I visited each website from the list of Demo finalists.Boy, do they suck. Really, really suck.Does no one understand how to market themselves?It’s amazing to me that not a single Demo website has learned from the lessons of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Winelibrary.tv. Now THAT is a Website that knows how to market! (Interesting that Gary runs a wine store that sells $50 million a year, yet no one looks at his style as a great way to market your service/product yet).

My mom used to tell me a story of how when she was a little girl, she was sent to get water. Now she's from North Carolina and at that time sinks inside the house was a luxury. So she sat her bucket down and pulled the lever on the water pump. After a couple of pulls, it goes up and down by itself and fills up the bucket. So she's watching the lever and decides to jump on it for a horsey ride. Well, she does this for a little bit until she slips and the lever in an upswing pops her in the chin. I can't remember if it knocks her out or not but she learned something valuable that day: Don't play with the lever!

I'm not sure people are getting the point in Social Media. I asked Alejandro Reyes( www.successfool.com ) about Robert Scoble and on live video he said he didn't want to talk about him, curious... You would think Scoble is the perfect model to follow for Internet marketing: Be yourself 100% percent of the time. Gain a following and direct them to cool stuff you find interesting...Ohhh no profit making, hmph. Well I'm not too sure about that. After gaining the loyalty of so many tech hungry people, pulling the lever to get something out of it shouldn't be devious in my opinion. This was touched on before once he put ads on his blog. The question not answered though is how can we use these social media tools properly?

I'm certainly not an expert in this space but (wait for it..) I do have some ideas.

1) Use your Followers to work for a company promoting new tech things:
Ok that's not new since that's what Scoble is currently doing...

2) Start your own company working (for profit) with potential developers and test their products with your audience:
I guess this is the rub, since I feel your hard work to get a following, should allow you to be compensated for it in some way.

Seagate Technology guides fiscal 1Q below Street

"Shares sank $1.80, or 10 percent, to $15.50 in aftermarket trading Tuesday."

That could be the headlines soon. This is the first time I've seen a negative tech finance article in awhile. Seagate fell under Wallstreet's expectations, that's not surprising.What's scary is Tech's delay in feeling the impending recession. There's only two shoes and the quicker the other one falls,the quicker it can be picked up. It's like trying to fight a fever. Just let it take it's course so things can get back to normal...