Not so fast. A well-crafted email can be a sweet treat, no different than the most inviting of desserts: the ice cream sundae.

Let’s start with the copy. Rich, flavorful, melt-in-your-mouth copy is the foundation, like a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. You copy should be sweet, simple, and provide a scrumptious place for toppings to lay. Don’t go rocky road, or neopolitan, or Cherry Garcia. Instead go with vanilla bean – not bland vanilla, but delicious creamy vanilla with specks of the bean. In other words, be brief, get to the point, but give it just a touch of excitement, enticement, or pizzaz to spark the reader’s interest.

The hot fudge, yes, that is the call to action button. What do you want your readers to do? Buy something? Take a peek at your new video? Donate to charity? Make sure your call to action buttons appear at least twice in the email – probably once at the top and once at the bottom (for those who actually read the whole thing…chocolate sauce drizzles all the way to the bottom, you know). Sure, the ice cream is good, but it’s the chocolate sauce that calls people to action.

Next, the whipped cream and sprinkles that make up the HTML email template. Just as fluffy whipped cream and colorful sprinkles excite your eyeballs and make you jump for joy, so it shall be with with an irresistible, visually delectable email template. Your company logo embedded in the attractive header, the sidebar with quotes, links, and promos….whipped cream and sprinkles make it all the more fun.

The cherry on top? Of course, the subject line. Perhaps the most important part of your email, a poorly written or spammy subject line will get as many people interested in your email as there would be people lining up to grab a sundae with a moldy yet mysteriously half-eaten cherry on top. Don’t type in all caps, don’t put 135 exclamation points in there, and stay away from cliches like “buy now”, “X% Off”, “Refinance Today”, or any other trite, rotten cherries. Even if your sundae, er, email makes it past the recipient’s spam filter, chances are that they will never be read with such subject lines. A marachino cherry is not only eye-catching, it is a sweet way to start a sundae. Make sure your subject lines are equally appealing at under 60 characters (the less the merrier, for the most part), and give people a reason to open your email.

Put it all together and you’ll have a delicious treat that will get the attention of your audience.

I’ve combined my advice and my vice in an effort to educate you, may it serve you well.

Then the news hit: Twitter is down. Twitter. Is. Down.

Upon hearing this, I rushed to the street, to see hundreds or more people fleeing their homes, grabbing one another, shaking each other by the shoulders, asking how this could be possible.

I drove through Cupertino and Mountain View and discovered that buildings once occupied with quiet cubicles, bothersome copiers, and endless meetings on riveting topics such as enterprise-level IT security were now in ruins. Office chairs torn to shreds, shattered glass everywhere, and the lowercase letter ‘t’ that is emblematic of the Twitter brand sloppily tagged onto the walls of once towering buildings that were filled with Silicon Valley’s brightest.

All along I sensed that everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it finally did. News started spreading around town (without Twitter?!) that Facebook was also experiencing problems. Stunned, I stood in the middle of the seemingly war-torn street, my jaw agape, contemplating the meaning of the events that had transpired.

I had to make a split decision. Knowing that chaos would ensue, I packed some canned food, a bottle of penicillin, my BlackBerry, and some raw fish (Pompano, to be exact) I managed to steal from Marina Food in Cupertino, and fled town. I quickly realized that I was not alone; hundreds, no, thousands had setup camps outside of the bay area, in desolate areas such as…..whatever is east of the Bay Area.

As I prepared to plan out the rest of my life as a nomad, I got a text on my BlackBerry. “Hey, it’s Mark. Twitter’s back up, and Facebook seems to be working intermittently”.

Oh.

I dusted off my dockers shirt, did my best to straighten out the crease in my slacks, and started to make my way back to the office. I looked up and saw that the sun was starting to creep out from behind the clouds. That’s not even me using a clever literary device to imply hope and well-being, seriously, it just got sunnier, check the weather report. “Everything is going to be ok”, I thought, “everything is going to be ok”.

