Today, December 24th:

Ron Samuelson, 36, is still smarting after being unfriended a month ago. The chief executive of jewelry retailer Samuelson’s Diamonds Inc. in Baltimore, Md., tried to view the profile of one of his Facebook friends — only to find his access was limited because they weren’t friends anymore.

Insulted, Mr. Samuelson wondered if his supposed friend, also a jeweler, feared his profile would give away competitive information, or if he had done it by accident.

It wasn’t long before the missing friend resurfaced, this time requesting to join a private Facebook group Mr. Samuelson had created for jewelers to network with each other. Still hurt, Mr. Samuelson says he hesitated before approving his request, but ultimately “chose to take the high road.” He says he would never get in the habit of unfriending people himself. “Diplomatically, it’s probably not the right thing to do,” says Mr. Samuelson, who has 466 friends on Facebook.

Mr. Samuelson declined to name the fellow jeweler. “I don’t want to burn any bridges,” he says. “He may be a future business contact.”

The reporter had run across one of Ron’s blog posts awhile back, “Unfriended on Facebook: Compliment or Diss?” Guess it does pay to just… blog. Who knew!

We love social media. It’s a way to have community across many miles, and to connect with customers who we’d never otherwise hear of. ‘Social Media’ might be a new term to you (certainly it was at a time to all of us,) so I’ll explain what I mean.

Wikipedia says,

Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.

That’s pretty much it. Social media services let us share information using the internet. Unlike a blog (like this) or email, they are a common place - a website usually - where discussion takes place. Sort of like those Roman forums. (Unsurprisingly, one of the earliest social media services, which is still around, is called a forum.)

Now, most services focus around being able to communicate quickly, and to be able to get a ‘community’ view of everyone you’re connected to. That is, you will be able to see a summary of what your friends have been saying or doing. All services nowadays have privacy settings that allow things you do to be restricted or even private. Many services also double as publishing tools, allowing your updates or posts to be viewable and searchable across the web.

I’ve used a number of these in my day, and they vary greatly in popularity and in features. Some that are around now include Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Bebo, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Identi.ca, Plurk, Hi5!, Mashable, Orkut, Friendster and quite many more. (For a list of popular social networks, this is a good place to look.) Some sites that weren’t social networks became so over time (Flickr, YouTube) and there are even aggregation services (FriendFeed, Ping.fm) that allow you to send or see posts or updates from different social networks in one place.

As for actual daily usage, there aren’t great statistics yet, but there are in almost all cases dedicated users of all of these networks. How do you figure out what network to get on? Usually you get invited by a friend. Because, that’s why you’re on there - to communicate. Services like facebook and orkut offer ‘groups’ which represent common interests among their users, and even more you can create ‘events’ and send invitations through the service. Usually you get updates of your choosing through email, because perhaps you don’t log in all the time.

The thing that is most interesting to us, and even as customers of others, is the ability to express interests. Sometimes you come to a web site and you see a banner ad - maybe it’s for computer servers. But whatever it is, it is rarely something you’re looking for or even interested in. Most of what annoys us about ads - junk mail is all about this - is that it is all about stuff we don’t want or couldn’t care less about. However, with the ability to express interest in things either by writing out a series of interests or by making one’s self a ‘fan’ of different products or businesses or people - it allows advertisers themselves to stop wasting time on people who don’t want their product anyway. And believe me, never seeing another ad for male enhancement (at least until I’m 60) sounds good indeed.

Mostly what’s in it for all of us is connectedness. Plus, for us men out there, something that automatically reminds you when somebody’s birthday is coming up saves us a lot of trouble. (Now if it could only remind us of anniverseries.) I don’t know that they are the center of our political and social life (yet) but they certainly have shown themselves to be anything but a fad.

The only question that remains at the end of the day is, which ones will stand the test of time? Recent news suggests that the social media trend is lasting, but some services are going to either be changing or disappearing for good.

