Those of you who have previously read this blog or my other writings, know that I am constantly warning against letting spin overtake or overshadow strategy in marketing and business overall. I am writing this on Super Bowl Sunday, the day when spin clearly reigns supreme and strategy takes a big back seat. (Which spot will win the Ad Bowl this year? Who knows or cares, but I would bet it’s not one that has a monkey in it.)

Another major spin topic these days is the rise of social networking as a media and marketing phenomenon. Now, I believe in, am impressed with, and even visit social networking sites as much as the next guy (at least, as much as the next Baby Boomer, a fact that will likely make the objectivity and relevance of this post rather suspect in some people’s eyes). But, the hyper spin around social networking of late is over the top even by the bandwagon standards of Silicon Valley and the advertising industry (where spin really is the coin of the realm). Facebook’s recent and justifiably infamous $15B valuation is a vivid example of this, but there are plenty of others out there.

So, here comes a quote from George Parker’s wonderful AdScam blog that takes the social networking spin into the stratosphere. In a recent post (http://adscam.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/01/social-networki.html) George referenced a piece by Leo Burnett UK in which the venerable ad agency predicts eight marketing/media trends for 2008. OK, this blog also hazarded its 20 Perilous Predictions for the year ahead (http://www.ideadrivenmarketing.com/?p=40). But the Burnett predictions included this doozy:

“This year we will see social networks beginning to dictate everyday life, influencing who people do business with, which parties, movies and gigs they go to, where they meet and with whom.”

Needless to say, George called Burnett on this ridiculous prediction. And what a load of spin it was. “Social networks beginning to dictate everyday life” is a pretty wild statement on the face of it. If anything, I expect that we will start to see exactly the opposite trend starting to emerge in 2008. That would be the start of a backlash against social networks. Frankly, they take too much time and anyone with a life and a job (meaning most adults) just doesn’t have the time to really put into these sites. Sure, teens and college kids have plenty of time to spend on Facebook and MySpace (as they always have had), but the tectonic shift that Burnett is predicting just is not going to happen with adults. They are seriously time challenged as it is.

This is exactly what I mean about not confusing spin with strategy. Just because hundreds of thousands of people are joining Facebook and LinkedIn every day, does not mean that these same people will be spending more and more of their time there, or using the sites to run their everyday lives. The web continues to grow like a massive global virus, with new sites, new media, new models springing up daily, each promising to revolutionize how people interact, communicate, conduct commerce, entertain themselves, etc. But, don’t forget: People’s time remains constant! Each of us still has just 24 hours in a day to deal with, and — guess what — we can’t spend all of that on Facebook, or on any other website of our choice.

Far from social networking sites dictating adults’ everyday lives, I think you will start to see a movement to more direct and “real” interactions — like people calling each other again and, yes, getting together in the real world (OMG, what is Second Life going to do?!). It’s part of a broader trend of “authenticity” which I believe is defining (or redefining) so many areas of life, and also the marketing industry.

The related trend here is a shift to special interest social networking sites, rather than the mass ones like the previously mentioned Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. The whole point of the “social graph” (Facebook’s founder/CEO’s Mark Zuckerberg underlying concept for social networking) is that it represents an individual’s personal network. Well, the fact that any major site has tens of millions of users doesn’t mean much when you consider that the average person can really only “handle” or realistically interact with a network of 100 or less friends (of course, some “social connectors” have many more, but never anything approaching the size and scale of the big sites…so what’s the point of the growing size?).

Just as other forms of media and marketing have splintered over time to address specific interests and needs, the same shift is happening to social networking. Which could leave Facebook as sort of the Time Magazine (or Ed Sullivan Show) of its day. A mass market media platform that tries to be all things to all people, and ends up being kind of irrelevant to most. Even more so than the old media world, you can see already how new media is increasing its fragmentation and specialization — ultimately because technology allows it and people desire it.

Net-net, let’s get real about social networking and the web in general. They are clearly important in our lives, and will thus be a growing part of the marketing mix, but you’d be making a big mistake if you let the Burnett UK spin influence your media/marketing strategies in the year ahead and beyond. Social networks will be a part of our lives, but they are not going to “dictate everyday life” in 2008. That is just more ad agency spin that does not take into account the reality of how people actually live, work and play.

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