With a staggering 1,463,632,361* Internet users (and growing) worldwide, marketers are scrambling to integrate their brands online with campaigns aimed at connecting with this coveted audience.

In doing so, however, many have been making the common mistake of forgoing traditional strategies and diluting their brand in the process.  This short-term pitfall could lead to long-term ramifications, so special care should be taken to preserving the integrity of your brand through all communications — on- or offline.  And with the increasing saturation in the online space, it is even more critical to remain true to your brand position — especially with regard to messaging, distinction and value.

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know I’m a Backtype evangelist, touting the product in 140-character snippets that couldn’t possibly capture all of the praise that I have for the service — or the crew behind it.  Nor does it even begin to scratch the surface of the many unique and valuable benefits that Backtype offers.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Backtype, at the core, it’s a comment aggregator that extracts all of the comments across the blogosphere and sorts them by user (based on information such as name, email address and website included in the required comment fields).  You can then claim your comments by setting up an account and profile page, which becomes a central repository of your commenting history.

It’s no secret that I spend a lot of time on Twitter.  For me, it’s a valuable medium that facilitates quality sharing and knowledge exchange with smart, like-minded individuals who enhance my thinking and enrich my life.

That’s what it can be, at least.

It can also be a vehicle for shameless self-promotion, overridden with fame seekers and snake oil salesmen intent on building a huge network with little care – or concern — for who actually comprises it.  During one of my signature ‘rants’ on this topic a few days ago, I happened upon Sarah Doody’s profile, and after reading her bio, visited her blog, where her latest post was centered around this very topic.

There’s been a lot of buzz around the new Seinfeld/Bill Gates Microsoft commercial, so I thought it only right that I chime in with my two cents on the topic, which, interestingly, is about all that spot was worth though I believe they paid Jerry Seinfeld a zillion dollars.*

*give or take a zillion

Aside from the fact that it was just a lame attempt to try and elevate Microsoft’s ‘cool’ factor, it immediately struck me the same way that the ‘Pepsi Challenge’ did way back when.  Pepsi was never content with their share of market, always trying to compete with Coke with a series of elaborately overproduced commercials like the one where Michael Jackson’s head went up in flames.  From their ‘blind’ taste tests to their MTV video-inspired spots, their efforts were misplaced on making their marketing sexy instead of focusing on the product attributes themselves, and delivering on that.

I still find it funny when I hear self-proclaimed ’marketers’ and ‘community experts’ say things like, ‘what’s your social media strategy?’ or ‘you have to use social media to build your community.’

Social media is a tactic.  Not a strategy.

And contrary to popular belief, it is not the only way to build a community or strengthen relationships with your customers.

Whatever happened to selecting the right vehicles in support of marketing goals?

Or developing strategic objectives?

And then crafting a media plan in support of those objectives?

The fact is that social media is just one channel in a fully integrated marketing mix.  It’s not the only channel.  And it’s certainly not always the best channel.  Nor is it right for every company.  In every vertical.  In every campaign.

I’ll wait a moment to let that sink in.  Please re-read that last paragraph several times if necessary.

I know it’s a radical concept in this age of Stepford-like social media disciples, but social media is just MEDIA.

274,000,000,000.

That’s how many users are currently on social networks worldwide. (Source: WikiAnswers, 2007. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_use_social_networking_sites_worldwide)

The number is staggering.

There are more users in the Webosphere than there are in some major metropolitan cities — even entire countries.  So, it’s no wonder that a new social networking site seems to pop up daily, all vying for a piece of this kajillion* dollar pie.

*may not be an actual numeric value.

But as I ponder the sheer volume of social networks out there, the thought of joining yet another one seems unthinkable.  Stressful even.  So much so that even if the social network equivalent of nirvana launched, I’m not sure I’d sign up.

And I don’t think I’m alone.

For most of us — especially people like me who are heavily entrenched in the space — it’s more than just being ’social networked out.’  It’s time-consuming — and taxing — to undergo the process of sign up through daily use.

Well, it looks like the time has come to call it quits on Twitter for me and thousands of others affected by this latest glitch of epic proportions.  Although still referring to these supreme failures as simply ‘glitches’ is comical.  Absurd even.

Yesterday, via their status update blog (that ironically resides on Tumblr), the Twitter ‘technical’ crew informed users to expect inconsistencies in their relationship counts but stressed that this issue was only related to the count and not to the actual relationships.

Co-founder, Evan Williams, even tweeted that just the ‘count’ was off, only to rescind that statement a few tweets later with an ‘OK, so it isn’t just the counts but don’t panic.’

Don’t panic?  Is attempting to cajole your users with a glib ‘we’ve got it under control’ attitude really the way to go at this point, Twitter?

We [the users] are way beyond panic, having run the gamut of emotions from annoyed and frustrated to aggravated and outraged.  There was even a hearty dose of humor along the way as the Fail Whale became an endearing mascot of sorts.  But we could laugh off the bajillion errors because our relationships were in tact.

It seems that lately there’s been a lot of negative commentary around social media, and people prattling on about how it’s ‘dead’ and the ‘movement is over’ and ‘the petal has come off the rose.’ (That last one is courtesy of Amanda Chapel, using ‘her’ in-your-face-PR-prowess to publish, propagate and proliferate her own agenda on the topic.)

But I contend that social media never really began — not on the web anyway.

What it seems to me that people fail to realize is that social media is not some fad like the Pet Rock or Ugg Boots (ugh indeed); it’s been going on since the dawn of time as club-wielding cavemen built — and leveraged — social networks to snag a bigger feast or a more spacious dwelling.  And it has continued throughout history as large sects of the population broke off into sub-sets forming religious groups, political parties, and public houses (today known as ‘pubs’ — isn’t the web really just a virtual bar that never closes?), all leveraging some type of social media vehicle to organize like-minded individuals and gather together.

And while most of that ‘gathering’ today happens online, the concept itself was not born with the advent of the Internet.

We all know how critical it is to effectively tag ours – or our clients’ – websites in order to obtain the highest search rankings. We understand the importance of appearing in the top ten organic results in order to demonstrate the company’s presence, credibility, and level of expertise in their given vertical.

And you have no doubt worked tirelessly to achieve top results on all of the major search engines.

But have you spent any time tagging yourself?

We all know that you’ve spent plenty of time Googling yourself.

(Go on, admit it.)

So, why haven’t you played a part in how you rank?

If you’re a professional, touting your expertise on any topic, you need to build your personal brand, and the most important medium for doing so in this age of technology is the Internet.

Since Plurk has come out of private beta, there’s been quite a bit of chatter about it. And most of it has been on Twitter, its competitor site – although I contend that there is no competition.

But the fact that people are still using it, with seemingly some degree of interest, completely astounds me. It took me a sum total of about ten minutes to flee the frighteningly frivolous site frothed with fallacious attempts to flimflam its users with farcical karmic points.

Karmic points = an underhanded attempt to coerce you into spamming your friends and make you spend interminable amounts of useless time on their site, most of which is spent trying to figure out how to navigate the application and perform even the simplest tasks

How does no one see this??!

There has been so much controversy over Facebook applications that require you to invite your friends, but for some reason, the prospect of unlocking ‘super secret’ features on Plurk somehow makes this a palatable option.

Unless one of those features allows you to put a head on that creepy headless dog, I refuse to participate.