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Two weeks ago I wrote a blog post that quickly became the most popular I have ever published, "Burn It Down, Start From Scratch And Build a Social Media Strategy That Works." One of the reasons it was so popular is that my friend and former Forrester peer, Josh Bernoff, replied to my post from his terrific Without Bullshit blog, "Augie Ray, can we admit now that social media marketing is dead?"

The dialog between Josh, Forrester analyst Nate Elliott, me and dozens of commenters was vigorous and fascinating, so much so that Josh has now published a worthwhile follow-up, "To be precise, Social Media Marketing is just mostly dead." But where Josh took me to task for not delivering the Last Rites on social media marketing, I believe his latest blog post pulls its punches with respect to blame for declining organic reach and poor social media marketing results. Josh's article ends with:

And if you’re looking around for someone to blame, blame Facebook. It sucked up all the social energy among consumers, then squashed marketing effectiveness. Thanks for crashing the party, Zuck. We thought you might be Miracle Max, but you left us mostly dead all the same.

For too long, marketers have pointed fingers at Facebook. "Facebook lied to us." "They pulled off one of the most lucrative grifts of all time." "Facebook is Machiavellian." As Josh might say on his blog, I find these arguments bullshit.

Brands have lost organic reach not because Facebook took it away but because consumers did. No one blames the television networks for the declining reach of TV advertising lost to ad-skipping DVRs. No one blames Google for the rapid growth of ad-blocking that is reducing online advertising's reach. So why do we let marketers shift the blame from themselves and onto Facebook for the inevitable decline of brand content in users' news feeds?

Yes, Facebook is in a position to profit from brands' struggles on the social network, but the essential factor for brands' poor unpaid reach is not Facebook taking away things people want to see. Facebook implemented and improved its algorithm to make sure that the content presented to users is the content they most want, and that means the things posted by friends and family rather than our bank or toothpaste. Brand content on Facebook simply did not measure up--it could not compete with the content posted by the people about which we most care.

Think of it another way: What would happen tomorrow if Facebook took away content from our closest friends and charged us to see it? The uproar would kill Facebook overnight, of course. So, where is the uproar from consumers for all that missing brand content? Do you hear any consumers clamoring for more brand posts?

Assigning blame where it belongs is not merely a matter of right and wrong--it is vital for marketers to understand the problem so as not to repeat it. If we all blame Facebook for the demise of brands' organic reach, then marketers may be encouraged to give the same strategies another shot on other social networks. Why not Tumblr? Or Periscope? Or Twitter? Or Blab?

But if we instead place blame where it belongs--on the misguided belief that an army of consumers is hungry for brand content--it forces marketing leaders to reconsider strategies. Why would consumers welcome and pay attention to my brand's content on Periscope when they have abandoned it on Facebook and Twitter? Should content marketing really be the most significant slice of my marketing budget given consumers have rejected our marketing communications on television, online and on social networks?

Blaming Facebook may be a salve for marketers' wounded egos, but it is not the least-bullshit, most-truthful message. Nor is it the most helpful in terms of resetting expectations for content and social media marketing in the future.

As I noted in a blog post last year, "Stop Social Media Marketing," there are certain brands and verticals that can make organic social media work, but most cannot. Why not? As I noted to Josh, we each interact with hundreds of brands every week, but with how many do we wish to have a content relationship? How much time will each of us really make to consume and engage with content posted by the long list of brands in our lives?

The first step toward getting marketing right in the social era is to take responsibility for convincing ourselves that consumers who block our calls, skip our commercials and obstruct our banner ads will suddenly embrace brand content in social channels. The last few years were not a grift by Facebook but a healthy reminder to marketers that consumers have never been more informed, distrustful or empowered. If marketers wish to win the millennial consumer, it will require a lot more effort than clever content and free posts.

Want someone to blame? Face facts, not Facebook.

