And I caved...

I feel a need to explain the reason I finally caved to Facebook and Twitter since I've been holding out for about five years (just two for Twitter).

I cover the business beat at the paper, and many of the business owners I talked to have started using social networking sites to promote their business — especially since they don't have many advertising dollars.

Since I like to cover all my bases, I thought it would be irresponsible of me not to set up social networking pages of my own, then and check out what South Shore businesses were doing. From a preliminary investigation, it appears that Twitter is great if you want to find people heading to town, and to provide recommendations for them. One of the casino reps I talked said she's followed up with a handful of people who she contacted on Twitter and found they sought her advice. Facebook is great to build a network of fans, and appeals to an older, educated demographic. MySpace is good for younger people, who might not have gone to college, and also has lots of pages for gangs, bars, clubs and musicians (for the record, I did not get a MySpace account. I just used Jensen's login).

All in all, it should be an interseting article when it comes out — probably in Saturday's edition.