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Don't e-mail what you can blog. Don't blog what you can tweet. Don't tweet what you can DM. Don't DM what you wouldn't publish.

Or so I twittered this afternoon. It turns out that the flip side of this social media hierarchy (which I hereby dub "smierarchy") is, "don't tweet what you need a blog post to explain". And as it turns out, it does take a blog post to explain this one. So here's the explanatory blog post:

This morning at Convergence 09, Barack Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe took the stage. His message: technology helped connect people in a way that's never happened before, to elect a candidate who might never have been able to win before.

Here are my notes from the session.

Visiting someone else's place is great. You eat their food, drink their imbibables, and meet their guests.

But eventually to host a gathering at your own place takes hold. You want to choose the hors d'oeuvres, cue up the playlist and invite your own friends -- in your own home.

It's no different with blogging. True, your organization can go quite a ways in engaging the online world by commenting on third-party blogs. But if you want to be serious about joining the conversation, you'll want a place of your own: an online home for the conversations you want to have.

And while you have no more control over where those conversations ultimately lead and what other conversations may start than you do when you're hosting a party, you're the one who sets the agenda. And it's your voice that sets the tone and pace for your audience.

Internet sages are full of rules about stupid things you should never do. But like most recommendations delivered as inviolable laws, the cardinal Don'ts of life online mostly distract you from Do's that would be more rewarding. Here are some don'ts I believe in breaking, and some dos you can undertake once you've let go of these time- and worry-wasters.

There's a convergence going on: some big social and business trends that have one thing in common - the word open.

Whether it's open-source software, or enormous information repositories that are open to be accessed and sometimes even edited by anyone, or the growing requirements for transparency on the part of organizations and governments, your customers, supporters and audience are expecting you to be open to them.

Turns out it really is better to give than receive! We just handed Julie Ovenell-Carter, a.k.a. @sfuwoodwards, her brand new Flip MinoHD video camera, her prize in Social Signal's first Twitter contest.

Update & Saliva Warning: I took my iPhone in for a repair this week and was told my warranty was void because a small paper tab Apple implants in each iPhone showed the phone had been exposed to liquid. Since this phone has never gotten wet, we suspect that the moisture detector (which is just inside the dock port) was triggered by excess saliva from the kids playing Ocarina and Balloonimals, both of which involve blowing into the phone.