I trust this blog post is unnecessary and that company leaders are smart enough to know they must maintain a presence on Facebook, regardless of the marketing challenges on the platform. But given that a small brand abandoning Facebook has been big news this week, a gentle caution may be in order.

In a shot heard round the social media world, food delivery company Eat24 lambasted Facebook for lying about brands' marketing opportunities, then deleted its Facebook fan page. I am sure a lot of frustrated and sympathetic marketers were jealous of Eat24's move. With organic reach getting harder to achieve, some marketers have been left wondering what the point is on Facebook.

The point is that your customers are there, and they have expectations, needs and questions. By deleting its fan page, Eat24 thought it was striking a blow against the Facebook "man," but the company sent an even more powerful and damning message to its customers. The company's actions were not a shot against Facebook (because the social network does not actually make money off of fan pages and organic posts) but against those 71,000 people who had liked the brand, as well as all future customers who might have wanted to interact with the company on Facebook.

Eat24 left a bitter and humorous post for Facebook before deleting its fan page, but here is what it really said to customers:

Dear Customers, 

We were not on Facebook for you but for us. Did you think we maintained our Facebook profile to listen or furnish value to you? Don't be silly--we were there to acquire new customers, and when you failed to help us do that, we decided you were no longer worth the effort. Your likes, shares and comments were of interest only to the extent we could exploit them for marketing gain, and frankly, you didn't help us very much, did you?

Did you expect to reach us with inquiries here on Facebook? We don't care--we were here for the free marketing, not to listen to your whiny requests, ideas, complaints or needs. Is Facebook a preferred channel for you to contact brands? Who cares--chase us to the platforms we prefer.

And to think we wasted all that time coming up uninteresting posts for you to ignore! Really, we expected so much better of you. Our Facebook fans have been a real disappointment, and we hope Twitter users will remember the one important thing about Eat24: We're not here for you; you're here for us! So get retweeting... or else!

Disrespectfully.

Eat24

The funny thing is that Eat24 thinks it has deleted its presence on Facebook, but it is still easy to find--only now the company is absent and unable to manage or protect its brand on the world's largest and most active social network. The primary brand page may be gone, but not this page. It was launched two weeks ago and looks like an Eat24 page, but is it? Customers are confused--one posted "Nice to see you back" and another added "I knew you'd be back"--but are fans liking an official company page or a page launched by a spammer? Who knows?

Of course, that is not the only Eat24 page. There's this page, also launched two weeks and looking quite official. And this one, apparently launched by a fan. And this one. And this one. Consumers expect brands to be on Facebook, and now when a customer goes searching for the company, there is no telling what they will find or to which pages they will connect.

If your brand is disappointed in the shrinking opportunities for earned media on Facebook, it ought to reconsider its options, but deleting the company page is not one of them. If you are investing too much in organic content that is not delivering the value desired, post less. (Problem solved!) Or reconsider if Facebook is really a marketing channel aside from the opportunities offered by its paid media offerings. Now is the right time to reassess if your Facebook page might be better suited for customer care, advocate programs and reputation management rather than for acquisition, awareness and conversion.

Does this look like abandoning customer care on Twitter?

My prediction is that Eat24 will be back; it would not be the first brand to make a big show of abandoning a social network, only to return with its tail between its legs. A year and a half ago, Charter Communications announced it would cease customer care on Twitter. At the time, I predicted Charter would reverse course, and it has. While the company has not relaunched a customer service profile, it is actively answering customer complaints and requests via its @Charter Twitter presence. Charter found it could not ignore customers' preferred channels, and Eat24 will likely learn the same lesson.

There was a time when companies threatened to abandon their early websites because the sites failed to drive the marketing value expected. Today, brand websites are less about marketing than sales, service, recruiting, education, investor relations and other business objectives. So, too, will it go with Facebook and other social platforms. Smart brands will find the right way to create value, both for the company and its customers.

I do not believe brands will follow Eat24's lead, because smarter and cooler heads will prevail. Eat24 has cut off its nose to spite its face, but smarter brands will sniff around for other ways to create value.
 

