Although this conversation is nothing new, it's good to see it continuing to bubble up beyond the uber-tech meetups and podcast conferences. As the topic gains momentum, it presses organizations like Comscore to the reality of how they must change to meaningfully address metrics for advertisers in social media. By the way, Comscore's message at OMMA was that advertisers must see metrics they are familiar with. Are you surprised?

Margret Clerkin, CEO of Mindshare Interaction, said yesterday, "it's wrong to do media placement on social networking because it's about conversations." I can't speak for Margret -- but if I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt, I'm guessing what she really means is that media placement within social networking shouldn't be measured by the normal standards.

If you think it's simply wrong, you should listen to our recent podcast with Bill Flitter, CEO of Pheedo. Bottom line: the creation of distributed media (content outside the website) is dramatically increasing. It would be irresponsible for marketers to wait for the perfect metric before engaging in this new world.