"Honey, you blew the blog"

So Social Media(SM) is the flavor of the month. Everyone and his uncle have a perspective, an opinion. Nothing wrong with that. But how many are relevant?

The venture capital community with which I schmooze is sniffing around for the next big thing. It is always. They don’t know much else. Once it was consumer internet portals, followed by search and social networks, then it was mobile content, gaming and stuff, now it is social media – blogs, wikis, podcasts and all things user generated. Their pet peeve – brands don’t spend much on online initiatives.

How will they? Cheapest computers still come at $500. Developed markets may afford that (not for long though!), but growth is in emerging markets, where millions live with annual median income of $2500. You must be nuts to ask them to spend 20% of their annual income on a computer so that they will see your ad or a mobile phone that has a TCO of $500 over 3 years.

Then there are other pitfalls in SM. B.L.Ochman says “without first-hand knowledge of social media influence building -- which, sorry to say, mainstream media still doesn't have -- blog advertising will fail no matter who's selling the ads.” She goes on bringing out some insights on optimizing blog networks.

Bottomline – SM has a lot of ground to cover. It starts with driving mass adoption of the web. Invest in hardware innovation. Make available low cost (I mean real low, cap it at $10) hardware to access the Net. Break the stranglehold of 10 second TV commercial by serving personalized digital content. Deliver curious content. Do anything that makes the user stick.

.