If there’s a refreshing bit of news perhaps it’s the “occupy” movement that began on Wall Street then spread nationwide as the vehicle for a grab bag of grievances and causes. Some criticize “Occupy” for its lack of a unifying theme. But c’mon, the message is loud and clear, drawn straight from that famous line in the classic film, Network:

“We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

Don’t laugh. Revolutions including our own in ’76 began for much the same reason. Usually the flash point is less intellectual than visceral. Per Jefferson, the occasional revolution is a healthy thing.

On the smaller stage where I live, editors and publishers could be on the verge of an “Occupy PR” movement. Granted, I haven’t seen any reporters waving placards yet, but nonetheless there’s a very discernible anger in the air. What’s making journalists “mad as hell” are companies and agencies that misuse social media. Who can blame them for revolting against:

• Second-Hand Blog Content.  The practice of re-using company web site content as a media placement is coming to an end. Increasingly, media are returning to the practice of demanding first or even exclusive rights, or insisting that companies pay a licensing fee, i.e., make the contribution a paid piece.
  
• Self-Promotional Comments. Editors are sick and tired of blog and article comments that carry a sales pitch or a link to the commenter’s corporate web site. We’ve heard tales of editors threatening to ban all news/features bv companies that use the comment space to self-promote. One editor even ended his threat with “This is your final warning.” Ouch.

Personally, I think this editorial reaction is a healthy trend.

Companies have enjoyed a free ride with double-purpose content created first for their web site then placed externally. For months many in the media went along with this practice, resulting in huge spikes in company and agency hit counts. But now publishers are wise to it and clamping down on such “two-fers.”

That makes perfect sense. Whomever first publishes a piece reaps all the traffic benefits; he or she who re-publishes the came content sucks Google’s hind you-know-what. Publishers aren’t stupid: If they’re giving you the benefit of reaching their broad audience with your guest piece, you have to give them the benefit of the web site traffic. Otherwise, feel free to pay for the privilege.

Similar thought on commenting. The comment section, like the old-fashioned “letters to the editor” page, is intended as a feedback mechanism for input and fresh ideas. It’s not a billboard. Editors are absolutely within their rights to go postal and penalize offenders who paste blatantly commercial messages into the comment page, or post links that pull the audience into a self-promotional blog posting. Why that steams editors: Obviously because the comment section loses all value as an objective forum, and people stop coming. Again, it’s all about the traffic.

So what is a company to do about these developments? Here are 3 simple pointers:

• Create Single Purpose Content for Media. In some ways we’re seeing a return to the old days when PR people pitched an idea, then based on the editor’s interest followed up with an abstract or outline and finally the guest piece. In that vein, create dedicated content for media. Make sure it is informative, objective and free of self-serving links back to your company’s web site.
• Get Permission to Re-post – or Treat Blog Content Separately. Ask for permission to re-post the piece to your company site after publication. Alternately, use the concepts in a published piece to create a separate, shorter company blog. Here, too, go easy on the links to marketing brochureware. The best links are those that take the audience to a place where they learn more — not to where they’re sold more.
• If it Adds Value, Comment All You Like. Journalists love comments that deliver a different perspective and new info or create an online discussion or debate. When you add such value, then simply having your and your company’s name highlighted is promotion enough. People will start to pay attention and look for your comments.

Let the counter-revolution begin — the one where you make sure that you and journalists are on the same side.

Next up: The Prematurely Reported Death of the Press Release. If old school announcements are really dead and reporters increasingly rely on social media for leads, then why do so many business news stories stem from — you guessed it — the venerable press release? Let’s find out.

There are sound public service and security reasons for this omniscient surveillance, I suppose.

If two cars collide at that stoplight, safety officials can dispatch an ambulance to the site immediately.

If videocams save lives by deterring speeders, all the better.

Perhaps criminals will think twice before jeopardizing lives and property if they know their every move is recorded. We know for a fact that in the UK, where hidden cameras are even more pervasive than in the US, law enforcement officials were able to quickly nab terrorist suspects caught on camera in the London “tube.”

