Ever find yourself lying in bed late at night, wide awake, scanning TweetDeck on your smartphone as you finish that last blog post? Or catch yourself wishing you could reach out and physically like something? Do you suffer from ADD and OCD tendencies? If you silently mouthed "yes" to any of the above, you too may have what it takes to become a social marketing specialist.

Plenty of marketers are drawn to social media these days (perhaps because 4 out of 5 Americans now use it), but skeptics still write it off as a flash in the pan. No matter how you look at the social web, one thing is clear: You have to fully immerse yourself in it if you want to tap its full potential. 

My team falls into the former category. We keep tabs on Dell's social sphere, and let me tell you: When your global platforms change without warning and you have to fix them in real time, keeping up becomes quite the challenge.

But troubleshooting is just a small part of what we do. We spend the lion's share of our time reading, evaluating and strategizing so we can take advantage of new opportunities to grow the brand's social presence. Sound easy? Become a fan of Mashable on Facebook and spend a day trying to read every article in its news feed. It's like that times a thousand, every day.

To keep our clients energized about the social web (and spare them the headache of sifting through it all), we created RPPL. Built around a real-time syndication platform called Posterous, RPPL is a branded social media presence that enables us to:

• Share. Innovative campaigns, private betas, ridiculous memes ...there's always something to talk about. We use RPPL to separate the wheat from the chaff. As soon as big news comes our way, we post it. Posterous then insta-publishes to Facebook, Twitter and Delicious, giving our followers plenty of ways to get the scoop. 
• Explore. The best way to understand social media is to get your feet wet. With RPPL, we can just create a presence when a new platform piques our interest and test it like mad. 
• Collaborate. RPPL is a vehicle for passing key learnings along to our followers. We hope they spark conversations and inspire new ideas. After all, a rising tide lifts all boats.

In the few short months since we launched RPPL, we've shared hundreds of posts and befriended hundreds of fans and followers. We couldn't be more thrilled about the response we've gotten so far, and we're just getting started. Keep your eyes on RPPL to get in on the next big splash.

In the world of social media, fantasy and reality duke it out for your attention daily — and the lines between them get blurrier by the second. Hence the branded avatar. Whether you're sick of using the same 3 profile pictures or you just want to kill a few minutes between meetings, avatar builders give you a chance to escape from all that other...escapism.

As you might expect, companies love branded avatars. The way they see it, you get to express yourself socially while their corporate logo keeps your feet firmly planted on the ground (or your head in the clouds, depending on your persective).

But people don't just go nuts over any old avatar. It has to hit that elusive sweet spot more and more companies are competing for these days. Which brings us to the battle: 

MadMen Yourself. Went from dark horse to reigning champ in seconds flat, thanks to a perfect storm of marketing hype, genuine anticipation, authentic panache and reality fatigue. Plenty going for it from a UX standpont, too: no barriers to entry, easy-to-use controls, lots of customization options, decent sharing capabilities and a generally lounge-y vibe. The pure joy of creating clone after jazzy little clone almost makes up for the overt branding or the occasional glitch (try going back to clean shaven once you've grown facial hair...OK, so maybe they did that on purpose). Plus Dyna Moe's mid-century DIY style gives it an organic allure that's hard to resist.

Yearbook Yourself 2009. If 2008 was Thriller for this franchise, 2009 was just Bad (blame MadMen Yourself). Which is a shame, because Colle+McVoy really brought it this year. You can upload images or use your webcam, rotating, moving, scaling, flipping and adjusting skin tone until your face fits your avatar (you have 5 decades' worth to choose from — each one calling out different online stores — but you'll have to re-tweak your photo as you jump from year to year). On top of that, you can create solo or group portraits, then share them via Facebook Connect and other services as neatly branded files. Confused? The funk-fueled video tutorial explains everything. 