What’s my favorite service? Easy, compadre: it’s Twitter, hands-down. Ron’s a big fan, too.

Have a great holiday, folks.

Hi Everyone,

I’m Ron Samuelson, third generation here at Samuelson’s Diamonds. This is my first post on our company blog. Please check out my personal blog, RambleOnRon, for well, more personal stuff. Anyway, I want to talk about what I look for in a diamond when I’m buying in order to help you when it’s your turn to look at some stones. I was reading a great article about Francois Curiel, head of Christie’s international jewelry division. He talks about how the financial crisis impacts diamonds, large diamonds in particular. What really struck me the most is what he says here:

Question: What makes a stone great?

Answer: “Its ideal proportions, its life and whether it talks to you or not. We had a group of young gemological students come to our New York viewing in October. We sat them behind the showcases, like real professionals, so that they could examine the diamonds. What struck me was that the first thing they did when they picked up a stone was to loupe it. I smiled because this is what I did when I started in the business and this is what all gemological schools teach you to do. When one gets a bit older, the loupe comes second and one first looks at the diamond in one’s hand. Do I like it? Even though the proportions might not be perfect by GIA [Gemological Institute of America] standards, do I want to own this stone? Ten people look at a gem, 11 opinions. So, what makes a stone great? Your eye and appreciation of it.”

This really hits home to me because we have so many customers who are very concerned about what the stone looks like on paper- the depth, table, girdle, culet, since they read so much about these factors online. Well, guess what? They don’t mean anything. You’re buying a diamond, not a piece of laminated paper. Look at the beauty of the stone, how it reflects light, what it says to you. Here at Samuelson’s, we buy diamonds, not paper.

Take a look at this video of Francois Curiel auctioning a massive 100-carat diamond at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong that sold for a whopping $6 million.

Christie’s Auction 101 Carat Diamond from Samuelson’s Diamonds on Vimeo.

Who am I? I’m Samuelson’s Director of Technology, Garth Ogle. Pleased to meet ya.

It’s interesting to come into industries which are typically very distant from the hi-tech world, and help them make use of the newest technology. My end of this deal has typically been the internet, web design and development, and with Samuelson’s my role has been mostly that.

I have to say I’ve been lucky, as when I arrived a half a year ago, we were already well into the action. The guys were already on Facebook and had created groups for their interests, and were involved in other services like LinkedIn.

Wordpress, when you need to publish something, anything...

By the by, this blog runs on a delightful piece of software called Wordpress. I would suspect (though my research powers fail me) that a good 25% of blogs are running on it. It’s pretty simple for those of you who don’t know. You go to Wordpress. You register. You make a new blog. Then, you log in and write what’s going on with you, and press ‘publish’. Basically no technical skills involved.

Anyway, I’ll be posting on topics relating to my expertise. Don’t worry - I’ll keep it interesting.

We know what you’re going to say - everyone’s got a blog these days - and without a doubt, it’s true. So there’s no real great excuse for another one.

But (stay with me now) we took a look at our events page - you might’ve seen it - and realized that it had not been updated in perhaps a year, despite the fact that new events had come around. Now, we realize that the point of our website is to be useful - and it’s easy to see how that kind of page wouldn’t be very useful…

It just so happens that in the past year, we’ve seriously expanded our presence on the internet, including on the now-ubiquitous social networks facebook, myspace, linkedin, and twitter. Ron even started his own blog, Ramble on Ron. We decided that with our current website, there was no way we could keep our customers abreast of recent developments, whether they be events, press releases, or just happenings around the Baltimore area.

So that’s where this blog comes in. You can even use the feature to the left (newsletter) to get this stuff in your email (if you’re so inclined.) Watch this space for important news - well, as important as we can make it, anyway.

The sidebar on the right has all kinds of links - in case you’ve got some spare time you’d like to use - both about us and about this blog itself.

Thanks, and have a great day.