The potential for good is indisputable. Even so, the Big Brother aspect of 7X24 surveillance in public places is a bit chilling, so that at times I’m tempted to take a can of spray paint to all these cameras. Call it a privacy thing.

Which brings me to Facebook. Like all social media, it is “public place.” We participate voluntarily, enter only such details about our personal lives as we wish to, can limit who sees it, and even opt out. On the face of it, no pun intended, arguments on Facebook being intrusive or violating privacy seem unconvincing when those who participate do so entirely by choice. Though lawsuits have been filed over purported privacy violations, for the most part Facebook’s 800 million users seem unconcerned that much personal data is made public by default.

Ironically, it may be the face itself that poses the greatest security risk.

Research by Carnegie Mellon Institute (CMU) shows that facial recognition technology, combined with data on your place of birth and age, can enable the wrong people to accurately “predict” your Social Security number from any snapshot — even the goofy one you posted to Facebook.

CMU professor Alessandro Acquisti said in a press release, “Ultimately, all this access is going to force us to reconsider our notions of privacy. It may also affect how we interact with each other. Through natural evolution, human beings have evolved mechanisms to assign and manage trust in face-to-face interactions. Will we rely on our instincts or on our devices, when mobile phones can predict personal and sensitive information about a person?”

When and if Facebook becomes the biggest and best worldwide photo ID album for technically sophisticated crooks, the social media giant may experience a new first: the PR crisis. How will it respond? How will you?

Quite possibly, now that YouTube is in talks with the California-based Center for Investigative Reporting to launch a service aimed at the kind of deep narrative that traditional newsrooms can no longer afford. You hear that, journalists? Your mission is still thriving — just in a different context.

Traditional media folks have an understandable habit of bemoaning the implications of their professional demise. The YouTube/Twitter/beyond-ADD generation of consumers lacks depth, focus, breadth of interests; the heyday of real, objective news is over… Maybe. But what if the real impact of the information age isn’t sensory overload and desensitization, but an increased demand for ever more focused, intelligent, and available news? Everyone I know is reading, writing, listening, watching, and discussing. In what sense is that a sign of a looming intellectual apocalypse?

It’s probably only terrible from the perspective of a newspaper’s accounting department, and only there because they’re confusing business model with purpose. The exploration of interesting facts and stories isn’t confined to a newsroom.

Tell a network bigwig that YouTube will pick up the slack on investigative journalism, and he’ll probably look at you like you’ve just suggested that Yo Gabba Gabba be put in charge of literacy education. But that’s a backward-looking perspective that doesn’t align with where media is heading, which is a pretty interesting, open, and informative place.

From a PR point of view, this decentralization of media is a challenge — and an opportunity. Some editors, reporters, bloggers, and curators may be easy to target for good old relationship-building — but an unknown’s coverage could also go viral at any time, and companies have to have a much broader awareness of what is being said about them and where. They also may need a real shift in their valuation of outlets — at a certain point, a story in the Wall Street Journal could have a shorter reach than a Tumblr blog. For some markets, I’d say we’re there already.

On the scary side, Jim wrote about the crisis PR implications of new media back in December, but there is an enormous bright side, too — for companies, journalists, and information seekers. Enormous potential reach, far more granular niche targeting, and the possibility of great stories and great relationships with a vastly expanded pool of “reporters.” It may be increasingly true that everyone’s a critic, but with the right approach, you can score a slew of great reviews.

I guess for some the answer depends on who you are and what people are saying about you, and I’d imagine there are days when any number of people, governments, and corporations wish the entire social-sphere of viral communications would go take a flying leap. But at the heart of the defensive “SHUT THEM UP” reaction is a major miscalculation of reality. Banning speech as a rule doesn’t foster affection — it fosters a deceptive lull of roiling discontent. It doesn’t change the facts — it just makes them less visible.

The British (and maybe Libyan) governments would no doubt argue that in some cases (theirs) social media is actually being used to incite and foment outrageous violence — egging otherwise placid citizens into committing normally unthinkable acts. And the power of social media to uncover and interlink voices that had lived in relative isolation really isn’t something that can be denied. But, as I would tell any company shying away from social conversation, the one thing that shouldn’t be actionable is ignorance. And if someone out there has a complaint, you are better off knowing about it.