Don’t get me wrong. Alan Cohen is a talented and charismatic speaker who seemed to have the audience in the palm of his hand. As I am someone who truly appreciates talented performers, watching him deliver his piece was in this sense a delight and an education in itself.

However the content was….shall I say, lacking? Allow me to summarize:

“Meetings are boring, and people fall asleep during them. Big companies are inefficient, as they spend too much time trying to get information from one place to the next. Email kinda sucks. Not important. Sorta annoys me. Human interaction is important. Face to face contact is important. That’s why Cisco makes this really neat video stuff that lets you do that, and in the near future we’re coming out with some more neat video stuff that lets you do that even better. Awesome, huh?”

Alright, I might be simplifying just a tad. Still, talking about the sloth-like path of information within  giant corporations and how meetings are boring and inefficient is not exactly groundbreaking news.

I was lured to the event with advertising that teased potential attendees by asking if Twitter and Google Wave were the future of enterprise-level communications. My disappointment stems from the fact that I was expecting to actually hear what tools, specifically, were going to change things, and not just some stats and filler about how you only retain 10% of what you read and how 39% of people admit to falling asleep in meetings, and how Cisco is going to save Mother Earth and all its businesses.

In the end, I have to say that observing Alan Cohen’s delivery and the Thai food provided were the true highlights of the evening, even if the noodles were a bit cold.

On one hand, you have to side with the NFL. Giving a bunch of rowdy, adrenaline-pumped, larger-than-life professional athletes a forum to say whatever they want to the entire world during the heat of battle, with all the raw emotions that go with that – you can see how that might quickly turn into a PR nightmare.

Top that off with coaches who would likely not want their players diverting their attention from the game at hand, and you can see where this might start to make sense.

However, the NFL is missing out on a ton of fun. And really, isn’t that what sports is all about?

Imagine a player telling the world what he feels like as the final seconds tick off the clock to a superbowl victory. Or loss. Perhaps you could envision an injured player taken off the field letting the world know first hand that he’ll be ok. The possibilities are limitless.

My suggestion to the NFL would be to give a few key players the privilege of using Twitter during games. This could serve a similar function as an isolated camera that follows a single player during a game, and is similar to the “mic’d up” idea that some sports leagues (including my beloved NHL) have used to get prime audio clips from players during games.

In the end, it’s all about entertainment, and fans are increasingly searching for behind-the-scenes coverage on what players are doing and saying before, during, and after games. The occasional tweet would only be the next step in taking it to an online format.

The first thing that sets it apart is the ability to manage multiple Twitter accounts. There are some others that do this as well, but just this one feature whiddles down the list of competitors significantly. Perfect for business users that have a personal and business account, as well as the split-personality sociopath who wants so bad for people to think they really are Brittney Spears, being able to manage multiple accounts in one place is a major plus. Additionally, you can also dedicate a pane to updates on Facebook, which is a nice touch.

It is a cinch to view, manage, and reply to responses in all of these accounts. For example, one smart feature automatically selects the current account with which to provide a response. User lists and searches can also be saved for future reference, a nice touch indeed.

A button to shrink text as well as the ability to add short links through bit.ly, digg, and is.gd round out a nice set of options for Seesmic.

One of my favorite things? The look. Perhaps not as important as the functionality of the application, it is none the less significant for the design of something that is meant to be stared at to be at least somewhat pleasing. Seesmic Desktop offers a slick and contemporary look that compliments my Mac desktop nicely.

If you’re looking for a feature-packed, easy to use Twitter application, I highly recommend giving Seesmic a try.

Though I could go on about paying homage to the tragic deaths of a handful of celebrities and TV personalities this week, I won’t. There are a million sites and a million blogs and a million groups on Facebook for that. So, I hope you don’t mind if I set the emotions aside and instead focus on the technology that empowered me to stay connected with these stunning current events, as well as a question to you: where were you?

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, social media has in many ways risen above traditional media in delivering up-to-the-minute information on a number of topics (Iran, anyone?). The past couple of weeks in particular have made for some tumultuous times and have provided incredible examples of how social media works in the context of our times.

