Cartoon via this blog, but created by Oliver Widder, a rather dapper Hamburg-ian.

Here's some filler text to enjoy while you ponder the meaning of "follow."

April marked the fourth consecutive month that Facebook ranked first for its number of unique visitors and time spent – InformationWeek, citing Nielsen data.

Time spent? How much time, exactly?

Um, 13.9 billion minutes. Up from 1.7 billion minutes. Now, I don't have the wherewithal to locate my nearest digital calculator, so I'll just believe the article when it tells me that's an increase of 700%.

SEVEN HUNDRED PERCENT, kids.

It looks cool when you write it in all caps, and it also is more frightening. It means that we are spending exponential more time in these little virtual bubbles, sending cryptic updates, fake-spying on high school acquaintances. (It's not stalking if there's no restraining order.)

What I find interesting is that Facebook is overtaking MySpace and yet it caters to a slightly older demographic. Translation: older people are learning how to "hang out" online, too. Now watch: the teenagers take advantage of our Twitter-Facebook obsession to get offline and do something surprising and perhaps wonderful, while our eyes remain glued to our virtual networks.

Brands and marketers who got all excited about using Twitter as a tool for reaching that 18-24 demographic may be sorely disappointed by a recent study that shows just 29% of young'uns on Twitter follow companies; most are interested in following their friends, and celebrities. (In that order, thank god.)

That is, if they're even on Twitter. Just 2 in 10 in that age group use it, compared to 9.9 out of 10 that have profiles on social networks, according to the Participatory Media Network study. Wait, 0.1 of a person? Does that mean there's three-quarters of a femur out there, floating around, without a requisite 'casual sexy' profile picture, eclectic-yet-mainstream musical tastes, and 'smart' literary quote with which to identify itself to its 700 friends? God forbid.

Michael Della Penna of PMN called it a "glass half full" scenario. "Clearly we're only touching the surface of its potential as a marketing vehicle," he says.  "It's clear that Gen Y has an appetite for social networking, but still hasn't fully embraced micro-blogging. There is a tremendous opportunity now for marketers to develop strategies to get this important group active on Twitter too."

Yes, clearly. Let's keep telling ourselves that. And let's also keep them as two separate entities, shall we? Because that doesn't make sense – integrating the less popular medium into the one that the group is already gaga over. Ga. ga.

By the way – funny that a search for "facebook twitter," or vice versa, brings up Twitter's Facebook page well before Facebook's Twitter account. Did that just make you dizzy?

The New York Times tells us today that Starbucks is launching a major social media blitz to tie in with their latest advertising campaign. Among other things, a contest to be the first to post a photo of new ad posters on Twitter.

They already have large followings on Facebook (1.5 million fans) and Twitter (183,000 followers) and this campaign is sure to get them more. So will social media get people to drink more coffee? Or buy more cars?

No one knows yet how to measure the ROI on social media, yet we all secretly believe it makes a difference. These grand experiments are laying the foundation for the future if nothing else.

Relationships are supposed to be the cornerstones to success on the social web. So what does this mean for brands? We find ourselves wondering how Starbucks (or any other brand) plans to have a personal relationship with millions of people. What's the point of social media if not to be social? Don't get us wrong, we are all for expanding into the social web. In fact, we think it is necessary and only a matter of time until all aspects of the web are social.

And yet, we find ourselves wondering where it's headed. Will social media continue to be part of advertising? Residing within the marketing department? Or is it something else, like, say, how a company does business everyday, up there with answering the phone. Because carrying on a conversation is what customer service representatives do. Not necessarily marketers.

As for Starbucks? We don't make friends with our coffee. We drink coffee with our friends. So we're going to grab a latte, sit down at the keyboard, and check in on Facebook. Maybe we'll tell our friends how great this coffee is.

Traditional advertising and social media are getting cozier by the day. So cozy that you might want to call them “friends with benefits.” That guy you overheard talking about his favorite yogurt? That woman blogging and twittering about her awesome new car? Maybe not quite so unbiased – since they got that yogurt and that car for free. Say what you will, getting something for nothing makes a difference. Hence, the benefits.

Solicited word-of-mouth is nothing new; BzzAgent has been around a while, sending people out in the world to comment, share and, well, generate buzz. Now, Ford Fiesta is giving away cars to agents. Hey, if I had a new car for 6 months, I would probably like it too. Ah, that new car smell. Nothing quite like it.

Our response? It's time to embrace your inner skeptic. The message is only as valuable as you allow it to be. These days, everyone has something to share, and it’s not all as innocent as it might seem.  As Pete Cashmore wrote in his post "Can Social Media Make Us Buy More Cars?": “In the era of user-generated content, being an informed and skeptical consumer of media is as important as being a skilled creator.” And for every blogger, vlogger, or twitterer commenting on a product, there are ten consumers who need to raise that eyebrow just a little higher.

Of course the real question is: will it work? How skeptical are people these days? Keep watching Ford Fiesta and maybe we'll find out.

Facebook and Twitter are now driving a significant amount of traffic to web sites. Enough to make Google and Yahoo just a teeny bit nervous. Heck some sites are seeing more traffic from Facebook than from Google. Google and Facebook are still complementary, but that may be shifting. We call this shift “Search 3.0.”

