Social is everywhere and nowhere

I was asked to sit on a social media panel last week and each of the three panelists had to provide a five to eight minute opening before the moderator and audience started to ask questions. As I began to ponder my discourse, I thought about the daunting task of how to say something original about social media. Because quite frankly, I knew the audience didn’t need to hear me say that “social was a conversation” or that “social can activate peer to peer.” Then it struck me – the best way I can sum up social in August of 2009 is that social is everywhere and nowhere. I liked it because it seemed fresh, jarring and dichotomous all at the same time. More than this – it was true and here’s what I mean.

Social is everywhere

• Social networking users have doubled since 2007, representing 60% of the online population and users go to their favorite sites five days per week, four times per day for about an hour per day.
• Facebook and MySpace represent two of the top ten sites and provide similar scale to the big portals.
• Social is bigger than facebook, MySpace, twitter and LinkedIn. It has become so pervasive that it has seeped into all parts of our lives: Music (imeem), movies (flixster), parenting (cafemom) and even ethnic communities (BlackPlanet and AsianTown).
• Smart marketers are starting to replace click thrus to their own site with click thrus to facebook where they encourage you to fan their brand. They understand that if I click thru to their site, they have reached one person, but if I click thru and fan their brand, they have reached me and all of my friends via facebook’s News Feed. Absolut Vodka has started to use this execution.
• Facebook and twitter are starting to infiltrate TV as there will be a twitter and facebook app in the Verizon Fios Widget Bazaar. In the first iteration of the twitter app, Fios subscribers will see a spilt screen with the programming on the left and the tweets on the right based on the programming or genre they are currently watching.

Social is nowhere

Ad land tends to look at the world through a myopic lens vs. understanding what is happening in real America. And although social is huge and is growing, we are sometimes startled and receive a much needed dose of reality when we hear contrarian numbers:

• 69% of all adults 18+ have little knowledge of what twitter actually does.
• Social networks receive less than 7% of the overall digital investment.
• TNS recently polled 60 big brands and the consensus was that agencies don’t get it and one went as far to say that traditional agencies have very little contribution to make.
• Ask any major marketer if they feel they have search or OLA figured out and most of them will say yes, but ask them if they have social figured out and the majority will say no.

So there you have it. The next time a client asks you to opine about social, tell them social is everywhere but nowhere. And FYI, you don’t have to credit yours truly.