War Games, as it turns out, is more than just an early Matthew Broderick movie. They’re a series of events involving prominent business schools, including Harvard, MIT and the London Business School. In the past, these war games have accurately predicted events like the AOL/Google search deal, “the game of digital entertainment supremacy last year, which was iPod versus News Corp. versus Microsoft versus Vodafone or Verizon, that Apple would make an iTV entertainment center.”

By simulating the business world with teams of business students, these war games have tackled social media this year. Leonard Fuld, organizer of the war game and president of Fuld & Co., told CNET about the games. Excerpts (emphasis mine):

There’s so much hype for Twitter, and against it, I can’t make up my mind whether to try the service or not. It seems like just another application designed to distract me during the day, without actually bringing me any value.

Anyway, should I decide to jump in, I’ll definitely follow closely the excellent “Newbie’s guide to Twitter” by Rafe Needleman.

Any readers using Twitter? If I joined, it would be good to know that I could find someone to actually “tweet” with.

Via Jeremiah.

With new social networks popping up virtually every day, standing out from the crowd is becoming a tougher proposition. One that has caught my attention is Imagini, which offers a slick and unique sign-up process.

New members fill in their profile by selecting images that best represent their personal thoughts on life.

Here’s an example question…

After you’ve completed about a dozen questions, Imagini reveals what your selections say about your personality, then offers to connect you with others in the network, that share your interests and views on life.

There’s even the obligatory widget, that allows you to show the world your photo selections. Here’s mine…

Some quick news items for you to wrap-up your day…

• Google’s updated their privacy practices. They’re somewhat vague, but “in the coming months” they’ll make your search data anonymous “after 18-24 months”. If they can anonymize individual data, why not let us opt-out from the get-go?
• According to Mashable, iVillage has launched iVillage Connect, a “MySpace for Moms”.
• You can now get Google Talk as a gadget for your Google personalized homepage – cool, yet another why for people to annoy contact me.

JupiterResearch has issued a new report entitled “Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape” (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) and ClickZ is all over it.

In 2007, as many as 48 percent of brand marketers will deploy marketing on social networking channels. Last year, about 38 percent were messaging on the channel. Adoption of social marketing tactics stems from the discovery “30 percent of frequent social networkers trust their peers’ opinions when making a major purchase decision, but only 10 percent trust an advertisement,” said Emily Riley, JupiterResearch analyst and lead author of the report.

Now would be a good time to be #1 on Google for social media marketing then.