I’m out on blogger vacation this week. The keys to TheKmiecs.com have been turned over to a few, select, awesome guest writers. The following has not been edited by me and is the work and effort of the original author. I appreciate the time and thinking that went into this post and hope you will too. Enjoy!

By Jen Beio, media planner and champion of the pursuit of internet awesomeness

I love the internet. I really do. Truly, madly, deeply.

I love it for its quiet brilliance. I mean, after LOLcats, of course.

As a self-proclaimed digital kid, I am perhaps more inclined than the average bear to jump on internet bandwagons, due partly to my age, and partly to the fact that I’m such a savvy so-and-so (I kid). As such, I often find myself defending web ideas to my suspicious circle of colleagues and friends, and am always a bit surprised to have to do so. The things I find so incredible in their simplicity tend to strike my skeptical cohorts as stalker-esque, creepy fads. Can all my Foursquare haters please stand up?

For anyone who’s unaware, Foursquare is a location-based social networking community that allows users to state their coordinates and offer helpful tips to friends and other users who might also frequent that venue. Check off items on your to-do list, earn points, win badges, and become mayor of your favorite spots by checking in there more than any other patron. Fun, right?

Last night, I found myself arguing on Foursquare’s behalf on two separate occasions. I know. I need to get a life. Anyway, both scenarios involved individuals in the advertising community, and both conversations, despite my fervent outpouring of Foursquare love, resulted only in blank stares and/or furrowed brows. What. Is up. With that.

Let’s all stop hating for a moment and contemplate what it is about Foursquare that launches it to the top of my list of quietly brilliant web innovations.

Here are the top reasons to hate on Foursquare that I’ve heard from the hater community. And, of course, the reasons I beg to differ.

1. It’s creepy.

Yes, there’s an element of weirdness to having a location feed available on the web for the masses, especially as a single female in a big city. I’m not stupid; I get that. Perhaps I will get kidnapped on the way home from my current location, and you can all have a good laugh about it (jerks). You know what? Life is creepy sometimes. And dangerous, always. This is one of those cases where I feel like the benefits outweigh the risks, so long as you’re smart about the information you share. Keep reading for more on that.

2. It’s annoying.

It’s not annoying, it’s information. Foursquare is a gold mine for consumer data. I really can’t believe that I would need to argue this to people in the industry. All pings, badges and tomfoolery aside, what Foursquare does, essentially, is give businesses a free list (a list! for free!) of digital-savvy consumers who love you enough to want to broadcast to their web community that they are a patron. These are people who carry a certain amount of digital clout that want to spread the word about you, and they are going to do it for free. And, you now have access to a list of them, what they think are the best parts about your business, and even some information about them (their Twitter handles, phone numbers, and so on). It’s a CRM-lover’s dream. How are you not excited about this?

3. Who cares?

You care! Especially all those ‘yous’ out there who are in the biz. Or, the business-owning ‘yous.’ Our job as marketers is to care. You care (a) what people do with their time (b) what they choose to tell their people they’re doing with their time and (c) when you can put your brand in front of them at the right moment in time. Not to pontificate, but if the internet is spitting out free applications that help us to gather the data that provides a foundation for our profession, it is your responsibility to care.

[A caveat: this is not to say that no-one cares. I have seen a few cool case studies of businesses who have jumped on the Foursquare train, and are riding it to Consumer-Love Station. This post about the Pit BBQ in Raleigh, for example, truly warms my heart. Kudos to you, Pit BBQ management. Consumer interaction: you’re doing it right.]

4. Why would I want to do that?

Well, this one is really up to you. I like it because it’s a game, it’s fun to do, and it gives me a tool to coordinate nights out with friends. I also like the idea of creating a database of my existence, which is why you can find me tucking seemingly trivial information into many different data-ports around the web. It seems to matter to me. Personal preference of the digital kid, I imagine. But, fun for everyone who chooses to participate, I find.

Like I said, my romantic feelings for the internet lie mainly in its outpouring of tools that unabashedly display simple, beautiful, quiet brilliance. If nothing else, I love that I’ve been able to use applications like Foursquare to build out a community of web-adoring geeks such as myself. I simply cannot wait to see what awesomeness lies ahead for those businesses that have us geeks heading up their marketing initiatives.

For all those out there who choose to remain creeped out, annoyed, apathetic and non-participating, I apologize for wasting a moment of your time.

Thanks go to my editor, Clay, for helping to un-muddle my thoughts on this one. Virtual high-five. Thanks also to Adam, for asking me to guest-post. I’m flattered, and honored.

I’m out on vacation this week. The keys to TheKmiecs.com have been turned over to a few, select, awesome guest writers. The following has not been edited by me and is the work and effort of the original author. I appreciate the time and thinking that went into this post and hope you will too. Enjoy!

Here we go again. Facebook’s in the news, and this time, it’s not Multi Level Marketers who are upset because Facebook took down an MLM program that was against their TOS. It’s many, many people, who are reacting to the Terms of Service addendum that now states that Facebook may use your information even after you delete your profile.

In monitoring the twitterverse, I was only half surprised to see the uproar from many many people. I’ve learned not to be surprised about this stuff anymore…it’s kind of like high school in that way..when one person gets upset about something, the whole school can get really out of control. But I am still confused at what the fuss is about? Are we afraid that Facebook is going to sell pictures of future celebrities dancing on a bar in their skivvies, taken when that future celeb was drunk and in college? Are we worried that artists will have their stuff resold after being posted on Facebook? When I asked the question of the twitter world, these are the responses I got. But here’s the thing. Ask Miley Cyrus about photos on social networks coming out into mainstream media. There’s no preventing it! Ask any American Idol prospect who had to take down their Myspace profiles in accordance with Fox– their pics are still found, and broadcast everywhere (remember Antonella Barba, kids? How about Frenchie and her foot fetish). And while artists have a more valid point…photos on social media sites like Facebook are so low resolution (they have to be in order to support the volume of photos on the medium) that they couldn’t REALLY be reprinted and resold. And let’s think about this for a second….do we really think that this is why FB is going in this direction? Once the uproar started, Mark Zuckerberg immediately posted his thoughts as to why the TOS were modified, saying basically that it needs to be this way to protect FB when people post information to one another: “People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them-like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on-to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.” He’s right, of course. They could be better at communicating changes, but hey, we all could be better communicators, right?

Here are my two takeaways:

1. Facebook is not trying to make a buck from your photos. They don’t give a hoot about your song that you’ve posted either. They’re not the devil. They’re a bunch of kids in their early twenties who have stumbled upon a revolution in the way people are connecting. Facebook is NOT a passing phase (at least in my opinion). It’s crossed the tipping point, and they have to be very careful now that 175 MILLION people are on there. They do need to cross every t, dot every i, and have access to everything. While we’re all thinking about our boobie photos, they may be thinking about suicide notes, and pedophilia, and all that stuff. Seriously.
2. For goodness sakes, PLEASE assume that everything you post on the internet might show up on the cover of STAR magazine one day. Okay, maybe not STAR, but assume it may land on the desk of your employer. That’s the safest way to stay happy on the internets.

Carrie Kerpen is a partner @theKbuzz, a Word of Mouth and Social Media Marketing Firm and contributor to BuzzMarketingDaily.com. She is, in fact, admittedly Facebook obsessed. Email her at carrie@thekbuzz.com or follow her on twitter @carriekerpen