Something tells me that the ease with which arsonists and looters were “incited” in England says something far more interesting and disturbing than, “Wow, social media is a powerful (and maybe dangerous!) tool.” It speaks to underlying societal problems that probably have more to do with economics, education, unemployment, and political malaise. But whatever the causes, the important — the intelligent — thing to do is find them out so they can be addressed. Not with a crackdown, but with an answer. The information age isn’t here to be ignored.

Defensiveness is rarely the brightest tactic, but unfortunately it seems to be the most common weakness of big entities confronting a time of open, and often viral, communications. “Buy that URL,” “Take over that Facebook page,” “Cease and desist…” These are not phrases designed to win people over; they are phrases designed to shut people up. And whether you look at that from an emotional perspective or a cooly rational one, angry or apathetic submission is a lousy goal. Far better to take criticism, ideas, complaints, even rants, and turn them into reasons to make your world, government, or company better.

In her new post, Why Buy the Cow?, Kate Schackai lampoons as “poppycock” the notion that providing goods and services for free constitutes a valid business model. She notes that what looks “free” is typically a clever bit of misdirection disguising highly successful for-profit business strategies.

Cases in point: Google and Facebook, the poster children for “free.” The social media titans are often cited as the archetypes of how to win by giving away something for nothing. In fact, that something is a pittance compared to what they gain: a universe of priceless customer data.

“Those free-service users aren’t the customers,” writes Schackai. “They are, instead, the commodity being sold as advertising targets to a sprawling market of paying clients. Google and Facebook do give out gift certificates for ad space (on the model of a dealer offering a taste), but we’re talking about a very limited sample for free, not a smorgasbord.”

Google’s and Facebook’s real customers are, of course, advertisers, not users. Both companies fully recognize the distinction and leverage it to the hilt. You will never find either giving away its real product — customer data — to paying customers.

Any company that doesn’t see the difference will find itself “well-liked and out of business,” Schackai notes. She isn’t alone in dismissing “free.” Leaders in the tech and communications industries are moving in the same direction. Most recently:

• Fox Broadcasting, a division of News Corp, now charges for previously free TV content.
• “Over the top” (OTT) video services such as Hulu — which came to prominence by offering free TV — now charge for premium content.
• Analysts speculate that all Hulu content and perhaps many other OTT video services will soon go the same route.

In short, the era of free TV may have come and gone. In other industries, however, companies continue to muddle on, zombie-like, deluding themselves on the business value of free.

Earlier this year we spoke with a venture capital firm which launched a content marketing content program in 2010 for the express purpose of generating new clients. The company’s content was high quality — I loved it — full of practical tips, and had created a large, loyal following. I congratulated the program director and asked how much new business she’d won.

“Well, none as yet,” she gulped. So I had to ask the rude question: “If your free content initiative isn’t meeting the baseline goal of bringing in new business, in what sense is it a success?”  The nice young lady waffled for a bit, but never really answered the question. As the Scots say, “nae answer is an answer.”

Many companies, unless they’re as clever as Google and Facebook, are in the same position as that venture capital firm: Doing “free” merely because it’s the thing to do, or perhaps because the usual profit-driven business model isn’t working for them — which is fairly damning in itself.

It’s possible that their social media programs, which constitute a sort of “free” activity, are driven by the same motive: herd mentality. Often, companies blog, tweet, Facebook and comment because their competitors do. Whether any of this effort produces a measurable business result for them is hard to say. The worst case scenario is when an enterprise engages in “free” just to look busy — and distract attention from their lack of free’s opposite: profit.

But let’s not pick on “free’s” victims when it’s the perps that deserve time in the stockades. The most contemptible aspect of the “free” movement: Its proponents actually give away very little, and instead make a very lucrative living from selling books, consulting services and speaking gigs. Bully for them — nothing wrong with capitalism. What merits a public flogging: the hypocrisy of making a buck by telling others to work for free.

Personally, I’m so fed up with this malarkey that I’m tempted to write a book about the business model of my Viking ancestors and call it, “Pillage and Plunder.”

