatever account.

So use social media as much as you like.  Just don’t get so caught up in it as to forget about any business goals you’ve set.

As things stand right now, Rich Snippets will be most useful if your site employs Google Site Search.  This way, Rich Snippets can make sure that visitors conducting searches within your site see not only the information they want, but that they also see it presented in an appealing manner.

A post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog explains, “You can showcase key information, such as image thumbnails, summaries, ratings in your result snippets if you provide the appropriate markup on your pages.”

But Google may well expand the use of Rich Snippets in the future, letting its main search engine pick up on all the same cues.  If so, people who haven’t yet made it to your site would be able to see the same sort of interesting information.

And either way, using Rich Snippets won’t hurt anything.  Leverage them as best you can so long as you have a little spare time.

On the Google Analytics Blog, Benjamin Mangold wrote, “It’s important that you tag your email campaigns with campaign tags so that you can track how well each email performs.” Using tags connected to campaign names, campaign sources, campaign mediums, campaign content, and campaign terms, you can see exactly what sort of stuff is convincing people to click.

As for how to create such tags, consistency is key (no Company_Name vs. company-name vs. Company+Name, for example), and Mangold explained, “The Google Analytics URL Builder is a great tool for generating tagged links to use within your email campaigns.”

Mangold then noted that time-pressed people might want to try Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, VerticalResponse, and AWeber, too, for their ability to automatically apply Google Analytics campaign tags.

Hopefully these ideas will help you conduct your email marketing in a more efficient manner. Email’s a cheap and easy way to reach people, so this is an area that definitely deserves companies’ attention given the economic climate.