Join me in a journey back to a simpler time; a time of innocence, hope and more than a little naivety. I'm talking, of course, about 2008. Facebook has 100 million users, a mere 200,000 people access Twitter each week, no brands are doing anything more than experimenting with the nascent social medium and virtually no one is employed full time in the field of social media marketing.

Those of us who are predicting the future are writing about the power of this medium to create greater authenticity, to build trust and to surface genuine advocacy. Success will not be won, we emphatically declare, by the brand with the largest advertising budget but the brand that earns authentic relationships and activates authentic Word of Mouth based on trust, transparency and a commitment to do right by the customer. Brands that collect authentic fans and engage in authentic conversations will thrive while those that cheat to accumulate worthless fans and trivial conversations will suffer when consumers learn of the brands' inauthentic exploitation of the social medium.

Authentic, authentic, authentic--social media may hold many surprises as it matures, but by God, we know the future will be authentic!

Since then, social media has matured--we got that much correct--with consumers adopting social media in droves, making it a big business. Forrester reports that marketers will spend close to $3 billion this year on social media marketing, and with that kind of money comes a great deal of immediate corporate expectations. Authentically create fans? To hell with that, we want lots of "fans" and want them now. Who cares if they actually are fans (the kind that do not need to be bracketed within quotation marks)?

In the war for fans, authenticity was the first casualty, and the weapons deployed were sweepstakes, giveaways, contests and social game freebies. Einstein Bagels gave every new Facebook fan a free bagel, and it garnered a 7,000% increase in Facebook fans in just three days; perhaps a few of these folks were already fans--in the true sense of the word--but the vast majority had no affinity for the brand and were simply bought with a $1.10 bagel. Gerber deployed a baby photo contest in which those who wanted to vote for a friend's or relative's baby were required to become fans of the brand, regardless of whether they ever purchased a product from or had any relationship with Gerber. And Farmers Insurance gave away a freebie to Farmville players and set "the Guinness World Record for most 'likes' in a 24-hour period." (Does anyone else feel a bit queasy realizing there is a Guinness World Record for collecting "fans" that have absolutely no relationship with the brand? I wonder if Bernie Madoff gets his name included in the Guinness book for tricking the largest number of people with a Ponzi scheme.)

Weren't Facebook "fans" supposed to be authentic fans? According to the social media gurus, people who fanned a brand would be signalling their authentic affinity for it, and this genuine expression of brand love would ripple through trusted relationships in social networks, multiplying awareness and purchase intent from one consumer to the next to the next. This is not what happened for most brands, because most brands did not start with the most important thing: Fans with authentic affinity

No one benefited from the fact marketers used inauthentic means to amass meaningless fans. Although people could have gotten true value out of knowing which brands their friends love, today none of us can tell if our friends' likes were motivated by true brand advocacy or a Mafia Wars freebie. Marketers lost, as well. Thanks to EdgeRank, Facebook's algorithm to keep users' news feeds as interesting and sticky as possible, brands that accumulated disinterested fans failed to break through to most users' news feeds, and thus few "fans" ever see, much less engage with, brand status updates. The result is easy to see throughout Facebook--fan pages with huge fan counts but small ratios of them "talking about" the brands. Inauthentic fans cannot drive authentic engagement.

In desperate need of engagement to break through to fans' news feeds, many brands are opting to game Facebook's EdgeRank rather than build meaningful dialog--more inauthentic tactics piled upon inauthentic tactics. Why take the long, hard, authentic route of engaging people in a conversation about your product, service, brand or mission (or the things your customers really care about) when you can gather likes, replies and shares by posting pictures of puppy dogs or "Keep Calm" posters?

It is difficult, for example, to get people talking about insurance, risk and financial security, so Progressive's Flo rarely even tries; instead, she shares things like a picture of an ear of corn on a unicycle. (Oh, that Flo--it's a unicorn!) Other brands beg people to "like" if they believe one thing or "share" if they believe another. In my opinion, the nadir of inauthentic and desperate engagement tactics came when Blackberry challenged fans to "write out 'BlackBerry' one letter at a time in the comments box, without interruptions," resulting in almost 19,000 one-letter replies with "B," "L," "A," "C"... well, you get the idea.