SVEDKA Bot Builder. This slam dunk from Barbarian Group (with the assist from Oddcast) oozes style. The Bot Builder leverages 3D modeling technology to create cool avatars that are icy and detached yet freaky-looking and kinda kinky. In other words, Scandinavian (although art director Ryan McManus tells me he snuck Tom Brady's jersey number in as a customization option — USA! USA!). Facebook Connect is integrated right off the bat, allowing you to do things like upload and use profile pictures. Once completed, your animated avatar will fly, sashay or karate-chop as you see fit, and will continue to do so in your news feed or on your friends' walls. Blame it on the alcohol.  

Dell Lounge Trans-Poser. Our contender doesn't need bells and whistles; what it does, it does well. Sporting a retro look and feel, the Trans-Poser makes cutting and pasting yourself into the action at X Games 15 as easy as twisting a few knobs. But it's the little UI touches (like multiple drag-and-drop anchor points for editing) that keep you coming back to see how far you can push reality's boundaries. Every trans-posed image gets saved to Dell Lounge community gallery, where you can see, rate, comment, download and share whatever grabs you. And because we built the Trans-Poser into the Dell Lounge, it can be reskinned and repurposed to engage users on an ongoing basis. Check and mate.

While I try to avoid self-righteous '90s alt-bros as a general rule, I've got to agree with Trent Reznor here: music is now essentially free, whether we like it or not. But then, this is true of information as a whole (just ask Chris Anderson). If it's digital, it will eventually be available to everyone for nothing. Blame the internet — it's turned us all into mini multimedia moguls.

That's why smart bands don't just write songs and make videos anymore. Instead, they use social media to build collaborative experiences on open APIs. Innovative artists empower their audiences, encouraging them to explore and examine the music until its secrets are revealed, then create and syndicate their own interpretations. The cream rises to the top, bands expand their reach and fans extend the brand by becoming part of it. 

It works. To promote the song You Came Out, for example, We Have Band shot a stop-motion video. Then they shared the building blocks (all 4815 of them), showed us how they were put together, bundled everything into a single package and spread the word tweet by tweet. Remixes, notoriety and new fans followed, and all it took was a solid creative concept, a good social ecosystem and a little guidance from W+K London (the kind of stuff we do for Dell Lounge every day). 

Smart companies could learn a thing or two from music scene pioneers. Like a great band, a strong brand inspires fans to participate so it can reach new heights. Just listen for the cues and join in. 

Let me just start by saying I admire Dustin Curtis's courage. Anyone willing to speak truth to power about a massive fail like AA.com is aces in my book.

But the medium is the message online, and imho there's just one problem with an otherwise spot-on critique. With all due respect, the choice of color (#cccccc) for inline links baffles me. Good user experience relies on an intuitive user interface. When you have to squint to read a hyperlink, UX suffers a little as a result.

Full disclosure: I don't specialize in UI or UX. But I do make the interactive content. And I value the opinions of my peers. Dustin, if you're reading this, I hope you feel the same way. Also, thanks for doing what you did. I hope your effort wins you a well-deserved new client.

About two years ago, certain people began throwing number signs in front of certain words in their tweets. The uninitiated were more than a little put off by the use of these seemingly meaningless symbols, but for some reason the twitterati were drawn like moths to a flame. And once the rest of the twit-o-sphere wrapped its mind around how hashtags work, they quickly became the preferred way to find, create and promote trending topics on Twitter.

These days, hashtags are everywhere — Facebook statuses, NPR…you name it. Some are meant for a select few (recently spotted: #whydovectorshapesremainclickablewithdirectselect). Others are clearly designed to grab everyone's attention. While organizations like #hashtags figure out cool ways to show the effects of this powerful little symbol, marketers keep trying (and, judging from efforts like MTV’s #thephone campaign, failing) to capitalize on it. Don’t even get me started on the MLM issue. 

All of this begs the question: how relevant are hashtags these days? Twitter Search now does much of the work hashtags used to do, and misguided (or malignant) efforts to use them just make people look the other way. While I’m a fan of hashtags in theory, in practice I find myself using them less and less every day.

I’d love to hear your take on the state of hashtags. Are they relevant? Annoying? Marketable? Endangered? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.