How about you — have you had it up to here with “free” yet?

Product placement is certainly nothing new in the world of books and film. As early as the 1870s, shipping companies pursued Jules Verne for mentions in his pending adventure, Around the World in Eighty Days, and he obliged them, though whether for payment or merely to add a touch of realism to the book remains a mystery.

Beginning in the mid-1890s, movies abounded with embedded advertising on the popular products of the day. Scholars contend that the film industry’s success owes a huge debt to early funding via corporate commercials. Apparently movie audiences didn’t blink, not even if a box of Boffo detergent popped up beneath the jungle canopy in a documentary on the Amazon rain forest.

Product placements are hardly more subtle today. We all know that James Bond drives an Aston Martin and wears only Omega wristwatches. Sometimes products are so intertwined with the protagonist’s character that they engender fierce loyalty. Remember the mid-1990s’ audience flap when Pierce Brosnan’s Bond appeared on-screen in a BMW? Behind the wheel of the “wrong” car, 007 seemed out of character to many fans. Producers of subsequent Bond films reverted to the “correct” vehicle, Aston Martin.

Similarly, it seems “right” that Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander, the ultimate anti-establishment anti-hero, favors Apple, the brand that has encouraged us to “think different” and question authority since the day of the famous 1984 Macintosh ad that made Apple (and director Ridley Scott) a lasting sensation.

All the good guys in the film versions of Larsson’s books use only Apple computers. It’s such a natural fit: Good guys/Apple — brilliant use of technology, underdogs, and always “in the right.” Capping off the analogy, somewhat amusingly: The chief villain uses a Dell PC.

Apple, of course, has a broad supporting cast of product placements in the Millennium movies: Firefox, Land Rover, Kia, Castrol Motor Oil, Samsung, to name a few. None comes close to Larsson’s personal love affair with Apple, though — in the books he’s known to devote half a page or more to describing a Mac’s technical specs in glowing terms. Is it just good research by the author, or a blatant ad? More importantly, does it work?

In my case, maybe so. I’ve used PCs for years. This year I bought my first Apple product — an iPad 2 — and I like it so much that I’m now contemplating a complete switchover to Apple products in the office. Is it just a coincidence that I loved the “Girl” novels and the movies? It’s just possible that reading Larsson’s books and seeing the fabulous Noomi Rapace in the Swedish language films planted a seed that ultimately converted me to Apple.

I am certain that success stories like this one make marketers drool over potential opportunities in another sphere: social media and SEO. The Web is full of advice on how to optimize corporate sites and make the best use of SEO to draw in potential customers, make new sales and grow the business. SEO has its proponents and detractors, but I’m not going to argue its merits here. I do, however, have a few thoughts on its misuse, notably in blogs littered with crassly self-promotional keyword links.

How often have you found yourself attracted to a site that seemed to appeal to your needs, then clicked on links that ostensibly elaborated on a point of interest only to find yourself driven to the company’s product sales literature?  That, to me, is the worst. Once it happens I resolve never to return, certain that the experience will be repeated on any subsequent visit. Granted, we often visit a site in order to learn more about a company. But when a link pretends to explain/elucidate and instead immediately turns into an online carpetbagging episode, it’s a turnoff.

For many, the same feeling spills over into views on advertising and the arts. Readers of Stieg Larsson’s books have complained about the author’s less than subtle product placements and some have even questioned his motives. While I identify with his protagonist — and despite my newfound love of Apple — I confess that I, too, tend to blow by the lengthy product descriptions.  I really don’t care about Apple’s tech specs. The fact that a character I admire uses the product is endorsement enough. At that point I’m sufficiently interested to go try one and, if I like it, buy one.

Woe be to the company whose social media misleads the visitor via hyperlink re-direction to a sales pitch. Such “cleverness” annoys the Lisbeth — who BTW was born a fiery redhead — in us all.

