A few weeks ago, Eric Goldstein, CEO of Clipmarks, invited me to his new website: Amplify. Amplify allows users to share clippings (like excerpts of text or images) much like Clipmarks, but encourages its users to comment on it and then the combined commentary and clipping are displayed together on a blog.

The uses are interesting. Amplify is a good way to quickly express an opinion on a topical issue and to share lesser known news stories. These can then be posted to Twitter, del.icio.us and/or Clipmarks through the site: maximising exposure.

The site also has a social element. You can comment on others posts and allow others to post on your ‘cliplog’, so many are ground cliplogs for specific projects etc.

WordPress MU is used so when you log-in, you face a familiar WordPress admin interface and you manage comments and users in the same fashion you manage WordPress users.

I like Amplify because it allows me to easily run a political blog (which can be seen here). I can clip stories that I want to share or discuss and write a minimal amount of opinion, but sufficiently communicate my viewpoint. I’ve even had a few complete strangers comment on my clips, and they’ve then retweeted them! It also displays retweets on the clipblog under comments.

Amplify allows users to log-in through Twitter’s OAUTH or to get their own account. Amplify, like Clipmarks, is well worth a look and is actually a really enjoyable but easy form of blogging.

Once it would have been unimaginable to earn an income solely from blogging, but people like Jason Kottke decided to. The latest form of media, one which is becoming increasingly respected, is micro-blogging (especially Twitter) so why is it that we have not seen swarms of full-time Twitterers?

Twitter is a social networking site, so its primary aim is to allow people to stay in contact with one another. This contrasts with blogging, which although is often social is more often or not commentary, advice or Hollywood gossip! The consequence is many Internet personalities use sites like Twitter to complement their other, revenue-generating online activities.

Before we ask if it’s possible to be a full-time Twitterer, we must ask if it’s possible to monetise it. Advertising on the blogosphere has used a wide-range of techniques: text links, contextual adverts, affiliate schemes in addition to more conventional approaches like banners. On Twitter, it’s more limited. Adverts can’t be contextual based on content, as posts are too short to have any ‘real’ content; text links cannot be built into posts as the site doesn’t support HTML and the 160 character limit makes it impractical to add links to tweets; and statistics aren’t provided to the user, so things can’t be charged on a CPM basis.

Sites like Be-A-Magpie suggest Twitter, does, however have the potential to be monetised, albeit at the expense of the followers. Scobles, according to Be-A-Magpie, could earn €22,657 a month. The problem is, followers would dismiss advertisement tweets and I imagine not many advertisers would be willing to make such a gamble.

Perhaps an effective way of monetising Twitter is through affiliate marketing. If popular Twitters suggest a product they like, and link to it with their affiliate ID, I’m sure they could collect a handsome commission.

Companies would also be unwilling to employ full-time Twitterers, as they’d have too much spare time (a Tweet takes but a few seconds to compose). Downing Street’s Twitterer is also responsible for their other social networking activities and I suspect much of our Prime Minister’s website.

Is full time Tweeting possible? Not until tweets become more useful than ‘I’m flying coach with a baby. I +wish+ I was in first class, but have used up all my miles. Sighs.‘ (and that somehow entertains Scoble’s 43000 followers!). Frankly, it isn’t possible to monetise tweets effectively as of yet.

Invite-only friendbinder is a website which allows you to keep track of your friends on several social networking sites. Unlike FriendFeed, these friends do not have to be members of friendbinder in order to follow them.

The site allows you to organise your friends into 5 different ‘interest levels’, so you can separate your actual friends from contacts. Friends can be added from Twitter, Digg, del.icio.us, last.fm, YouTube and Facebook and their RSS feeds can also be added; but contacts from these sites are not automatically grouped together on friendbinder (eg, I must manually tell friendbinder ‘bloggs55′ on Twitter is the same as ‘bloggs55′ on Digg).

friendbinder can be used to update Twitter and Facebook status, which is a nice addition which in essence means you do not have to go on Twitter.

I still find myself questioning the need for friendbinder when we have services like FriendFeed, Ziki and Profilactic. I guess what makes friendbinder unique is the fact you can rank friends in terms of interest. I do, however, find it annoying that so much has to be done manually on the site; whilst all contacts can be imported, accounts on different sites must be manually associated. Sadly, as our partner The Last Podcast pointed out, there are also no RSS feeds from the site itself.

friendbinder is definitely just a binder. It allows all your friends’ social activity to be collated in a central location, whilst having little social networking in itself. The one main feature is that this social activity can be filtered, which I’m sure is essential if, like me, you are following 100s of people but only frequently talk with a dozen of them.

The site, with its last.fm-like design, needs polishing and should become increasingly automated. Social networking junkies will have their uses for the site, but it unfortunately lacks support for several essential networks (such as Friendfeed).

Is social networking counter-productive? The answer must surely be yes. Patiently watching Twitter for replies to your Tweets will surely prevent you from doing work, or browsing Facebook will prevent you from preparing a report.

So why do people keep turning to social networking? I imagine for the simple reason it is fun. I have resisted joining MySpace or Facebook so I do not get addicted to them preventing me from doing work, and so MySpace doesn’t deform my HTML, but I must say I get sucked into Twitter (but I try to only occasionally check it).

I am sure I will have plenty of commenters telling me how to productively use social networking for the purposes of actually networking and advertising and I have to say well done to them. I still think it’s impractical for the average person to regularly update a site like Twitter and only people who literally work on the Internet or (in the case of 10 Downing Street) are hired to update Twitter have the necessary time to use it productively.

I even doubt having the news texted to you by the BBC through Twitter is particularly productive because you are distracted each time there’s a new headline!

Naturally, you can follow me on Twitter here or on FriendFeed if you really wish (I don’t use it).