With all the discussion on what social media is, what it’s future will be like, who will control it, I often feel we fail to see the forest for the trees.

I see it as too diverse of a phenomenon to pin down with one easy definition. Its applications go far beyond the neat capsules that can be used to pick a particular department or function that should “own” it. Social media is creating, empowering, and accompanying a paradigm shift in the way we use all media.

Are we fully there yet? Of course not. These are only the early stages, part of an evolutionary process that often comes step by step. But those steps are happening and happening and soon we’ll look back and be amazed how far we’ve traveled. Then before we know it again, we’ll be stepping again and look back again and we’ll be amazed how much we’ve come from that first time we looked back.

Yes, organizations are going to have to harness social media in ways that they can benefit from, to reach ROI. This means trying to create some sort of structure for it without “siloizing” it. Very difficult indeed.

I’ve tried to lay out what I see social media as. Not from a specific definitional standpoint, but from a several miles up point of view.

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I just received the below email in my Facebook Inbox because I am a member of the ooVoo Facebook Group. Well, I have been sitting on some cool news that I assume I can share now since it has been released into the wilderness. Lots of cool stuff: My ooVoo Day, a version of ooVoo for the Mac, and the ability to chat up some of the coolest new media, social media, new PR, new marketing, and rock star bloggers anywhere!

If you haven’t had a chance to try out ooVoo yet, there’s a great opportunity coming up in the week or so: My ooVoo Day With…You can download the software - including the MAC VERSION!!! - and sign up for a slot where you can talk to some other ooVooers in the blogosphere about a variety of topics at: http://www.myoovooday.com

If you don’t have a webcam yet, don’t worry - you can still participate on calls as an audio-only caller. You’ll still be able to see and hear the others and add your own voice to the mix. Just pick a good looking avatar to display. ;-)

That’s it. Get over to www.myoovooday.com to check out the details and do your thing.

Now back to your regularly scheduled email…

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Ian Lurie always has brilliant insight over at our brother site, Conversation Marketing. Now, Ian Lurie panned down into the pre-Internet world of advertising and PR and came back with nuggets of gold. I stole his quotes below but if you check out his blog entry yourself, All I Need to Know About Internet Marketing I Learned from David Ogilvy, you’ll read Ian’s sage advice as an added bonus for visiting his post.

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The November 8th edition of The Economist has an article that asks us “Will Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites transform advertising?”

In truth, the article is poorly written. It asks the wrong question, it’s lazily researched, and it provides little actual theory or empirical evidence to justify the premise they are trying to suppose. Perhaps the reason for this is that The Economist is a general news publication – one that I respect – and that the article was intended for a mainstream readership that’s likely mostly interested in reading about general trends and not deeper analysis. But nevertheless…

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Here’s a series of figures that blew me away. It showed me how immature the online ad industry really is. And how far it has to grow. It’s a breakdown of how many visitors went to Style.com in September.

421,000 as measured by ComScore
497,000 as measured by Neilsen/Net Ratings
1,800,000 as measured by publisher Conde Nast’s internal measurements

They’re miles apart and that’s a big problem. When I first saw the 76,000 visit discrepancy between the two metering services I thought that was bad. But the 1.8 million figure that Conde Nast holds is more that 3.5 times that of Neilsen/Net Ratings and around 4.5 times that of ComScore.

For a long time publishers and rating companies have bickered over the different sets of stats they have for site visits and other web based traffic measurements. But differences such as these will only serve to slow down ad dollars going to the web. And that hurts us all.