Information libertarians are typically solo artists who as the great “Easy Rider” once said, like to do their own thing. They thrive at entrepreneurial companies that have a largely hands-off approach to managing social media. In such an environment, content is reviewed and approved — if at all — in a blink, giving its author an edge in meeting the real time demands of social media audiences. One downside: When there is little or no gatekeeping by way of formal review processes, freedom can quickly turn to anarchy. Off-message, rambling, error-ridden content is one common outcome. In the worst cases, some bloggers have been known to use social media to air personal opinions that undermine their own company’s position.

Large enterprises, in contrast, often have multiple bureaucracies — product management, corporate planning, marketing, PR, Legal, human resources, public policy and c-level management, to name a few — each of which owns a stake in safeguarding corporate reputation. Unfortunately, when so many parties share responsibility for content review and approval, the quality control system can be painfully slow: weeks to okay a simple blog post, for example. However, on the up side the process typically delivers error-free, highly polished content.

Information libertarians and command and control types don’t get along. The “information wants to be free” crowd derides corporate behemoths as being too slow to meet the rapid response times required of social media. Fortune 500 PR teams counter that unmanaged social media equals chaos.

Each side has a point. Yet it’s just possible that the best ideas of each camp might be combined into a really stellar approach to social media management based on procedure but encouraging autonomy.

Best-selling author Atul Gawande offers the definitive view on this concept in his recent book, The Checklist Manifesto.  Dr. Gawande, a surgeon by training, was drawn to the idea of checklists after studying the rate of common errors that occur during surgery leading to infection and death. Those responsible were invariably highly trained and caring doctors and nurses. And yet, in the often rushed and tense environment of surgery, any of these professionals could make a mistake — forgetting to wash with antiseptic soap or to administer antibiotics within 90 minutes of a surgical procedure — that could cause irreparable patient harm.

Together with other physicians working under the auspices of the World Health Organization, Dr. Gawande helped develop, test and refine a simple “Surgical Checklist” that any medical team could use to cover basic but critical tasks prior to an operation. In nations where the checklist has been deployed, the rates of infection and death from surgery have dropped 50% and 33%, respectively.

Does the checklist intrude on the autonomy or decision-making power of the surgeon? Not at all.  when the operation begins, the surgeon runs the show. However, he and all members must run through the checklist first. And, if during the operation any member of the team including the chief surgeon violates a checklist item — for example touching non-sterile items — another team member can point out the error and require its correction.

Dr. Gawande acknowledges that his checklist idea borrows heavily from another field that requires a mix of procedure and autonomy: aviation, where the modern checklist began.

In the early 1930s, the U.S. Army Air Corps was interested in a new bomber that offered both great promise and unacceptable peril — on occasion, even when flown by the most experienced pilots, the plane crashed on takeoff. Some concluded that with its multiple engines and sophisticated enhancements the bomber was simply too complex to fly. A handful of pilots had a different idea: A simple checklist that let the flight crew address all critical issues responsible for prior crashes. It worked. The plane evolved to become the B-17, the Allied Nations’ most important bomber of WWII.

Commercial aviation was quick to embrace the checklist drill. Today, no plane ever takes off before the crew runs through a carefully planned and thoroughly tested list of “must do” items. There are separate checklists for landing, too — and for every conceivable situation that may arise while the plane is in the air. Important notes: (1) a checklist must be brief and to the point; and (2) it never replaces the role of the pilot, copilot or navigator, but rather, simply provides obvious reminders so that no key step is ever overlooked, either during routine or emergency situations. In fact, it is by adhering to basic operational checklists as a matter of routine that most emergencies are avoided.

Are checklists “overkill” for social media and other content management, and just a thinly disguised twist on bureaucratic control? Not at all. The checklist may be the optimal approach to social media management, augmenting the power of the individual through baseline procedures. How such a system might work:

1. Contract: Content producers and senior executives agree on the need for rules-based content management.
2. Checklist: Content producers themselves create, test and deploy the rules, adding refinements or changes as needed.
3. Autonomy: Because the social media team reliably self-governs, it has the trust of senior managers and the authority to make many key decisions on its own.

Just as every airline — or for that matter any large enterprise engaged in managing highly complex activities — operates by its own set of checklists, there is no one-size-fits-all, generic list that will suit every corporate social media program. That’s something each enterprise must develop on its own, preferably with the help of those experienced in the field. To see how you might get started, check out Atul Gawande’s new book — it’s a great read and a goldmine of ideas.

