Mashable reports that Facebook will now let expectant parents add their unborn children to friends and family listings.

The last time I felt this T-boned by digital news was when I started seeing stories about brides and grooms tweeting their weddings from the altar.

If you’re tweeting your proposal or creating a Facebook page for your zygote, you’ve fallen way over the edge. Seriously, it’s probably time for an intervention.

… which should not take place via Skype, by the way.

Here’s an email that popped into my inbox yesterday:

We want to reach out and share information about the Technorati Technology and Blogging Channels.  We are specifically reaching out to technology writers/bloggers who may be interested in contributing articles to this area. The posts can be anything related to technology including: trending news, technology/gadget/app reviews, opinion pieces, commentaries, and anything related to the technology industry.

To get signed up to contribute, simply complete this interest form by clicking here. We’ll rush your approval within a few hours and get you set up to begin publishing on the site.

Additional benefits to writing with Technorati:

• Millions of pageviews per month.
• Articles can be cross posted on your personal site/blog after launching on Technorati.
• Monetize your articles through AdSense.
• Work with a seasoned editorial team.
• Most important – have fun, showcase your work and be part of a fantastic community/site!

We certainly hope you will consider writing with us.

Among the benefits not listed: getting paid by Technorati for developing content for their site. I’m reminded of Harlan Ellison’s oft-stated philosophy about this sort of thing:

The amateurs are the ones who give their stories away, because they want to be recognized; and that”s fine, I suppose, if they want to be patsies, but then when the time comes for a publisher to pay, the well has been poisoned, and the publisher says, “Well, everybody else gave us their story. Why do you want a fee?” And I say, well, Cowboy, just because everybody else is a simp, jumped off the cliff, and paid you for the privilege, doesn’t mean I”m going do it. I”m a pro, mudduhfugguh, and you can prey on the ignorance and hayseed naivete of these hungry fish, but not me. Pay me!

Okay, here’s the scenario: You’re in charge of blogger outreach for Brand X.

Now, let’s put aside all the questions of identifying the proper bloggers and approaching them one-on-one vs. a mass mailing and offering them appropriate news and all the rest of it. For the sake of this post, we’ll assume you have all those issues covered.

Let’s further assume you’re engaging bloggers in some sort of a product sampling program for Brand X.

Okay, now let’s look at two possible approaches:

(1) You send the blogger your product sample and ask them to try it and comment.

(2) You send the blogger your product sample along with an eight-page document from the Brand X legal department containing nearly 4,000 words of legalese that they need to read and sign before they can receive your product, said legalese to include language regarding Web site liability, expectations of what and how the blogger is to post, how the Brand X trademarks can and can’t be used, how often the blogger is to also post to Facebook and Twitter and more — all capped off with a hearty “This Agreement, including any and all Schedules and other attachments to this Agreement, which are hereby incorporated by reference into this Agreement, constitutes the entire agreement between myself and [company] with respect to the subject matters of this Agreement and supersedes all prior agreements, understandings, negotiations and discussions, whether written or oral, with respect to the same subject matter.”

I’m not joking about (2) above. Pretty much this exact situation crossed my path this morning from a company that is otherwise superlative and smart in so many ways. By the way, that “hearty” language is presented verbatim, and the email accompanying the 4,000-word document included language that said: “You MUST use this if you work with any individual bloggers.  We know most mom bloggers will be intimated by a LOA but Legal did a good job of making this as short as possible.”

Okay, so you know most bloggers will be intimidated … which means most bloggers won’t bother giving you the exposure you otherwise would have received … so why, exactly, are you doing this?

I gotta say: If I’m a blogger (hey, wait: I am!), I’m telling any company that does this to take a hike. I don’t need this kind of a paperwork headache, and I have tons of companies offering me all kinds of free stuff anyway.

And if I’m a social media agency who works with bloggers (hey, wait: I am!), my message to any company who asks me to implement this sort of thing is: If you’re expecting me to use this paperwork with every blogger, then also expect to get a tiny fraction of the coverage you’d otherwise get.

