I know.  You've heard it a million times.  The social web is not a vanity press.  It's a place to develop relationships, where give and take rules and conversations thrive.  

Sounds great, right?    

But how does that work in practice?  Just because you have a way to introduce yourself, doesn't mean people are going respond.  

What's the right way to use online social networks to get someones attention?    If you've ever wondered, "What do I do when my @replies and emails go unanswered?" then this episode is for you.  

I originally thought it was going to be pretty much just about the real time web, and the first half is, but you're going to hear some very useful, practical tips about how to actually break through and start conversations with people you may want to know -- even the ones who are so popular they're literally inundated with requests -- through social networks.  

You're going to learn about leveraging preferred communication channels, how to cross-pollinate social networks, where the VoIP industry is headed, whether or not government regulators should be looking beyond net neutrality to search neutrality and what it all means to a 15-year old.  

It's the Social Networking Jedi Training episode with the father of the VoIP industry, Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver) of jeffpulver.com and the 140 Character Conference.   

SHOW NOTES

01:00 -- In the financial markets, brokers and investors base their buying and selling decisions on real-time information, and in some ways, the real-time web offers us the same fast, breaking information, and its new found availability, thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and Google Wave, has a flattening effect on competitive markets, by democratizing information, giving everyone access to information at the same time.  T

he archival web gave everyone greater access to information, but some people were still at an advantage because they got it first.  But it is the real-time web, where individuals echo one another's voices, which has had a leveling effect, in the transfer of power from the few to the many.  

04:46 -- The 140 Characters Conference, its purpose and the rise of Twitter among individuals in the mainstream media, politics, entertainment and advertising.  

05:15 -- Using the analogy of financial markets once again, Jeff Pulver uses the gap in time between an earthquake that occurred in Northern California and amount of time it took for that information to surface on Google as representative of an information arbitrage opportunity, reminding us that just as a 5-second advance on world events can and does constitute a significant trading advantage, the real-time web may afford us advantages in business, politics and culture that not all entirely known.  

7:01 -- Tim Street (@1timstreet) asks via Twitter how Jeff manages his database of personal contacts, which is mentioned in the book "Trust Agents" by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, though not in enough detail to be actionable.  

11:48 -- Eric reads Jeff the following line from "Trust Agents" which says "The lesson Pulver told Chris at the time, was that one's personal database is an asset as valuable as gold, if nurtured and maintained" and then asks him specifically how one nurtures his personal database, which Jeff says is based on tailoring the message to the individuals preferred media channel.  

"If I understand that someones communication device is a Blackberry, then I make sure my subject of my e-mail is less than 16 characters.  Some people, who will never respond to an e-mail, will respond immediately to a tweet.