Neither of my top clients —  the paying nor the offspring variety — are doing anything on Twitter or Facebook over the next three weeks. So why should I? What can I learn from the online community that I shouldn’t be learning from the people and magic and family that surrounds the holidays in my own home? And what is it about my world that is so important and exciting that I need to disengage from it to broadcast to the world? I’m guessing, not much.

My motivation last year was a $100 credit to Anthropologie from La Gringa if I was able to keep the vow. I don’t have a carrot yet this year. I better think about that.

Now there are logistics to keeping me completely off of Facebook and Twitter for over three weeks. I don’t have self-restraint, so I’m going to have to remove all temptation. Here is how I plan to do it:

1. Remove all social media monitoring tools from my desktop (this is no small task).

2. Remove Tweetdeck and Twitterlator Pro from my iPhone.

3. Go to Twitter.com and set my preferences to not receive any alerts to my mobile device (that’s cheating!)

4. Go to Facebook and set my email alerts to none.

5. Remove FB app from my iPhone.

6. Leave a post/tweet of the day I will be returning (this is mostly for work stuff)

What do you think? Think you could do it? I challenge you to try.

I’ve used code names for my kids and self for years. I worked hard to keep my LinkedIn separate from my blog. I put my online personas into buckets: Facebook/LinkedIn in one bucket; Blog and Twitter and Flickr in another bucket. I went so far as to set search alerts for my name with my user names and cross reference the searches with my kids names — all for the sake of being both transparent and private. But somewhere along the way, the web got smarter than me. Oh, it just took one link to here or there, one re-tweet, one comment that used my real name to put it all together. Mark 2010 as the year that the Internet truly began to never forget.

The biggest problem with working in online communities has always been transparency — both the lack of it, the strive for it and the freakout when it comes to pass. It’s true that most people I know online know me as Garza Girl, and when I introduce myself I expect the blank stares, but as soon as I use my online name, the recognition comes. But the yucky side of that is that if you know me online, you know my dirt, because it is there in the cloud, where I, like so many others, have the false security that I’m writing anonymously. Transparency as we know it is dead because if it has to be staged, hidden behind user names and goofy profile pictures, then it’s not really transparent. Online transparency has a new norm: bare all or someone else will.

My someone else day has arrived.

I’ve been selected to be one of 15 iVoices for NBC/Universal’s iVillage. This means attaching my real name to my real face to my real life. This means being a face of a two-mommy family. This means the world will know that I feed my kids organically to prevent my daughter from having early puberty. This means that my crossed-eyes can’t be hidden. It means being transparent about my opinions on parenting to the world, not just in my backyard between like-minded friends. It means my exes — from the super insane thief to the one that got away — will be able to access me in all my 10-lb weight gain glory.

This move toward transparency also means that I will be able to work on stories that I am passionate about. It means I will put my image fears to the forefront of challenging myself to look in the mirror and into the camera. It means I’ll be able to offer a peek at what it’s like to be a two-mommy family. Being transparent means I’ll have to keep myself in check (can’t rant at the kid’s teacher anymore), keep other’s privacy in check, keep myself open to failure when it comes. It means, above all, that I’ll be living externally and that my role is to ensure I’m living that same life privately — the best I possibly can.

Until Groupon. And SavvySource. And Fresh somethingruther, Daily Deals, Juice, Mamapedia, Group Swoop, Yipit Do it buy it fry it try it. Oy.

Unexpectedly, I have become a complete Groupon junkie. And likely, so have you. There is going to have to be some consolidation in the space. And if I were the czar of all things group buying I would focus on the following four things:

1. Think Vertical. It makes no sense to use similar technologies to accomplish the same tasks. There are even a zillion white label group buying softwares to start your own knockoff.  Rather than reinvent the invented, I’d encourage companies that have a niche group buying model like App Sumo (a group buying site for software) to build out their niches. If GroupOn is local, verticals can go deep with the same customer’s targeted needs (without the local spin).  App Sumo could, for example, use their audience to leverage new niche buying: Software, Hardware, Apps, and IT. There you go. Own the vertical space.Forget about local if you’ve got niche.  From there, go category specific. Vertical consolidation has got to be one of the first changes in group buying.

2. Think Consumer. The downfall of many daily deals is that they are hyper local but broad. Although GroupOn went heavy into hitting every major world city (nearly 40) and close to 100 US cities, they haven’t yet leveraged their database to highly target user purchasing. There’s room in a rapidly saturating market to hit customers with what they want and be able to repeatedly deliver for them. Quality has to count. Be sure to vett out your customers well. At some point, Mamapedia is going to run out of Moms in San Jose who want deals on spa treatments at every place on El Camino Real Blvd. There’s only so much spa a girl can take. But, however, if Mamapedia refocused to go completely postal on offering me things that are (a) in my spending range for instant gratification/POS purchases  (b) hit me with variety (I’m not just a mom!)  (c) was both local and virtual and (d) only offered the good stuff and weeds out the crappy deals for me, then you’d have me as a loyal customer. So loyal, in fact, that I might just unsubscribe from Living Social. Make me a rockstar purchaser and I’ll return the favor.

