Social media enthusiasts from around the city gathered Tuesday night at The Urban Hive for the Sacramento Social Media Club Relationships and Social Media presentation.

With Valentine's Day just behind us and the ever-increasing role of social networking in our day-to-day lives, relationships via the online frontier was a timely topic for discussion. Four speakers headlined the evening, and the audience was filled with some of Sacramento's most active facebookers and tweeps.

Up first at the podium was independent marketing consultant Paul Ardoin, who discussed facebook privacy settings and how to manage them. "facebook is a for-profit entity; every decision facebook makes on your privacy, they are thinking not about you, but about their revenue stream." Paul suggests checking your facebook privacy settings regularly to make sure they're still to your liking. He also recommends creating friends lists to take advantage of facebook privacy granules, especially if you have a boss who likes to critique your facebook activity.

Lanette Capellas, Staffing Director for The Agate Group, then discussed social media from an HR perspective. Layoffs are increasingly due to social networking negligence, and an overzealous willingness to share. One of her main points: think before you post. Is venting about a bad day at work worth losing your job over? Lanette thinks not, and most are likely to agree. If your fingertips get the better of you and you end up saying something you regret, thank goodness you took Paul's advice and already divvied up the permissions on your friends list.

Feel like your friends list isn't long enough to divvy up? Not to worry, "strangers are friendships waiting to happen," says Laura Good, executive director of Social Media Club Sacramento. Sacramento twitter use is ranked fourth in the nation. Utilize that to your advantage and engage people on social networks in order to realize the real-world potential of a virtual friendship. You can also use hashtags (e.g. #smcsac or #sacbeerweek) to find events going on around town. Laura also recommended MeetUp and Couchsurfing for connecting with like-minded people in town

If you just spent Valentines Day hopping from venue to venue and you still couldn't find your sweetheart, maybe an online dating site should be your next stop. MetroSpark.net is a locally based internet dating site that provides personally tailored classes to help your outward presentation match your inner self. Amar Dhariwal, founder and current CEO of the site, also discussed an array of other online dating sites and even the new generation of mobile dating apps that include geolocators for singles out on the town.

The night concluded with a raffle; the prizes included tickets to B Street Theater, Esquire IMAX, the Sacramento Zoo, California Lecture Series, de Vere's St. Patrick's Day in the Park, and the Sacramento Kings vs Clippers game. Food and beverages provided by Chick-Fil-A Arden Fair and The Sacramento Press made the after party all the better. You may watch the video of the presentation on the Sacramento Social Media Club's uSteam channel. “Like” their Facebook page to stay tuned in for information on future events. The club is also active on Twitter.