About a month ago a smart friend of mine, Ethan Bauley, posed that question to a few friends, myself included. On the surface it seemed like an easy question to answer. In fact, at first I rolled my eyes at the question feeling like it had jumped the shark to even be asking that question today. But, dozens of emails later and about a month of discussion has produced what I felt are some compelling thought on the question. I’d like to share a summary of our discussion points publicly to jumpstart some rework of the Wikipedia entry on social media.

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The big ‘idea’ news last week was Oracle’s launch of Oracle Listens. A campaign where they solicit ideas from end users. Charlene Li blogged about it and gave Oracle kudos for the effort. My big question is what does legal think of this? Oracle does things a bit differently than the other idea-submission sites like Dell’s Ideastorm or My Starbucks Idea. We’ll come back to that difference in a second.

Many corporations have a number of legal hang-ups when it comes to social media. Among entertainment and media organizations a special concern is idea submission. For example, I want to sue NBC, because six years ago at a conference reception I told an executive about my idea for a TV show based on regular folks who are superheroes. Just kidding, but you get the gist.

Enter the new concept in social media sites, the ideastorms. I name the genre after Dell’s launch of the self-titled Ideastorm last year. Dell asked for your ideas and then allows the community to vote on them. The top vote recipients hopefully get the nod from Dell and enter production. But what about those lawyers and idea submission?

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Alright, so despite efforts by some to paint and position social media work as radically new and different, if you take a minute to strip things down, there are still traditional marketing mechanics underlying most social media programs — much of which can be distilled down to simple push-pull tactics.

Push tactics are all about, well, pushing a story out to the marketplace.

Push tactics tend to generate a lot of attention and discussion, unfortunately it’s not always the right kind. These are your A-typical proactive pitch tactics. Placement tactics. Sometimes response tactics too.

I think it’s the comfort of something that seems familiar (i.e., media relations) that attracts and compels PR folks to think about social media activities in this mode first and label them such (e.g., “blogger relations,” “influencer outreach,” etc) — be that, you know, for better or worse. And in all fairness, push tactics, when well executed, can be very effective. The problem is that push tactics require a tremendous amount of time, energy and resources and alone can only move the needle so much.

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This October I’ll be speaking at the Sarasota International Design Summit. The speaker line-up is quite impressive, so I’m honored to be part of the mix. On Day 2 I’ll be leading a session briefly titled, “Does Design Matter?” Following me will be Matt Jones from Dopplr, who will answer that question.

The gist is, in a social media world where a large percentage of your customers/fans consume your content via RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or some other third-party location how can you maintain a brand experience, if at all….and does it matter?

One unique thing the conference organizers have done is print Moo cards for the speakers. As you can see the cards promote the event. They also threw in one of the new Moo card holders. Nice touch.

Girls For A Change (GFC) is kicking off their seventh year by launching their first ever cross-country tour. The tour is set to begin on Sept. 24, 2008, and will be premiering in the San Francisco Bay Area. But before they set off across country the Sephora-GFC partnership launch party hit Los Angeles last Friday. Check out the front page of People.com which highlights just a few of my favorite celebrities that were out to support the cause.

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