I recently received an invitation to beta test the new social bookmarking app RSS feedreader, Streamy, thanks to Mashable.com (thanks, Pete!) I've been taking it for a test drive this morning, and I have to say I'm pretty impressed. Do you like the sweet Ajax user interface of Ma.gnolia, but not the slightly girly design? Then you'll like Streamy.

The interface is beautifully slick and clean, and it has truly excellent usability. The "Start" page is the typical social bookmarking "most popular" list, which appears to be personalized (possibly based on your expressed interests, or possibly based on the subscriptions you've chosen). The next navigation link takes you to your subscriptions--and this is by far the slickest and most fun to use feed-reader I've seen so far.

You can browse for subscriptions by most popular, by topic, or you can enter your favorite feeds manually. Of course, when I say "manually" you might be cringing, imagining yourself dealing with some clunky form page. Au contraire, mon frere. The Ajax pop-up is clean and simple, a joy to use, pretty much (unless you subscribe to a few dozen feeds--I didn't notice a place to import your feeds from another feedreader.) After your subscriptions are all in, your subscription page lists post excerpts in date order. You've also got a sidebar that lists your subscriptions individually--so if you want to only look at one particular feed at a time, it's simple to do so.

Clicking on the title of a post excerpt opens the full post in another nifty Ajax pop-up. There's also a "launch" button if you want to launch that particular site in a new window or tab. You can comment on posts internally within Streamy, which other Streamy users who are logged in and looking at that story can read--but it doesn't appear to post those comments outside of Streamy on the originating site.

Of course, because it's a very web 2.0 site, you can join networks, groups, and add friends. Wouldn't be much of a social bookmarking site without that. You also have the obligatory profile page, chat, and IM functionality. Drag 'n Drop sharing of stories and other media is a nice interesting touch. You can even drag another user into an IM window to create an instant chat room (although the metaphorical implications of literally dragging a friend into a chat room are more than I want to contemplate at the moment. It reminds me vaguely of being dragged into a nightclub to socialize when I really wanted to get some sleep. Ah, well.) On the whole, I think Streamy is an incredibly well-made and well-thought-out application. Kudos to the gang at Streamy for building a great tool. If you can finagle an invite to join the beta, I highly recommend it.

Much emphasis is placed on proper on-site optimization when discussing search engine optimization. While on-site optimization is important in ensuring that your company site maximizes the indexing and ranking that occurs when a search engine spider crawls your pages, a well-rounded and complete SEO plan should also include off-site efforts to increase page rank and relevance for your corporate site.

The simplest and most obvious of these efforts is to submit online press releases, or media releases, through outlets such as pr.com, prweb.com and prnewswire.com. A well-written and genuinely newsworthy media release can increase your relevance when it includes inbound links to your site. While most of these online outlets have a free service available, using the paid submittal service will ensure better positioning and can result in your release being picked up by other news organizations and aggregators, increasing the SEO value.

Another effective offsite activity is social media marketing. Getting involved in online conversations through blogs, social networking platforms, and discussion forums is a great way to not only create buzz for your organization, it can also increase your page ranks when appropriate inbound links are used.

However, it's important to make sure that the person tasked with your offsite public relations and social media marketing is well-versed in both your brand and online etiquette. Even a CEO can make serious missteps that negatively reflect on your company. A perfect example would be the recent scandal involving Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, who was discovered anonymously posting derogatory comments about a competitor in online forums and blogs.

When it comes to offline SEO activity, what you say, when you say it and where you say it are all of critical importance.

When it comes to interactive marketing, where everyone is constantly scanning for the next big thing, there's big potential everywhere, but in the words of Jerry Maguire, it's like popcorn in the pan: some pop, some don't. So lets take a look at some recent properties that had strong buzz in the last year, but didn't quite hit those high expectations.

1. Second Life. Yes, you can argue that certain specific brands were able to effectively leverage a presence in Second Life for some significant ROI, but on the whole, the platform hasn't yet lived up to the hype it received in its early days.

Why not? Because the vast majority of consumers are overtaxed trying to keep up with their first life, much less a digital second one.

2. Myspace. As with Second Life, some industries (the music industry in particular) have had great success with Myspace as a marketing platform. But other industries are rapidly losing interest in favor of its collegiate cousin, Facebook and its inviting open API.

Why not? Because most brands lack the understanding and willingness to commit time and resources to effective social network marketing. And it's just not a great fit for every company.

3. Ask.com. This time last year, industry insider buzz was pointing to Ask.com as a hot contender to seriously challenge Google in search. A year later, Ask has yet to make a serious dent in Google's search dominance.

Why not? It may be that Ask waited too long. Improved results and a snazzier algorithm isn't enough to take on Google, now that their acquisitions take them far beyond search.

4. YouTube. When Google made its historic purchase of the video portal, speculation ran wild that online video was going to completely take over interactive marketing. While video continues to grow, the pace has been decidedly slower than some expected.

Why not? The head geeks at Google are still wrapping their prodigious minds around both the copyright implications of YouTube and developing a workable revenue model. YouTube will probably live up to the buzz eventually, but the industry may have expected too much, too soon.

5. Mobile. Technological innovations that enable marketers to advertise across networks has created tremendous interest in mobile and SMS marketing in the last year, but so far advertisers have been slow to test the waters.

Why not? Considering the wide penetration cell phones and other mobile devices have, this one is probably more a matter of time than anything else. Once an effective infrastructure is in place and some key industry leaders emerge, mobile truly could be the next big thing.