Hopefully, thereafter, you as a content producer or manager will never again be forced to ask: “Why did this blog crash?” or “Why can’t that Twitter campaign get off the ground?” or “How the heck, during this byzantine review process, did my video get re-routed to Des Moines?”

Alas, the opportunity to stage guerrilla marketing and PR is increasingly rare in the field of tech PR for Fortune 500 companies. Which is maybe one reason why an exciting startup like socialtables resonotes with me.

In case you haven’t heard the name yet, socialtables is the first-ever social networking utility for events with assigned tables. Essentially it’s an online seat management tool designed for anyone holding any event. Lets you create a floor plan, seat kindred spirits together, allow guests to see in advance who their table partners will be, and much more.

Imagine if King Arthur had socialtables to arrange seating at Camelot’s famous Round Table. The King could have sat Sir Galahad beside Sir Lancelot, with special orders to keep an eye on Guinevere, and remained happily married ever after.

I had the opportunity to meet up with socialtables co-founders Dan Berger and Matthew Tendler last night at the Tech Cocktail DC Summer Mixer, where I viewed and was impressed by their demo and also enjoyed the tales of how they shook things up with a few stunts at this year’s SXSW. The stories are better heard in-person from the perpetrators, I mean authors, so get in touch @danberger or @matthewtendler

You’ll be hearing a lot more from these guys. socialtables is going places with an innovative product and a love of fun in marketing that’s totally contagious.

This is a world that you and I, meaning all of us in the information business, created. In my case, I give special credit and thanks to Businessweek for getting me started.

It was about 30 years ago, the evening of February 9, 1982, to be precise, that I went to bed reading a Businessweek article about Reuters’ online data service used by commodity traders. I dreamed about it and the next day quit my day job as a reporter and set about launching what I dubbed “the world’s first interactive online news service,” available on GTE Telenet. This was the era of The Source, Compuserve, acoustic couplers, Kaypro “portable” PCs that weighed 30 pounds and cell phones as big as your head.

Along with other crazy startup founders, I was invited to speak at a lot of trade shows and demo my service. I’ll never forget the stunned look of the Chicago audience as I typed an email to a pal in Washington and they saw the response come back in a heartbeak on the giant auditorium screen. It was like being Samuel Morse and the Pied Piper for a day: As I left the podium, people literally followed me out of the auditorium to ask about this new sensation called e-mail.

At the time, we IPs (information providers) liked to predict the imminent demise of print media. For years, of course, print had the last laugh on that score. Right through the tech boom of 1995-2000, print continued to dominate the world of text media. Remember the days of inch-thick magazines stuffed with ads, and PR clients who disparaged hits that “only” appeared online? Now, of course, the tide has shifted. We’re online junkies, every one of us. Clients can’t wait for the print version of their story — they want the online hit and right away.

It’s thanks to this incessant need for real time data that most print media are on the rocks. Hopefully with one exception: My old pal, Businessweek, which I believe still has a lot of life left in it. Before the folks at Bloomberg took over, Businessweek was quickly becoming a forgotten barnacle on the underside of the media ship of state. Bloomberg turned the magazine inside-out with a fresh, fun, exciting layout that creates the equivalent of a financial page-turner. To be sure, Bloomberg Businessweek keeps up with the news on their web site. But where they knock competitors dead is in the weekly print edition’s analysis. The magazine lifts the reader above the “news noise,” tells you what it means and where the market’s heading. Why they do that better than anyone else: Bloomberg very wisely kept outstanding writers like Peter Coy, attracted a lot of fresh blood, too, and cut them loose to find great angles and produce content with rare insights you just can’t get in a newsfeed.

Now comes notice from Bloomberg Businessweek that they are offering “hand delivery” of the magazine to guarantee it’s arrival before the weekend. Perfect. This is one media that I like to hold in my hand, pore over at leisure and curl up with, and sure enough it got here Friday before noon.

