My family and friends know I'm a pseudo-geek.  I'm not a real geek because I may know about things like Facebook before they do, but I couldn't fix a computer if my life depended on it. Anyway, as a pseudo-geek I fill the role that all consultants love: I'm no expert but some people think I am because I know more than they do.  Lately most of the questions I've gotten have been about things that could loosely be defined as social media.

As an example I get asked: "What's this Twitter thing? How does it work? Why in the heck would anyone use it?"  Inevitably the questions evolve into conversation and culminate with the ultimate statement-question: "I'm too busy to pay attention to this crap, but (insert name of someone they respect/fear here) thinks its important so I guess I have to.  How can you tell which one of these things really matter and how do you keep track of it all?"  That's when I lay out my own rules for the road:

1. Find your sage. To determine which cool new thing to pay attention to I track people whose job it is to know these things and test the products/services they seem to be high on.  My number one resource is Fred Wilson and not too far behind him is Rex Hammock.  They don't know me from Adam, but I read their stuff religiously and pay close attention.
2. Be patient. Usually the things that techies are high on don't seem too relevant at first.  Facebook and Twitter seemed pretty useless to me for quite a while because no one I knew was using them, but when more friends/colleagues started using them, and the network effect kicked in, they became as valuable as any online tool I have with the exception of that insipid creature known as email.  Still, it took a long time and I essentially just monitored the services until they took off.
3. Use appropriately. I'm reminded of this by an article in Fortune about LinkedIn.  I've always thought of LinkedIn as useful, but somewhat stodgy in terms of my social media universe and that remains true.  So what?  It functions very well and does what it's supposed to do and I use it for all the tasks I need to accomplish when I'm wearing my "professional Jon" hat.
4. Don't be afraid to cut the cord or limit your menu.  I've abandoned more of these things than not.  Off the top of my head I can name FriendFeed, Tumblr and MySpace and I'm certain there's ten times that many that I can't remember. I'm not saying that these services don't serve lots of people very well, they just never reached a critical use point for me and there's nothing wrong with that.  Do this relentlessly or you'll soon be overwhelmed.
5. Try not to be the last one at the party.  Time really is our most precious commodity so don't waste it on something that is bringing you minimal returns.  I actually used MySpace quite a bit a few years ago because there were friends and family members using it and I found it a great way to stay in touch.  But they started leaving and all MySpace seemed to offer were really ugly pages managed by local escorts and so I said "adios." 
6. Don't be afraid of the rebound.  Sometimes you stop using a product or service because it seems fairly useless and then out of nowhere everyone seems to be talking about it.  Before you dismiss it as simply uninformed n00bs talking out of their nether regions go back and check it out.  You might find that the service has been vastly improved, or has added a component that makes it more useful, and you shouldn't let your ego get in the way of using it.  I know this sounds a lot like 'be patient' but really it's about rediscovering something you actually abandoned (truth be told I did this with LinkedIn).
7. If your boss (customer, significant other, kids, etc.) uses it then use it too.  You may think it's stupid, but if someone whose opinion truly matters to you is using it then you probably need to at least be up to speed.  You may not give a rats you-know-what about Facebook, but if your kids are using it don't you at least want to know how it works?  Same goes if your boss keeps spouting off about the great research potential provided by LinkedIn.  Nothing says you have to be an uber-user, but it doesn't take too much effort to get enough of an understanding to keep from looking like the kid who still had an 8-track player in his car in 1991. 

Simple, huh?  Feel free to disagree, add or delete.