So, where were you when David Carradine, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcet, Ed McMahon, or Billy Mays left us? How did you use social media to find out about it, communicate others, organize groups, etc? I’d love to know! Let’s see some comments about how we’ve used these incredible tools to talk to each other.

Now stop imagining. It’s real. And your boss isn’t going to like you sitting around with your eyes closed looking like you need your 3pm shot of java.

I’ve checked out a few of these sites, my favorite so far being Scoopler. A search engine with a clever and dynamic twist, Scoopler will take whatever words you enter into it and pull up relevant articles and videos on the right side of the page while pulling up Twitter feeds on the left side of the page. If you want to see how it works, try typing in a few words related to a hot topic. Simply typing in “Iran” or “Obama” will give you enough information to make your head spin right off your shoulders – in a good way.

If you’re trying to stay abreast with what is going on in Iran, this is an excellent tool. As I mentioned in my last entry, Twitter has become the preferred vehicle of repressed Iranians to spread their word around the globe. By seeing all of the Twitter feeds relevant to the situation all in one place and chock full of links to pictures, videos and articles (oh, and did I mention it updates Twitter feeds in real time?) is juicy enough, but to have all of the coverage from major news sources in an adjacent pane makes for an atmosphere that can only be defined as media-junkie bliss.

Scoopler and other real-time search engines are slightly less exciting when you are searching for anything other than white-hot news. I typed in a few words related to my beloved hockey team, the San Jose Sharks, and got nothing more than a couple of Twitter feeds and a couple of uninteresting articles.

The lesson learned here? Use Scoopler to find out about the latest, most exciting, and most relevant news out there. Give it a shot, I’ll bet you’ll be hooked!

According to CNN, the U.S. State Department asked Twitter to reschedule maintenance in order to keep the social network alive and pumping information out to the web during crucial election-related moments. Furthermore, sites like YouTube and Flickr have become great resources for getting video and pictures for those who want more insight, and, unsurprisingly, blog posts from individuals on the scene are providing more useful than the media when it comes to providing up-to-date coverage to the public.

Despite the Iranian government’s attempts to shut down social media sites including Facebook and others(do a quick Google search), relentless bloggers, Twitterers, and other social networking site fanatics have been posting away.

All of this amounts to what could become an incredible case study in the value of social websites to the public. When the U.S. State Department is banking on Twitter users to relay important political information, when foreign governments attempt to shut down social websites in order to control how their image is presented to the world, and when there is global attention paid to seemingly amateur bloggers, it is time to admit that social media sites have begun to transcend traditional media.

After all, the joyous warmth of human interaction pales in comparison to the radiant glow emanating from your computer monitor, in front of which you will be accessing Facebook after 12:01 EST in order to select your username. As attached as you are to an ID like profile.php?id=1064330513, you just won’t be able to pass up the opportunity to finally pick a name that reflects your true character, like PrInCeFaN4eVa.

Sure, Cassandra is a lovely girl, worldly, bright, and certainly deserving of your company for your first date. But please. Priorities here, people.

Rest assured, everyone is expecting a flood of traffic to Facebook in order to take advantage of the first come, first serve system of distributing user IDs. So, make sure you giddy on up to be the first “johnsmith” out there.

For more info, see Facebook’s blog.

MySpace seems to be suffering the same fate as the Our Lady Peace, the band who’s lyrics I so artfully butchered.  Like the mid-nineties pop-rock outfit, MySpace got its 15 minutes of fame and now seems to be on its way to the land of irrelevancy. 

In the world of social networking, it’s all about what’s hot, what’s new, and what everyone else is doing. We’re nothing if not a society of sheep! 

In an article from CNN, the author points out the decline of MySpace and the rise of Facebook, as well as the social media tool that may eventually dethrone Facebook: Twitter.

Really, who uses MySpace anymore? It may be better for blogging, and it is certainly a better site for bands, but for the average Joe who wants to connect with his network, Facebook and Twitter have successfully usurped MySpace as the industry leaders. 

What’s your take?