3. Put real money into editorial. Voice is one of the most important things to look for in what we see next from group buying. This isn’t for marketing 101. Targeting isn’t enough. If you’re going to go vertical and focus on customer retention (even if the price point is lower), then you’ve got to speak to me. This is a relationship, afterall. You have my credit card, my attention, my inbox, my loyalty. You speak with me every single day. That’s more than I speak to my mother. Many of the leaders in daily deals use generic communication tactics. Boo! Take cues from sites like BuyWithMe who write unique copy and not PR submitted blahblah.  It’s all in the positioning, the communication and the delicate yet direct call to act.

4. Think customer. So the bad news in group buying is that it might be a deal for you, but in general, it’s no bargain for  the company (usually small business) offering the deal. The marketing dollars are well-spent and putting companies on the map is important. Once qualified, think about how to help the customer. How are they going to make real money here? What’s the package you offer them to help with user retention?  What should they be prepared for? You are likely taking a small business’ Yellow Pages marketing dollars. It better be worth it. Be a customer care advocate. Help set expectations. My friends at The Grapevine Wine and Bistro lost money on their absolutely smashing Groupon deal from last year. There were over 1000 people who bought-in on the deal. It was a financial hit for them and wasn’t a new customer acquisition play either. They’ve learned and now are part of Groupon “G” points, ofering an ongoing discount rather than a one-off daily deal. Ace Hardware also  took a hit too when they learned their computer systems couldn’t handle the Groupon couponing. They spent more money in getting their cash registers able to accept the Groupons without fraud than they did in income for the deal. What can you to to be fully customer focused to help customers become evangelists?

Consolidation in the group buying space is certain. Watch for key players to swoop in — eBay is running a good, but simple daily deals site that’s getting some traction. I’d expect Yelp to develop something here soon. I was surprised they went with the Foursquare direction before the daily deals, especially considering the controversy with their sales teams. Keep an eye on Merchant Circle, the online small business tool (advertising, ratings, blogs, community) for merchants to reach local customers. An acquisition for MC would be likely and beneficial to their model.

My existing group buying deals include: Zip lining, Kayak lessons for fun, Empire Tap Room, Edna Ray and Habana restaurants, Ace Hardware, A & I Books Online and A Work of Heart for creativity, One Month at Club One Fitness + 60 Min Massage and waxing services for body, The Gap and Bella James for clothes. My total savings to-date have been over a thousand dollars; my total purchases have been around $300.

I have no idea how long I’ve been on Facebook. A long time. I’ve been a power user (Scramble games in the afternoon, stalk ex-boyfriends at night), to a casual engager (messages with old high school classmates that hated me back then, but seem to be excited to know me now). I’ve ditched Facebook completely for months on-end. I’ve used it for work, for clients and for self-promotion. I’ve used it as a voyeur, a supporter, a loneliness killer. Facebook is in world-domination-mode, and there is very little anyone can do to stop its momentum. But, we can curb our own.

I believe Facebook owes us the one thing we can’t get back: Time.

Here are my three product ideas for Facebook that focus specifically on helping us all curb our #fb obsession:

1. Self Timer. Set FB self timers so that you get logged out after X amount of time and cannot log back for Y amount of time. Just think: self-controls for the un-self-controlled. I’d allow myself a half-hour, with a forced 12-hour logout.

2. Give me a way to consolidate down my friends. Afterall, those of us who’ve been using the product long enough have added many people over the years we don’t really need anymore. Or, like me, FB is strictly personal now and not meant for workplace banter. Give users the ability to view, multi-delete and, ultimately, put friends into lists without having to do it one-by-one. That would save me time and get my people all sorted out. While you’re at it, FB could — and should — allow us to download our address books into a .CSV file.

3. Allow us to self-regulate spam and spammers. It’d be helpful to know who was a blabber, a spammer, repost-freak-o-matic. It would save a lot of time if the community was allowed to rank posts — display weighted versions. I know Most Popular is supposed to do that, but it’s not helpful or time saving. Give us the chance to see only truly relevant content. Oh, and if something is really spam, it would be very helpful to just go ahead and get rid of it for us.

At some point (and past the 2011 IPO, right @gseevers?), Facebook is going to have to become a time saver, not time waster. It’s going to have to be serviced-based, it will have to have an easy way to find good nuggets of information, and weed through the junk for us. They’ll have to find a way to let us utilize our own address books for efficiency in our offline lives.