Okay, I’ll always be hooked on news streams so that I can react to events in real time. But it’s also good to have at least one information source that helps you think at leisure.

Long live Bloomberg Businessweek, and may your print edition last forever. There’s no telling what or whose dreams you’ll inspire next.

Reactions to the ruling by the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), the French broadcasting authority, ranged from outraged to “Vive La France — Let’s all move there.” No surprise. What’s odd is how long it took for this story to gain momentum. France announced the ban on Tuesday, May 31. The news made glacial progress across the English Channel until it was picked up by The Guardian nearly a week later on Monday, June 6, then finally went viral in the U.S. yesterday and today.

Draw your own conclusions. Maybe it’s a food thing. After all, it’s summer, a time when Americans typically are more interested in Weiners than anything from the land of smelly cheese. That’s what I think, anyway.

Or maybe, given that we’re entering vacation season, folks are easing up on their obsession with social media, perhaps even questioning if it’s the end all/be all of life and business that they’ve been led to believe.

Food for thought, at any rate. A new national survey by Edison Research and Arbitron finds that, of social media services that influence buying decisions, Twitter comes in dead last — with just 1% of survey participants saying that the blue birdie most sways a purchase. Facebook is much more powerful: 24% of consumers say that their buying decision is most influenced by Facebook. However, before making a mad dash to your piggybank so you can sink your savings into Facebook’s coming IPO, consider this last fact that Edison, for whatever reason, downplays:

Asked “Which one social network service or site influences your buying decision the most?” — 72% of respondents said “none.”

Hm. What does that mean, I wonder? That three out of four consumers can’t cite a single social media service as the most influential purchase influencer? Or maybe they’re influenced by more than one? Or that they don’t know? Or, egads, maybe that social media doesn’t influence their buying decisions, at all? Good heavens, the latter simply couldn’t be true. Marketing departments would crumble. The unemployment rate would soar past 10% as newly fired social media consultants joined the jobless.  My Lord, is that Brian S. over there standing in the bread line?

Okay, enough fooling around. What’s really odd about the Edison/Arbitron study is how it skews interpretation of the data toward a pro-social media slant. For example, one key slide in the deck leads with the title:

“Frequent Social Networkers Are Plugged Into Brands And Companies on Social Networks”

Below this, they show the question asked of survey participants: “Do you follow/friend any brands or companies on social media?”

Then comes the data in pie chart format.

• Pie chart 1 — All Social Network Users: Yes, 25%.  No, 75%.
• Pie chart 2 — Frequent Social Network Users: Yes, 43%.  No, 57%.

Tell me if it’s just me — I promise I won’t cry or get mad. What I get from these pie charts are the following two conclusions:

1. Three out of four social network users do NOT follow brands or companies on social media.
2. Nearly two out of three frequent social network users do NOT follow or friend companies on social media.

Trust me: I’m not a “glass half empty” kind of guy. I love social media. I’m a digital fanatic. I’ve been using email since 1982, for chrissake — two years BZ (before the birth of Zuckerberg). I’m just reading what the numbers say. Am I wrong? Makes ya wonder, doesn’t it?

About 20 years ago a group of aesthetes organized a national “Turn Off Your TV Day.” They’re still around. I have no idea how successful or effective they are. Every year when I go to the beach I swear I’m going to switch off the tube for 24 hours and try to make it further through James Joyce’s Ulysses. Every year I succumb to news, movies, even weather reports, instead. I’ll take the fishing channel over Joyce: Watching people sit in a boat watching pond water is far more entertaining.

What if I quit social media for a day instead? What if everyone did? Would the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummet to 6000 as it did two years ago? Might gold soar to $36,000 per ounce? In retrospect, would France’s ban on on-air Facebook/Twitter mentions prove to be incredibly prescient, preempting losses by French businesses who — thanks to CSA — were the first to realize that social media made little or no difference to their bottom line?

I doubt that any of this would come to pass. Whether the jury forever remains out on the ROI of social media, and its impact — real or imagined — on financial performance stays unprovable, two facts are immutable.

We are all eternally beguiled by Facebook and Twitter.

I will go to my grave one day, having never read past page 17 of Ulysses.