Brands were supposed to build trusted networks with valuable content, and instead they have turned into carnival midway barkers, simultaneously shouting at passing customers hoping to catch the attention of one or two gullible enough to be hustled. Like us! Share this! Comment!

Thanks to the Condescending Corporate Fan Page for these examples.

How does any of this pass for authentic engagement that reflects authentic brand relationships? The better question is how can this sort of vapid, pandering "engagement" build brands? Are you encouraged to check out a brand, research its products or consider a purchase because one of your friends announced he or she is on "team Peanut Butter" by liking a post by GE Appliances? "OMG, my friend is on team Peanut Butter--I should buy a GE refrigerator," said no one ever.

Social media was supposed to strip away the meaningless clutter of the mass media era, exposing true brand affinity and advocacy; instead, social media marketing strategies have encouraged brands to post any meaningless thing in pursuit of a comment, like or share. The irony is that none of this actually helps brands--just as inauthentic fans cannot create authentic engagement, neither can inauthentic engagement build authentic brand value. Asking people to spell your brand name one letter a time or share your picture of a vegetable on a unicorn doesn't spark awareness, consideration, preference or usage.

For example, Einstein's freebie giveaway garnered hundreds of thousands of bought fans, but it did not prevent the company from stumbling. Today the brand has three quarters of a million fans and just 500 people "talking about" them. Moreover, six months after the Facebook stunt, Einstein reported disappointing revenue with same-store sales down more than a percent, and two years later, the company had the lowest earnings growth in its industry. So many "fans," so few fans.

For another example, Blackberry can get tens of thousands of people to type the letter "B" in a reply, but it cannot successfully launch the phone it desperately needs to succeed. In the United States, the new Z10 phone "started poorly and weakened significantly" after that. Look at its Facebook page, and Blackberry looks like a winner with 26 million fans; look at its stock performance, and you will see a company that has lost almost 90% of its market cap since the advent of the social era.

It turns out that, much like in every other marketing channel, it is possible to buy impressions but you cannot buy success in social media. Authenticity is not dead, you just have to look a little harder to find it in social media nowadays. You can find authenticity:

• On Ford's Facebook page: Every post on brand. Every engagement focused on customers and enthusiasts. Not a single attempt to trick people in liking a post if they love tires or share a post if they think rear view mirrors are the bomb. Ford is a brand that conveys passion, focus, respect for customers and confidence in social media, and as a result, social media is credited with helping to build the brand and successfully launch products.
    
• On Home Depot's Facebook page--and on its community, its blog, or the many online forums in which it participates:  Home Depot has earned praise and enhanced its business by putting its greatest asset--its experienced employees--to work answering consumer questions in the social networks where consumers are. The company does not dictate either the dialog or where consumers should interact with Home Depot but deploys resources and responds to consumer questions in the channels where customers are active.
    
• On the Duck Tape Facebook page:  While the brand's 14,000 people "talking about" is disappointing given its fan count (of five million), you still have to hand it to a brand of adhesive tape for getting 14,000 people talking. I frequently hear from people who feel their brands have little interesting to say, and Duck Tape shows how creativity and crowdsourced ideas can help even a boring brand earn authentic engagement.
    
