"Don’t waste two to four hours a day on Twitter and call it lead generation. It’s the same as watching soap operas."             
-- Chris Brogan
Certainly, social media matters -- but it's not the ONLY thing that matters.  The biggest problem with social media is that it can be a time-waster, and your Klout score notwithstanding, it's still difficult to track and measure the impact you're having.  Not impossible, but not easy, either. Most brands need the whole package:  even a pure online play will need to show up at targeted events from time to time!  That requires a skill set that is more than online-focused.  Most brands cannot Tweet their way to the bottom line.

  I just noticed this post on Alltop about how social media has plateaued.  I'm not surprised!  I remember when marketers got all hot and sweaty about email marketing in the mid-90's; it was supposed to kill off virtually all other types of media, and we;d even stop killing trees.  Anybody remember the promises of "the paperless office"???  

Twitter's tapering off... Chris Brogan made a great point about this, and as usual I agree with him. Believing you NEED more Twitter followers is like believing you NEED more Facebook friends.  Heck, I routinely bump people off my back because I don't cotton to spam or irrelevance.  

It's not going to die, certainly, but I think we'll start seeing a rebound in 2012, where people start to reconnect to other people in real life, face to face.  It will be interesting to see how the trends continue to shift.

Of course I'm on Facebook -- I'm in marketing; it was made mandatory.  I think Mark Zuckerberg managed to have something dumped into the coffee supply at every single marketing conference that was held in 2008-2010 -- and if you attended virtually any sort of marketing event during that time span, you instantly became a Facebook devotee, whether you wanted to be or not.  I presented at and attended a lot of marketing events and conferences in the past few years, and I love coffee, so I certainly came out with the craving for having a Facebook page, just like everybody else.  

However...
I'm just not that into Facebook, and I doubt that will change. I read recently that the fastest-growing age demographic on Facebook is women over 55 -- not my tribe. I've known a few people who have become fixated on Facebook, downright addicted to it. YES, I use it; YES, I get it -- but it's not MY killer app. 

I'm glad we still have freedom of choice!  That said, I can see the writing on the wall: a couple of years from now, Facebook login integration's going to be the hot-hot thing; you'll be able to log into countless other sites using your Facebook credentials -- and naturally, Facebook will have access to all that intel on your preferences and interests. 

I know we're moving toward a Big Brother world -- a lot faster than many people would want to think -- but I'd rather have a bit more payoff than what you get from Facebook! Cute kids, cute kittens, drunken college students and personal diatribes are not things I like spending my time on. 

 I keep my hand in, but other than a brief stint playing Mafia Wars when it was brand new (um, and probably when the effects of the Zucker-Coffee was the strongest), I spend more time on LinkedIn because I think the discussions are more interesting.

So, please don't ask to Friend me on Facebook -- but by all means connect with me on LinkedIn!