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I've got to admit it…I'm a bit of a Facebook junkie. I love the way I can keep in touch with friends as well as clients and business colleagues without having to dash from blog to blog, email, or if I'm feeling old-school, pick up the phone.

There have been numerous conversations in the blogosphere about how Facebook is being used as a media outlet for personal branding, for creating a sphere of influence and for marketing.

Last week, Rafat Ali from PaidContent.com reported on the speakers at the Fortune iMeme conference, saying:

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, is on the opening panel: Facebook is a technology company...media companies are about content, technology companies are about building layers in the stack so that others can build in top of it.

I thought that was a curious statement, and apparently so do a lot of other people, as Rafat Ali later noted the response from Chris DeWolfe (founder, MySpace):

Facebook is a media company: any time you are competing for eyeballs, and you are getting people’s attention, it is a media company. It is a different and unique way of consuming media.

But we all know it isn't just about consuming media, it’s about creating it as well. This week, one of the comments that resonated with me about this topic came from Mitch Joel, or one of his numerous clones. (There is no other explanation…how can one guy do so much??!). Mitch was commenting on Sebastien Provencher's The Praized Blog post Robert Scoble Is Media as well as Scoble's reply post My Facebook Secret Is Out… and noted two key points:

1. Content is media. Scoble, Sebastien, you, me and anyone else who creates content is creating media. That is the advertising. Everyone keeps searching for the ad model in Blogs and Podcasts not realizing that the content and the individual producing it are the media.

2. Personal brand. Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion had a killer post last week called, The Golden Age Of Individualism, where he states: “Individualism is as old as American ideals, though it's certainly not a global phenomenon. However with the Net Gen taking over the work force, the value of personal brands will continue rise and perhaps be a prickly force to be reckoned with. This means big changes in the workplace and a critical importance for everyone to be team players even as their stars rise online. It also means that personal brands will become unofficial spokespeople at times (perhaps involuntarily).”

Yep, that's it in a nutshell. And with the freedom of social networks like Facebook comes not only personal branding, but the very essence of branding - personal responsibility. We are fully accountable for the message we transmit via Facebook or any other web community. As social networks continue to climb in popularity and our definition of 'friend' becomes a little footloose and fancy-free, here's something to consider:

Too many people know too much about each other. Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other. There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening." (Marshall McLuhan, 1967)

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