It seems like I stumble upon subtle reminders that I am getting older quite frequently these days. Today it was iPhone’s fourth birthday.

I distinctly remember watching Apple’s demo video with my parents while home from college on my summer break. We huddled up behind my Powerbook G4 and watched wide-eyed in disbelief while inserting a few ”oohs” and “aahs” when appropriate. Four years later, these gadgets are the norm and tablets seem to be the new it-thing. In fact, if you don’t own some form of a smartphone, you are almost as rare as the PDA owners of the 90s.

While working on my feature, Mobile Commerce: The New Retail Therapy, for the July issue of CRM, I found the growing consensus among vendors, analysts, and businesses to be that mobile shopping is a phenomenon to stay. In fact, Forrester Research estimated that 53 percent of mobile customers will most likely increase their mobile spending budgets in 2011.

In addition, several experts agree that the smartphone may soon replace our physical wallets. The reason? “We are doing almost everything on a mobile device; that’s just the direction of the world,” observes Michael Fauscette, group vice president of software business solutions for IDC. “We are always connected. We have evolved into having the constant interactivity of the Internet, so it’s just natural that I want to take the next step and want to do some type of commerce, or I want some customer experience tied into the mobile device as well as other things.”

Well, shoot. I invested a lot of hard-earned cash in my Burberry wallet.

When did steroids become a good thing? It seems everyone now who comes out with some kind of enhanced or beefed-up version of something is calling it a “whatever… on steroids.” As examples, while I was at the ACCE Conference in New Orleans last week,  Wednesday’s keynoter Erik Qualman, author of the book Socialnomics, defined “socialnomics”  as “word of mouth on steroids.” And just yesterday, I came across a press release from Mindshare Technologies announcing a new speech-to-text customer feedback management system that it was touting as “voice analytics on steroids.”

If memory from my high school gym and health classes still serves me correctly, steroids are bad for us. A recent Google search on the health effects of steroids points to a number of very bad side-effects: Steroid abuse can lead to serious, even irreversible health problems. Some of the most dangerous among these include liver damage, jaundice, fluid retention, high blood pressure, kidney failure, severe acne, and trembling. For men—shrinking of the testicles, reduced sperm count, infertility, baldness, development of breasts, and increased risk for prostate cancer. For women—growth of facial hair, male-pattern baldness, changes in or cessation of the menstrual cycle, and deepened voice. Then let’s not forget about increased aggression, violent outbursts, “roid rage,” etc. The list goes on and on, but you get the picture.

Now I’m certainly not against innovation. Companies should toot their own horns when they come out with new and better widgets, but why do they have to put the widgets on steroids to make them better? Why can’t we have widgets on Wheaties? As far as I know, Wheaties are still good for us.

Today, 24/7 Wall St. published its annual list of 10 brand that will disappear by 2012. While I am feeling a bit dreary this week due to some gloomy weather and a potential mouse infestation at home (gotta love NYC), I was interested in this post for reasons other than the fact that I have a case of the dulldrums. I have been knee-deep in research for my upcoming marketing to communities feature for CRM’s September issue, which has involved a lot of interviews and brand research. I have heard a lot of success stories, but haven’t really come across the don’ts until today.

Here is what 24/7 Wall St. came up with:

• Sony Pictures
• A&W
• Saab
• American Apparel
• Sears
• Sony Ericsson
• Kellog’s Corn Pops
• MySpace
• Soap Opera Digest
• Nokia

The takeaway? “Brands that have stood the test of time for decades are falling by the wayside at an alarming rate.” Well, that’s a bit depressing. Renting movies from Blockbuster will soon resemble listening to tunes on a record player, a Saab will be a collector’s item, and A&W will just be a soda option.

So, where is the silver lining? Well, the times they are a changin’…and there are plenty of brands ready to present new and improved options for today’s consumers. Take Facebook, for instance. The social networking giant has made platforms like MySpace seem unnecessary and obsolute. Netflix has virutally caused the extinction of physical video rental joints. And well, let’s face it. Reality television is much more entertaining than the latest installment of All My Children. Also, who liked those sugar-packed corn puffs anyway? Those are so last century.

When I was assigned to go down to New Orleans to cover  the International Customer Management Institute’s Annual Contact Center Expo (ACCE) conference, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d heard that the show’s numbers have been dropping the last few years, and so I thought I might have to use every ounce of my creative juices to generate some meaningful copy from the event. Happily, I was wrong.

The event brought together more than 800 contact center professionals who engaged in a conference program that centered on understanding customer needs. High-level executives with more than 10 years experience in the contact center space were a major portion of the attendee roster, which heavily favored larger contact centers with 500 agents or more.

There was no shortage of buzz around the show, and it all seemed to be taking place around the social media hive. From the keynotes to the workshop sessions, from the chatter on the exhibit hall floor to the banter in the halls, everyone wanted to discuss social media in the contact center. I even overheard a few show attendees still talking about it in the airport as I was getting ready to board my flight home.

Everyone at the show wanted to know what to do and how, when, and where to do it. Luckily, there were some amusing examples of social media strategies that went terribly wrong in a hurry, and some equally amusing examples of customer service flubs that went viral even faster. Those stories always make for interesting articles. But there were also a larger number of success stories, and they quite often make for better, more meaningful editorial content.

There may be trouble in social network paradise. Facebook reportedly lost 7 million active users in the U.S. and Canada last month, marking the first time that the site had lost active American users in a year.

But Facebook isn’t buying it.

“From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions,” said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement on Monday. “Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn’t designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook. We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. More than 50 percent of our active users log on to Facebook on any given day.”

Yes, Facebook reached 687 million users at the beginning of June. But the concern lies in the fact that its growth rates seem to be slowing down. More than 20 million users were added every month last year compared to 11.8 million active monthly users in May and 13.9 million in April of 2011. So, what’s really going on here? Has Facebook jumped the shark?

This past month, I switched over to the marketing beat at the CRM. I already have had the opportunity to speak with well-respected and esteemed experts in the field who offer a variety of opinions on an array of topics. The one thing they do agree on is that Facebook needs to be on the minds of marketers everyday. Ignoring the social network at this point will only hinder the organization’s potential.

In fact, densely populated countries including Brazil, India, and Argentina all saw growth of more than 5 percent in May, with Brazil jumping from about 17 million users to about 19 million. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so American-centric (I can think of a few additional situations this statement could apply to…) and look at Facebook’s global influence before proclaiming defeat.