“Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings.”

I found this definition unsatisfying. Defining social media as a tool set turns the concept into a noun, when it’s really a verb. Social media isn’t a device that lets people share and discuss, it’s a process of content creation and dissemination.

A cell phone lets you discuss and share information among human beings, but companies aren’t running social media campaigns on phones. They’re doing it on blogs, social networks, and wikis.

A more accurate definition captures the process of content creation that defines social media. Social media is the shift from a “read-only” web to a “read/write” web. Websites started accepting user input. They started letting users “reprogram” them through collective actions like voting and user generated content.

Therefore, I propose the following definition:

Social media is a communications medium that relies on its audience to create, modify, or distribute the medium’s content.

This definition captures the activities we think of when we talk about social media. - “Hey, did you see all the comments on that blog post?” - “My video went viral from so many people sharing it with their friends”.

So, what’s the point? A proper definition of social media brings attention to how it works and is drastically different from traditional media. Newspaper columns never “went viral”. Advertisers never knew if a viewers’ eyes glazed over during a television commercial. Ten years ago, users never knew if they were the only ones frustrated by a defective product.

If you don’t know what social media is, you can’t market in it.

The article listed no new information, but instead highlights the massive shift in the way we will interact with the web. Unlike other web applications, social networks are not simply destination for another form of media we consume (i.e. I go to Youtube for video, and the New York Times for news). They are another essential layer bringing context to the web the way hyperlinking has since 1965. Hyperlinking connects content around the context of a document. Social linking connects content around the user. The chief example has been services like Facebook’s news feed or Friendfeed, which deliver content relevant to your social connections.

We still have a ways to go.

Social networks and content networks are still separated. As a hack, we’re using ad hoc social networks, or underpowered networks to connect content through active sharing. These are the “share this” and “mybloglogs” of the world that leverage social connections around a specific task.

But what we really need is to have social linkages “baked in” to the website’s programming. Connect and Friend Connect are part of reprogramming the web for social connections. It will happen because social aspects push engagement and discovery, which will be attractive counterparts to attention driven through active interest on search engines like Google or Yahoo. Publishers understand that they need to reprogram.

Unfortunately, we in the advertising industry are behind. Advertising has been slow to reprogram for the social web. We’re still hung up on hyperlinking in a content connected world. This is the reason marketers don’t understand why just 57 percent of social net users report clicking on an ad over the past year versus 79 percent of all users (according to IDC). Although, clicks can be a misguided success metric for brand advertisers. Optimizing around clicks is a very different goal from optimizing around brand loyalty.

The problem is that we’re not respecting the context of the medium. On social networks, it’s social connections that make content relevant, not hyperlinks. And we’re only in the beginning stages of reprogramming advertising around this concept.

The contraction in spending growth has forced the marketers to evaluate what can be pulled from their advertising portfolio. With few metrics to back value, display advertising is coming under fire. CPM rates are shrinking and publishers are concerned.

The More Things Change …

However, the growth of social media properties has made this a self fulfilling prophecy. In other words, “web 2.0″ broke web metrics. Back in 2001 top websites included AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and Lycos. To give you an idea, this is what AOL looked like circa 2001. It featured clear blocks of content resembling a magazine. You’d click, read, and move on.

Flash forward to 2008 and the top sites are Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. These sites generate 100s of page views per session as users take quizzes or page through photo albums. MySpace is a perfect example of the impact on CPMs as it happens to also be the largest display publisher on the web.

However, despite the drastic change in inventory, the metric remains the same. But an impression on AOL circa 2001 isn’t the same as an impression on MySpace 2008. Publishers on social networking platforms realize this more than anyone. High page view apps generally command a lower CPM than low pageview apps, simply because the high number of page views dilute the revenue from those ads even if they make more money overall. CPM is only useful when you’re comparing apples to apples and we’re far from that now.

How Do We Measure Success?

If CPMs isn’t a good measure of success then what is? Metrics must be geared toward a goal. Then the format is optimized around the goal. In search advertising it’s traffic, or lead generation. In direct response it’s conversions.

But CPG (consumer packaged goods) brands don’t need more traffic and they aren’t looking for viewers to fill out lead forms. Brands like Coke and Diesel are looking to create a meaningful impression. Meaning isn’t a metric measured by just clicks or views. It’s an emotional reaction that the viewer feels when seeing or interacting with an advertisement.

The industry needs desperately toward moving toward metrics that take into account meaning. We need metrics that understand clicks and impressions can represent social interactions or signify engagement. We need what we call “performance branding”.