Peter Hershberg broke down Search 3.0 in AdAge recently, defining three levels of social connections: personal/real-life, shared interest (such as those you follow on Twitter), and shared experience (an Amazon or eBags reviewer). People are using these connections to assess the value of their search results. A straight Google search just doesn’t cut it when you can ask your friends,
their friends, a few professionals you respect and maybe someone who has tried the product. All in one easy inquiry into the hive mind.(Ok, maybe not all queries are best suited for this kind of search.)

On top of that, people can’t seem to stay away from social networks (time spent is up 93%). Which means that their social connectivity is growing and
strengthening. There is a new kind of relevance: personal — defined by your personal network. So you, dear marketer, are going to have to approach things just a little differently.

We also learned that people filter content in a way that Google just can’t. A recent study showed that 25% of posts through the social bookmarking site Delicious have yet to be indexed by search engines. And the tags are 93% relevant. That is high value: relevant AND timely. No waiting for spiders to catch up.

What does this mean for you? Social media is critical, like it or not. Twitter or something like it won’t go away (as much as you might want it to). And Search as we know it has changed. Nervous yet? It’s time to start experimenting. And make a few mistakes while you’re at it — the risk-taking window is wide-open.

These days, you can’t read anything without coming across a mention of Twitter. If only Twitter could monetize word-of-mouth they’d be IPO-worthy today. And yet, there you are, a marketer, shaking in your boots because you have no idea how to start with all of this.

Oh, you know there is plenty of advice out there. You’re no fool. You’ve been reading blogs. You have googled expert tips. You even signed up for a Twitter account (@cluelessnewbie) a month or two ago. But every time you see that “What are you doing?” you are paralyzed. Why would anyone care what you had for lunch today? And are you actually interesting enough for people to follow you? How self-obsessed do you have to be to constantly want to say what you are doing? Is Twitter populated with narcissists?

And then, you read an article like this one about the different types of Twitter personalities and you get even more anxious. There are styles? Some of them undesirable? I don’t want to annoy people!

Don’t worry. Reframe the question. Instead of answering “What are you doing,” answer this: “What do you find interesting today?” If you found it interesting, someone else probably will too.

Still worried about narcissism? Think about this gem we heard at an excellent panel (Is Aristotle on Twitter?) at the SXSW conference: if someone complains about something you tweet, THAT person is the narcissist for having assumed it was intended for him.

To misquote President Lincoln: You can entertain some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not entertain all of the people all of the time.

See? No worries. Go ahead: Step into the Twitter stream. It’ll be OK.

And if it brings you any comfort – everyone else goes through the same process. (See the 5 stages of Twitter acceptance.)

The SXSW Interactive conference brought together thousands of people who love technology so much that they were willing to spend a weekend and then some in Texas to talk about it. (OK, they also love the parties and the social scene that go along with it, but still, these are serious technophiles.)

And how do all of those people want to communicate with each other? Twitter, of course. So, great idea, we use the hashtag #sxsw so anyone can search for related tweets. Only one small problem. In the time it took to write this paragraph, during the interactive conference there would have been hundreds of tweets.

Since interactive is over, and it’s now the music & film conferences, many of the hard-core twitterers are gone. (Just 40 results since typing the #sxsw hashtag above.) Nonetheless, the Twitter fire hose is spewing at a pace faster than most can manage. (44 results now)

Who can keep up with this? Absolutely no one. And now we have the challenge: scalability of social media. (50 results) How do we avoid #overload FAIL? (57 results) The magic word? “Filtering.” Not that the perfect filtering solutions exist yet. But they will.

For example, check out the new Facebook redesign. (79 results) You might not like it right now (like so many vocal others), but did you know that you can create a group of just the people you want to hear about it? And, you can make that group the default for your own news feed. (82 results)

Now that’s useful. (92 results. Have you caught up yet? Need to filter those tweets?)

Sick of hearing about layoffs, bankruptcies, and — dare I say it — cut ad budgets?

Here are few bright spots among all this doom and gloom:

• Interpublic Group (holding company for McCann Erickson, Universal
  McCann, Initiative and Lowe) posted  organic revenue growth of 6.2%
  last year, despite the downturn. That's $6.9 billion in annual revenue, but more importantly, $265.2 million in net income, up from $133.3m in 2007.
• Tech companies are going green. That is, using solar energy to power their massive, power-hungry server farms.
• Brands are figuring out how to do Facebook up right.
• Advertising is still sexy, politically-incorrect, and can be totally dangerous. My favorite: Mad-Men-style ad execs "doing nothing," from JWT Manila.

By 2013, 155
million of US Internet users will consume some form of user-created
content, up from 116 million in 2008 — and the number of user-generated
content creators will grow by similar proportions, reaching 115 million
in 2013, up from 83 million in 2008.
according to eMarketer.

And everyone loves it. I mean, it's cheap, it drives traffic and engagement, and it can be darn fun to play with. Like putty. This of course assumes that you don't look too deeply into it and try to analyze the psychological identity of the creator, that is, the American public — which I don't recommend doing, ever.

But not everyone, apparently. Advertisers, fearing its "inherently unpredictable" nature, tend to steer clear of it, which puts a lot of pressure on site publishers and social media channels to give them safe havens. But do those really exist? How do you juggle "true" UGC with the need to moderate for quality and relevance?