Like if the Housing Bubble Tweeted Itself.

I feel like I'm being sold snake oil. Social media aficinados are very much nearing the time where we need to stop praising every social media "advancement" and begin to treat it as a widespread and accepted practice. Imagine if even to this day every conversation about television included praise for the technological innovation of that "series of tubes", and how it helps companies and movements get their message out. We got that, decades ago. And we already get it with social media.

Any more hype, and I fear we will be creating a social media bubble, much like the housing bubble, and while not so scarily threatening to our economy, deathly threatening in the short term to this generation's impression of social media. I know, my message forgets that many people are still discovering, or remain blissfully unaware, of social media. I acknowledge that, but my message is directed to the early adopters and leaders of social media.

As early adopters, our responsibility is to push the boundaries on social media. Every time an early adopter stops to marvel and how "changey hopey" social media is, that is a missed opportunity to move the conversation forward.

The Case of the Upper West Side Yuppie

They're the people who can afford to wait in line to be the first to get an Ipad. They make about 6 trips to Starbucks A DAY and often have a company card to deduct the expenses. They complain in my mom's salon about which country they want their parents to send them to for the summer, or whether or not it is ok that their allowance was just reduced to "only" $2000 a month.

I would like you introduce you my friends to the Upper West Side yuppie. I thought the Upper West Side had the highest concentration of yuppies in the world, but then I came to American University. According Urban Dictionary, a reliable source if there ever was one, defines yuppie as follows:

"Informal for (y)oung (U)rban (P)rofessional, or Yup. turned into yuppie in the 1980's. A term used to describe someone who is young, possibly just out of college, and who has a high-paying job and an affluent lifestyle. Can now be used to describe any rich person who is not modest about their financial status. Yuppiedom (yuppie-dum)is a term used to describe an involvement in being a yuppie."

These yuppies sound like somebody I should hate, but they are the best thing to ever happen in my life. You see, they are the people who pay for my college. That's right, they visit my mom's salon twice a week for $45 blowouts and every 3 weeks for $300 colors and cuts.

They are exactly the demographic I stressed when I made the case to my mom that she needs a revamped website for her salon. My mom was just figuring out email, search optimization was just not on her horizon. While I didn't know the ins and outs of search optimization, I knew my reliance on Google, Yelp and Foursquare for all recommendations, and knew there were doubtless thousands of New Yorkers a day googling the term "Recommended Salon'.

I started out by using search optimization to... well learn how to search optimize. I Googled "How to Give Your Company online presence". It's surprisingly easy to follow their recommendations. I won't go into too much detail, but I did things like add us onto Google Maps, make sure we erm... creatively added some of our own reviews of our salon on citysearch and that we listed our site on leading search engines.

It is really amazing how simple search optimization is. When your potential returns are as high as attracting even more yuppies to your business, there really isn't much to lose.