Dell has a team of over 40 employees interacting with their customers through social media properties like blogs and their “IdeaStorm” voting site.

Technology firms are moving into social media because customers have in droves. Blogs and review sites have blossomed, changing a one to many conversation about their products to a many to many conversation. Companies can either let people say what they want, or dive into the conversation in a meaningful way.

I still think we’re in the very early stages of this shift. Companies are still concerned with constructing their own social media properties instead of focusing on the content. Case in point have be the slew of branded Facebook applications pushing products that only draw a few thousand users a month.

Businesses should focus on buying into the conversation, not into hosting it. More on that later.

Frankly, Ted McConnell has more influence over my thoughts and feelings when it comes to marketing, particularly in his latest speech covered in AdAge.

At a forum on digital media, McConnell said he isn’t sure that marketers even belong in Facebook. Specifically, “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”. McConnell sees marketing on “social media” as invasive and with too much low quality inventory.

Old Metrics - New Medium

He’s right when you apply traditional metrics to this new media. When ad sizes were standardized and users saw roughly the same number of ads on each site, clicks and impressions helped gauge the success of campaigns against one another. However, when you buy on social media, impressions and click through rates can vary widely. Traditional media sites like Yahoo or online news sites deliver an alluring consistency, but misses the mark on what makes social media a more effective platform. Brand advertising isn’t about generating impressions or clicks. Brand advertising is about delivering a meaningful message.

It’s All About Meaning

Meaningful messages come from the people we love, hate, and admire. It’s why Nike sells shoes with player’s names on them. It’s why we value a letter from a friend. And it’s why I’m writing about something P&G’s digital guru, Ted McConnell said. When messages come from meaningful people, they influence our decisions and thinking. Focusing on impressions and clicks loses the forest for the trees.

Our social banners focus on meaningful messages. We let advertisers sponsor conversations generated by users on their terms. Advertisers only pay when users volunteer to say something about the brand to their friends. These are impressions that leave an impression and clicks that lead to conversation. That’s what social media marketing is about.

It will cost $375 to apply ($175 for students and non-profits) and must be renewed each year to stay in the program. Verified apps will have a few cosmetic advantages (seal of approval) and some TBA benefits rolled out over time, but the real difference will be in how much Facebook aids verified apps and/or punishes unverified apps. Facebook has several knobs they can turn, from how often your users can invite each other, notify, and where those messages show up in a user’s activity stream. Wrapped in the new redesign was a tightening of these quotas. It has yet to be seen whether Facebook will simply reward the winners, or also punish the apps they don’t like.

The New Bureacracy

Theoretically none of this regulation should be needed. The “best” apps should be the one’s user’s share with friends the most. However, this kind of popularity contest led developers to focus on optimizing traffic flow. Apps focused on sending messages instead of building functionality.

So Facebook has had to step in to shape where they think the platform should go. Facebook would say app verification aligns incentives away from generating more messages to users, and toward pleasing Facebook’s usability goals.

However, the problems of spammy apps was largely cleared up with the Facebook redesign. The new verification program just creates an undue burden on small developers. Developers will have to provide an itemized list of how their application functions, as well as screen shot storyboards of their apps. Even still, they need to make sure their apps abide by a laundry list of functional requirements.

This is antithetical to the way applications are launched. Developers are used to prototyping quickly, finding out what works, and investing in the successes. If Facebook squeezes too tightly on unverified apps, the cost of applying for verification to get the reach they need to test an app, will simply be too great.

Toward A Better Platform

While the verification program will create problems for small developers, incumbent developers will see a boost if they get verified. Verification provides advertisers with a greater level of quality assurance, making advertisers more comfortable with advertising on this cohort of applications.

While logging into your favorite social app, you may have seen one of our most recent campaigns for “Eagle Eye”, Shia LaBeouf’s block busting thriller. The socialized movie promo hit the network, further pumping up developer’s earnings while topping out the box office at $29.2 million and pulling Hollywood out of this Fall’s doldrums.

The top 12 movies took in $87.8 million, up 15 percent from the same weekend last year.

No word on when, but it’s coming soon. The change to one Facebook is bound to make developer’s lives easier.

Over the course of a month, Compete’s data says over half of Facebook’s more than 100 million active users have made the switch to the new Facebook profiles.

More details in their post

What does it mean for Facebook developers? For one, you should get around to reviewing the New Profile entry on the Facebook wiki and get familiar with “fb_sig_in_new_facebook”, which tells you whether a user is using the new profile or not.

A word to the wize, the developer behind “Always Athletes” has said that when a user is using the old Facebook design, they can not see your app displayed on their friends’ profiles.