Found image of the day. Social media, the truth.

“I’m having a coffee at Starbucks.” Or, “I just finished a 10k run.” Or, “Will you join my facebook mafia gang?”

Most social media is nonsense. Status updates you wouldn’t update your spouse with, let alone people you mostly don’t even know. It’s a complete waste of time.

And money.

Despite twitter’s valuation of some hundreds of millions of dollars, it hasn’t produced a nickel of profit. And they still can’t figure it out. I’m sure old Rupert Murdoch wakes up with indigestion every night over his myspace acquisition as well.

Then there are the hordes of social media mavens, experts and visionaries.

For a term that was just coined in the last couple of years, how can this be? To make matters worse, much of what could be called, “the new social media elite,” like to scold newbies over proper etiquette. As if we were all formally invited to the party in the first place. I’ve been told that I don’t know much about social media because I insist the fundamentals of marketing still apply. Particularly, to provide interesting ideas that benefit your chosen audience in order to create conversation and (groan) sales!

Finally, there’s the old nod-your-head-and-repeat-after-me, “a good idea can come from anywhere” crowd. Have you taken a look at myspace recently? Over the past 5 years, maybe? It’s a bloody mess. They allowed, rather, encouraged everybody to have a free-for-all with custom widgets, flash, assorted apps and other crap. And now they can’t clean it up.

To determine whether everybody on the freakin’ planet is good at ideas and aesthetics, simply look in their house. Or at their bank account. Or their life. It’s not difficult. On the other hand, maybe the gangly, ugly child that is social media will grow up into a productive member of the communications biz. It just needs a mirror placed in front of it. That is, criticism. Lots of criticism.