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Imagine yourself preparing to go to a "cocktail party". For some this might increase one's anxiety knowing you'll be in a social scene and will need to spark or join conversations with strangers. Others might look forward to the open and loose environment and be excited about meeting new people and grabbing a drink.

In contrast the 'club meeting' is comfortable, familiar and your status in the group is pretty well entrenched. There are the leaders, contributors, nay-sayers, followers, etc. A lot of people like this familiarity and do well, plus you get a few sodas here, ice if you are lucky.

Cocktail Parties Are for Closers
My take is cocktail parties takes preparation, time and energy to be successful. I find that 70% of the great conversations I get in with people at events are outside the actual event subject matter topic. It's current events, music, books, sports, celebrities, TV shows, movies, family stories, etc.

Years ago I discovered a magazine (yes an actual physical object that can be sent to you through the mail) that plugged me into being comfortable at any cocktail party. It is The Week magazine. It's a weekly publication that covers everything I need to know about to have a relevant and meaningful conversation: the best columns, snippets of news from around the world, people, gossip, cartoons, health and science, arts, books, stage, music, film, leisure, travel, properties, consumer, obits and business.

I took to reading The Week like it was my job. My wife and I actually fight over it when it arrives. Makes for some funny moments.

Club Meetings are a Bore
Put that in contrast to club meetings that I participate in, and to be honest, I can show up, sit in the back of the room, check my email, talk to one person just to have an alibi that I was there and no one cares. The fact that I showed up counts (and is the requirement to stay in the club), but my participation level didn't require me to prepare and be sharp.

Jack and Coke Please
So as usual I agree with Seth. The web is like a cocktail party. You never know with whom you might strike a conversation with or what topics might resonate with you. So being prepared, well read and having a good understanding of relevant, current topics will go a long way to your enjoyment of the web.

Now, if I could only get someone to buy me a Jack and Coke and talk about Pearl Jam, The John Adams HBO Series, The Rockies, heliskiing and biodiesel - that would make a perfect night.

Let start with the fact that social media is constantly changing,  evolving and it requires the tenacity to put oneself out there and try new things. There's Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Flickr, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Yelp, Reddit and now FriendFeed, Viddler, TubeMogul, SocialThing and the list is - you guessed it ENDLESS.

Some honesty here, I'm writing this post while on vacation and just yesterday, there was a good set of waves on the beach and my 8-year-old daughter was contemplating boogie boarding. It was scary for her imaging doing it as she was looking out at the surf crashing down. I found my self encouraging her by saying, "The best things in life are the thrills of new experiences." She agreed, grabbed the board and went boggying. She loved it.

Last night my son picked the book Green Eggs and Ham as the bedtime story and when reading it I thought of Josie braving the waves and trying new things, only to find that she really loved it.

For me, I often get fatigued by the thought of trying to manage yet another new social media service or network, but the fact is once I dive in and experience it, I usually enjoy it tremendously.

So as the good Dr. Seuss says: "How do you know you don't like, if you've never even tried it?" 

The name for the blog hit me when I researching different approaches to marketing via Facebook. At one point I had spent about two hours reading articles and blogs, downloading eBooks, watching videos, looking at pictures, cruising through online groups and when it was all done, I lifted my head had not the faintest clue what path took me to all this information and I thought to myself: "This is a frack'n endless wormhole, once you start you can literally go on forever."

For me, that statement was dead on. That is how it all works online. You like one individual's blog and their take on a subject, then that person references a post by someone else, you venture over to the referenced blog and there you are adding that blog's RSS feed to your reader. 

Beyond the links going back-and-forth between blogs, links act like wormholes to other social media universes. One blog links to a video on YouTube, or another takes you into a definition on Wikipedia - which then links to a fan site in Facebook, which takes you to someone's profile and then to their Twitter feed.

The biggest mistake marketers make is looking at social media as one homogeneous universe, when in fact each universe has it own unique elements, reasons for existence and community laws.

Immersion in these worlds can be tricky, confusing and sometimes just a total waste to time.

Consider this blog my Captian's Log from my journey through the wormholes.