There is a dirty little secret many folks don't want you to know - There is no such thing as a social media expert.

If you've attended a conference, browsed a book store or, god help you, Googled a social networking question lately, then you know what I'm talking about. The sheer volume of men and women purporting to be experts in a field that until recently didn't exist is preposterous. 

Let's take Malcolm Gladwell's research and agree it takes at least 10 000 hours to become an expert at something. The math breaks down like this: A person would need to spend 5.46 hours a day researching and practicing social networking for five years straight with zero days off (Merry Twittistmas!) in order to be deemed an "expert" in social media.

How many marketing professionals have added "Social Media Expert" to their resume over the last 5 years? These are folks working full time jobs with long hours to serve clients who need sound marketing assistance but somehow they've found five hours a day to practice social media? Seriously? I can't find five hours to watch Home Alone 1 & 2 in succession. To give you an idea of the time frame we're talking about,  LinkedIn & MySpace launched in 2003, Facebook in 04', Youtube in 05' and Twitter in 06'.

One more thing: I lied.

There are social media experts—they work for Facebook, Google, Twitter and other companies yet to be launched. Don't get me wrong, many folks can provide sound advice on how to use social media to communicate with your audience (Aasman included), just beware the claim of an "Expert."

I have a secret. Saturday was my birthday.

Last year my birthday led to an e-mail tsunami courtesy of Facebook, amassing some 125+ birthday greetings posted to my wall. Yes, folks cared enough to write. No, most of them aren’t my friends.

So, I made some Facebook changes prior to Birthday 2011:

• Changed my birth date to one that's already passed
• Altered my birthday setting to private
• Adjusted my display picture to a photo of an unknown male

The results?

32 Birthday greetings (A 75% decrease over 2010), 85% of which came from true friends who know me well.

That's what i'm looking for in a social network, real and meaningful interaction.

What are you looking for?

There are businesses that are still unsure if they'll find their target market in Facebook. I've seen it in Whitehorse, I'm sure it's true the world over. I'm also sure the title quote of this blog entry will help convince, as will this one: a twelfth of humanity is on a single network: Facebook!

A twelfth of humanity on a single network!

Put in that kind of context, it's just crazy… and exciting.. and scary! Which do you feel?

Both of those quotes are from Lev Grossman's TIMES article about Mark Zuckerberg, Person of the Year 2010. Read it here and let us know how you feel: excited, scared, overwhelmed, charmed, chaffing at the bit....