• On the USAA Facebook page: My former employer continues to demonstrate how to mix highly-engaging content with serious information to educate consumers and build brand loyalty. The brand is not beyond posting a photo of smiling child wearing fatigues to celebrate the Month of the Military Child (and earning 10,000 likes for doing so), but other posts in the days before and after help fans learn how to switch accounts to USAA, furnish education on financial planning for a PCS (Permanent Change of Station in military speak) and address questions on flood insurance. 

earn  verb ərn\:  to receive as return for effort and especially for work done or services rendered (Source: Merriam-Webster)

I've been engaged today in a running dialog on Twitter, my blog and Social Media Today about why 20-something social natives are not better suited than older people to lead social media. The thing that frustrates me most of all is not the lack of self-awareness of young adults; after all, we've all been there, and today's Millennials are no better or worse than Boomers or Gen Xers in their 20s. Instead, what annoys me is that so many people think social media offers some sort of shortcut--a way to bypass time and hard work for their careers or their brands. Social may change a lot, but it doesn't change what really matters, and this means there are no shortcuts to earning success.

Relationships are not formed, value is not created and skills are not honed without time, investment and effort. Getting someone to have a true relationship with your brand is not accomplished with the click of a "Like" button, and attaining positions of leadership within the corporate world does not happen because you  tweet constantly and have a cell phone surgically attached to your hand. Facebook, Twitter and other social tools may change how we manage our careers and brands, but they don't change what is required to succeed.

I've long railed on my blog against brands that think they can buy fans with sweepstakes and social game giveaways. We've seen story after story of brands accumulating hundreds of thousands of fans using these methods, but have these brands really succeeded at anything? They've gained a Facebook "fan," but have they gained a loyal customer or an advocate? These brands believe they've acquired a prospect, but with little to no affinity and low EdgeRank, this connection is as thin and valueless as a purchased email address. This isn't a relationship--it's a mockery of one--because relationships take time, effort, mutual interest and shared values. The brands that are truly succeeding in social media are not the ones taking shortcuts but the ones that stand for something, commit to the customer and work hard to earn a lasting relationship.

The same is true for social media leaders. Some young people think they own the market on social leadership because they've grown up with social media. By this logic, Steve Jobs, a man who did not grow up with mobile tech, should never have been able to relate to the way young people use tablets and cell phones. How could Walt Disney, a man who was in his 30s when television reached mass adoption, have succeeded at creating entertainment for children of the TV era? Dr. Dre, who turned eighteen when Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band topped the charts, still produces music relevant to young people year after year. And let's not forget people like Brian Solis, Scott Monty and Frank Eliason, recognized leaders in social media, despite the fact Facebook launched after they were 30 years old. 

Beyond the gaping holes in this 20-something logic lies the same sense that social media can be a shortcut. Why should young professionals have to put in years of hard work, prove themselves, earn their way up the corporate ladder, gain experience managing budgets and people, and validate their judgment in ever larger and riskier programs when, you know, they all tweet and post? They're social and that counts for something, doesn't it?

Social media and social business are not shortcuts. They do not make earning loyal customers or earning job promotions any easier (although failing to use social media appropriately may make both more difficult). They operative term here is "earn." You earn these things; you don't just get them because you are merely present in social media and have a Klout score.

Later this week, the Olympics will begin, and two thousand athletes will compete for 302 gold medals. A billion children run, jump and swim, yet only 302 gold medals will be awarded. It takes more than just showing up to be the best. It takes hard work. It is earned.

I had the opportunity to review Altimeter's new report, "The Converged Media Imperative: How Brands Must Combine Paid, Owned and Earned Media." The report by Rebecca Lieb and Jeremiah Owyang is smart and right, but if you work in social media it probably contains little you do not already know. That's not a criticism of the report, but the state of converged media is so nascent that there isn't much to say except "break down silos."

Let's face it--most marketers and agencies only "got" the need to truly converge digital and traditional media about five years ago. It took almost a decade after the mass adoption of the public Web before agencies stopped being distinctly "above the line" versus "digital." For most of that period, the web was an afterthought--marketers and their agencies dreamed up big ideas to be executed in traditional media, and then added on a brochureware site and a small banner ad buy almost as an afterthought. Given this recent history, it probably comes as no surprise to anyone that agencies and marketers are struggling to integrate paid, owned and earned (POE). 