(Oh, and when I contact the bloggers, I’m totally disavowing connection to said paperwork, apologizing profusely for it, agreeing with them that it’s ridiculous, and my pitch to them necessarily changes from “This is a great thing, check it out” to “You’re right, this company is nuts, but try to look the other way, the paperwork isn’t really all that bad, and give the product a try.” Anyone else think this might have a tiny effect on the earned media won via blogger outreach efforts?)

A ton of legalese may be called for when you’re a legal department looking to set blogging guidelines for salaried employees, but bloggers aren’t your salaried employees. They’re press. They have no obligation to you or your products, and asking them to sign a 4,000-word legal document to tweet about how great your product is may very well be the height of social media absurdity.

Takeaway for marketers: Ask yourself, seriously: Why in the world would you want to intimidate the very people you’re hoping will provide you with positive word of mouth?

I see posts like this all the time: 60 Social Media Tools and Platforms You May Have Missed. They deliver a comprehensive laundry list of all sorts of stuff that, if you take the time to investigate them all, will suck your day away and leave you incapable of getting anything else done.

Now, I don’t want to come across looking like I’m dumping on COMMScorner — it’s an excellent blog, and if you don’t have it in your RSS reader you should. But seriously, beyond these sorts of posts serving as link bait, is there anyone who reads a post like this who takes the time to explore all 60 tools and platforms? And if so, do they have an actual paying job with a boss and/or clients? Do they ever sleep?

On the other hand, there need to be places where emerging tools and platforms can get some attention and, if they’re worthwhile, some traction. And if you scour the list of 60, odds are you’ll find one or two that will be useful.

Maybe that’s simply the curse of the digital lifestyle, that no matter how much time you spend online investigating new tools and platforms and tactics and techniques and such you’ll never be able to catch up with everything that’s happening. Maybe a bad case of SNF is simply an occupational hazard.

Or maybe there’s some sort of happy medium that can be achieved. Like the elusive work-life balance, maybe there’s an online-offline balance to which digital professionals can aspire.

If you find it, please let me know. I’m still lookin’.

Take a look at any given day’s headlines in the world of social media, search engine optimization and online marketing and you’ll see plenty of stories like these:

Google Changes How Twitter Appears In Search Results

Google’s Algorithm Tweaks Pushed Down “Two-Thirds” of Yahoo’s Contributor Content

10 Tips For Marketing On Redesigned Facebook

Are you sensing a theme yet? As Isaac Asimov famously said (though I doubt he was the first): “The only constant is change.”

Which creates quite the problem for online marketers and communicators, not to mention the clients and businesses for whom we all work.

Because a blog post like this one comes along that describes the essentials of integrating SEO and social media and it seems to provide a solid strategic roadmap. But then Google changes its algorithm. Or Facebook changes its layout. Or Twitter adds a new feature. Or some other change is made to one of the online giants that affects everyone’s online content, and those essentials wind up changing in one way or another, sometimes fundamentally.

Here’s the thing: Those changes happen all the time. And here’s the other thing: You can spend all your time planning and conniving and strategizing and positioning to try and beat the system and outrun your competitors — and no matter what you do or how much time and money you spend, you’ll never master the system to such a degree that you can claim to have a command of all the moving parts and elements of online communication better than anyone else out there.

Look at it this way: Absolute and unequivocal mastery of knowing exactly and precisely what to do to in the world of online communications is the carrot at the end of the stick that’s attached to your head, and the stick is about a foot longer than your arm. The reality is that you’ll never be able to grab it, no matter how hard and how long you try.

So where does this leave us all?

With the best strategy there is: Concentrate on the basics. Develop a solid message. Engage in great customer service. Provide valuable content. You know the drill.

Which do you think deserves your limited resources: Delivering valuable content for your Web site, or trying to optimize the content and frequency of your Twitter feed so that you show up a space or two higher in the Google Realtime search results for specifically optimized keywords that may or may not be relevant a week from now?

Because when you’re chasing trends and trying to grab carrots, you’re wasting a lot of equity that could otherwise go toward serving your customers and building your business … goals that are actually attainable.

Takeaway for marketers: Forget the carrot; as tempting as it is, you’ll never catch it. Assuming you plan on being in business for the long run, focus on developing and maintaining solid marketing communications fundamentals.