FM recently jumped head first into the Twitter universe and it has proven to be an amazing catalyst for conversations with a wide swath of folks including industry leaders, clients, partners, authors, by-standers, and even potential competitors. In case you're wondering who's behind the FM Twitter curtain (as Shel Israel does) rest assured that it's just me, FM's humble marketing manager. Tune into our Twitter feed here.

Here are a couple of my favorites from the last several weeks:

Craig Breslawski joins FM's new York office as a Sales Coordinator. He is a recent graduate from Dartmouth College, where he studied Government and English. His previous experiences range from corporate finance to legislative advocacy for small farms and rural communities. In his spare time, Craig enjoys finding new music, running around Manhattan, and traveling. Welcome to FM!

Lisa Komoto joins the FM team as a Sales Coordinator after two years in retail management with Macy's. Prior to that, she received her degree in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley (go Bears!). She spends her free time cheering on Cal football, getting lost in Golden Gate Park, and finding new places to eat in San Francisco. Welcome to FM, Lisa!

In conjunction with a completely revamped self-serve ad platform, FM today announced the Online Marketing Ideas Exchange. This is for all of you SMB marketers out there. Check it and get involved. Feel free to ask questions, offer advice, and read special content from FM authors like Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Trends and more.

Jon Ohliger joins the FM team as a Technical Producer. Jon spent his time between college and FM updating the internal framework of a growing real estate firm in New Jersey. He graduated from Grinnell College with a degree in General Science concentrating in math and enough English classes to be a closeted English major. When he's got a few spare moments he likes to compete in bridge tournaments around the country, fight people with foam weapons, roll d10s into the wee hours, study hand-drumming, ski, and find something cool he hasn't learned yet. Video games slip in every so often. Welcome, Jon!

Ashley Berg comes to FM's San Francisco office as a Sales Coordinator from Conde Nast Publications as the former sales assistant to Architectural Digest and Cookie Magazine. Originally from Orange County, CA, Ashley is embracing her newly found "Norcal" side after just a year in San Francisco. As a graduate of Cal Poly SLO Ashley looks forward to learning more about FM through Cal Poly's highly evolved "learn by doing" method. Ashley is thrilled to be joining the FM team and looks forward to getting to know everyone. When not at FM Ashley enjoys running outdoors, playing with/cleaning up after Sue (chubby bulldog), and spending time with friends and family. Welcome, Ashley!

Trisia Panos, a Chicago native, joins FM's Chicago office as a Sales Coordinator. Her experience includes interning for two PR firms; Cramer-Krasselt in Chicago and Barclay Communications in Scottsdale, AZ. Most recently Trisia spent 2 plus years at media agency OMD in Chicago– handling several accounts such as JCPenney, Cars.com, Northwestern Mutual and Bosch. Trisia graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in Journalism and Mass Communications. Well traveled and fluent in Greek and Spanish, she also enjoys writing, word puzzles, dancing, reading, water skiing and traveling. Hailing from a big Greek family Trisia has 42 cousins! Trisia is excited to work with a talented staff and learn more about online marketing! Welcome, Trisia!

Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner, hit the nail on the head in this article by CNET's Caroline McCarthy. One of FM's guiding principals has always been, "to connect superior conversational media sites, brand marketers and influential audiences in an ongoing conversation that feeds everyone involved." All FM campaigns are created with an eye toward providing value to the consumer as well as the marketer.

From CNET's The Social:

Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner, has projected that over 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with Web sites will have undertaken some kind of online social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes. But, he added in an interview with CNET News, 50 percent of those campaigns will be classified as failures...

"(Businesses) will rush to the community and try to connect, but essentially they won't have a mutual purpose, and they'll fail," Sarner said. By a "mutual purpose," he means a way to serve both the company putting out the campaign and the audience interacting with it: finding that balance is not easy.

Not really. FM's own Director of Author Recruiting, Bill Brazell, flies the FM colors above Tanzania's Ngorongoro crater. Bill and his lovely bride, Victoria, are on their honeymoon. Congratulations Bill!

Technorati recently released their 2008 State of the Blogosphere report. Richard Jalichandra, Technorati's CEO, discusses the findings of the report, and his thoughts on the blogosphere in general, in the piece below. He immediately points something out that we've noticed as well - the line between blogs and other more traditional forms of digital media is becoming thinner and thinner as each adopts characteristics of the other.

From iMedia Connection:

iMedia: Four of the top entertainment sites today are blogs. Is there a difference between blogs and regular sites anymore? Will blogs morph into looking like other sites and vice versa in terms of design, staff, ad sales?

Richard Jalichandra: We're already seeing this. It's getting harder and harder to define. Many mainstream media sites are adding blogs and blogging styles into their mix, many of the larger blogs are taking on features of mainstream sites and some blogs have transformed into full-blown mainstream media sites themselves with editorial staffs and business functions. Also, some people use their social networking profiles to blog, and how do you categorize microblogging like Twitter? Think continuum versus category.