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When you think of services offering to get you more fans, followers, and friends on social media sites, a few words come to mind: spammy, scammy, and sad. Purchasing fans is taking the easy way out. Instead of building up a community of followers who actually appreciate what you (or your company) has to say, you can give off the appearance of popularity with a store-bought set of fans. While no one in their right mind will come out and say that the social media "marketing" services that deliver followers and fans are worthwhile, the truth is that many people and businesses are using them anyway, even if they won't admit it. But can any of these services really be trusted?

Do you jokingly refer to yourself as an "app addict?" That is, are you someone so obsessed with your mobile phone applications that you've filled numerous screens full of apps, play with them anytime you have 5 minutes to spare and sleep next to your phone just so it can be the first thing you grab in the morning? While there haven't been any studies yet on the impact of mobile phone application use and health, USA Today recently ran an article practically dubbing "app addiction" a real thing. "What is app addiction doing to people's health?, the article asked. What indeed?, we wonder. How about nothing at all?

(Hint: It's Not FriendFeed)

Robert Scoble just admitted to spending 7 hours per day in FriendFeed. It's easy to see why. The more you explore that service, the more you find, and the deeper you fall down into the rabbit hole that is the social web. It's probably one of the most interesting and powerful social sties that we've seen develop over the past year. Yet it, like many other of today's social web services, seems to be a somewhat incomplete vision of what a real social web could be.