My personal experience is that agencies are better equipped to deal with POE convergence today than they were digital/traditional convergence a decade ago. The generation of agency execs who grew up with digital media were quick to adjust to the importance of social media and the need for marketing strategies that converge media. 

Despite this, the Altimeter report observes too many agencies are stuck in the campaign mindset and fall back on single-channel expertise. It is ironic to read that "Digital agencies claim social agencies lack larger brand perspective," since that was exactly the criticism aimed at digital agencies by their traditional counterparts not so long ago. While agencies continue to struggle with the rapid changes in media habits and toolsets, they seem better prepared for the demands of convergence than many on the client side. 

For marketers, the challenges of converging media seem greater. As noted in the report, "Internally, brands are organized in marketing sub-groups that are territorial, competitive, and political." It's not merely that different people are responsible for paid media, PR and brand (not to mention hiring, training, customer care and product management); it's that they speak different languages, measure success with different metrics and fight for the same limited budget. As the corporate budget for social goes from six figures to seven and eventually to eight, the reaction will look less like a collaboration in media convergence and more like a cage match for the heart and soul of corporate social media.

Both agencies and marketers have a common gripe when it comes to media convergence: The state of existing tools. The report notes that "Agencies struggle... with ever-changing tool sets" and that marketers are "kneecapped" by "disparate tools." The Altimeter report notes that vendors recognize media is converging but still tend to rely on their traditional strengths. Even the recent spate of acquisitions hasn't helped matters, since integrating disparate systems takes time.

As I noted, if you are employed in the social media space, none of this will come as any surprise to you because you live it every day. The Altimeter report is still a worthwhile read, however;  it contains four fine examples of brands that have executed strategies combining two or more types of POE media. Also, the report recommendations are solid, although the irony is that executing them will require cross-department collaboration, the lack of which is one of the primary problems in the first place. It's a little like giving a person instructions on how to start a fire that contains a step requiring a match. (If I had a match, I wouldn't need the instructions, now would I?)

The social media professional probably cannot, on their own, tear down silos, change enterprise dashboards or create new incentives for agencies and vendors, but several of Altimeter's recommendations fall into the purview of the corporate social media leader. Some of the things they offer (along with a bit of additional advice and experience of my own) include:

• Bridge internal teams: There is perhaps nothing more important for today's social media leader than being an educator, networker and collaborator. In an organization of even modest scale, the success of a social media leader won't be measured based on what his or her own team produces but by what is enabled across the enterprise.
    
• Give agency leaders who can bridge the functions a seat at the decision-making table: Don't merely work with the social teams within your agency partners. Even worse, don't hire your own social agencies, separate from the agencies used by others in the organization. It may be tempting to hire and control your own agency relationship, but your enterprise cannot converge if the agencies are intentionally distinct and incompatible.
    
• Work closely with agency partners that have deep expertise in tools and data: Your organization needs an agency that gets the way social media data is used and the tools necessary to make social work at scale. It doesn't take a high level of interdepartmental collaboration to understand the importance of this in today's world. Make sure agency selection processes include considerations for deep social execution capabilities and not merely high-level Facebook strategies or paid media tactics.

Facebook says using Reach Generator will increase the volume of engagement with your brand (likes, comments and shares) by 2x

At last week’s Facebook Marketing Conference (fMC), the company announced new timeline features and ad programs, which are thoroughly explored in great summaries by TechCrunch and Attention. Marketers are atwitter (pun intended) over new opportunities for social media at scale, but the announcements made me wonder if Facebook was diminishing the power of earned media and elevating old-fashioned paid media.

Let me start with a simple question:

Which brand do you believe deserves to win in the social era: The one that earns the most attention through its products, services and brand, or the one with the biggest advertising budget?

Now, read what Attention has to say in its overview of Facebook's new timeline:

"Thus far, brands have invested in fans. And brands have invested in content to engage them. Now, by investing in Reach Generator and Premium on Facebook, brands have the ability to guarantee that fans see this content. While brands are paying for distribution, brands are receiving significantly more engagement. This will greatly increase a Page’s EdgeRank score, which will, in turn, grant a greater ROI as more of a brand Page’s content will be viewed over time."

Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, said it even more succinctly on AdAge:

"While you're paying for distribution, you're getting significantly more engagement. This engagement is 'Facebook gold,' as I like to say. Your EdgeRank score will be juiced."

Wait a sec--brands that invested in fans and content now must invest in paid media? And paying for distribution will increase a brand's content's EdgeRank, Facebook's method for (authentically?) recognizing the content that fans most want to see in their newsfeeds? It sounds as if earned media has just taken a knee to the groin from old-fashioned Advertising 1.0.

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I think Facebook has finally given to marketers the tools they need  to drive success on the Facebook platform--the combination of Open Graph, new action types, richer fan pages, Reach Generator and Premium for Facebook furnishes a powerful (if still complex) marketing suite. On the other hand, I also cannot help but think back to the tenants of social media as expressed in the Cluetrain Manifesto: "We are immune to advertising. Just forget it..." Not so quick there, Cluetrain! There's a new sheriff in town--and he looks a lot like the old sheriff in a new uniform.

Different observers have different opinions what this all means, but I believe one thing is certain--Facebook users will see less organic brand content in their newsfeed and be exposed to more paid brand content. No, that is not exactly what Facebook execs said on stage at fMC; instead, they launched Reach Generator which, according to Ad Age, "lets you pay money to guarantee that your Posts get to at least 75% of your fans each month" instead of the 16% Facebook says sees wall posts currently. Facebook is also launching Premium on Facebook, which allows brands to insert their posts into fans' newsfeeds (both in the browser and mobile versions), saving brands the hard work of earning their way into fans' attention.

Facebook guaranteeing impressions can only mean one of two things. The first is suggested by The New York Times, which says we will see a great deal more ads: "Facebook’s hundreds of millions of users could soon be faced with a lot more advertising — in their newsfeed, on their mobile devices and even when they log off." I'm betting on option number two, which is the less dangerous one for Facebook: The number of brand impressions will stay more or less steady, but paid impressions will push earned media out of the way.

We all recognize that people don't sign into Facebook  to see what brands are posting. A little bit of that goes a long way, and too many brand posts--sponsored or organic--could easily get people packing their bags and heading to Google+, Path or another social network with less advertising (for now). If Facebook wishes to increase paid impressions while avoiding a user revolt against greater brand presence, the answer is easy: Simply decrease the opportunity for brands to speak within fans' newsfeeds for free in order to make room for the brands that pay. (Now, c'mon, you didn't think Facebook existed to allow companies to make money by collecting customers and communicating in powerful new ways for free, did you?)

Maybe this isn't an either-or situation but instead marks a new synergy between paid and earned media; after all, these new Facebook ads all begin their lives as posts, not traditionally-designed ads. Or maybe Facebook just eviscerated the difference between earned, owned and paid media (for better or worse). Michael Lazerow thinks so: "The lines between what marketers now refer to as paid, owned and earned media are now officially gone. Goodbye. Gone."

Still, if the way a brand gets noticed in social media increasingly depends on its checkbook, this seems to mark a new phase in the evolution of social media. Are we seeing the passing of the era of earned media so soon? Is Facebook now like television, putting challenger brands and small brands with limited budgets at a disadvantage against the brands that can invest liberally to get their messages distributed? And can we say that earned media is, in fact, earned if most people see it only because it is paid?

As I watch for Facebook's bold changes to be deployed more widely, I hope that earned media does not become locked behind a paywall. Mike Hoefflinger, Director of Global Business Marketing of Facebook, said Facebook is bringing back the relationship between customers and brands to the “good old days” when the guy behind the pharmacy counter knew your name. He then added that ”Premium offers on Facebook are the best way to get your stories in front of more people, more often…This is your opportunity to express your identity and tell your stories.”

Funny, but I remember the shop owner earning the relationship with me, not buying it.