Earlier this week, Microsoft and Facebook held a press event to announce a new module coming to Bing. In essence, Bing is now a true social search engine, using your own Facebook social graph to inform and expand your decision-making process. This, in and of itself, is big news. Search has been an evolving marketplace, but the searchable content has historically been similar from engine to engine. That is certainly not the case, at least for now, with this deal. But for most marketers, the implications of this have meaning far beyond search.

As I was putting the finishing touches on another column, my friend Karl came into my office for a scheduled meeting and, in passing, dropped the following observation about a client (names have been changed to protect the innocent): "I was talking to Susan, the person who's in charge of their social media, but I'm not exactly sure what she does. One of their tech guys, Michael, is the person who actually set up their Facebook page and Twitter account." And there, in a nutshell, is the problem with the corporate approach to social media.

Danny Sullivan and hosted Google's Baris Gultekin, Group Product Manager, AdWords, in a session titled "Inner View: Google's Keyword Research Tools." I'm certain that Gultekin stayed very close to the party line in discussing the keyword tool, but it ultimately proved how out of step Google is with its core advertisers -- the same audience that funds its primary revenue stream.

It's in our nature to solve problems, and problem solving can lead to tidy solutions: in math, for example, it's inordinately gratifying to work out that X=6. But that same propensity to resolve a thorny equation down to a simple integer often leads us to ignore the complexities of human behavior, seeking instead to attribute a single, base motivation for all of our actions.

Living and working in Silicon Valley can be both exhilarating and heartbreaking. Companies that come from nowhere are suddenly overnight sensations and then, just as quickly, fall into obscurity. Companies that seem sure to define a new era are suddenly, in the blink of an eye, gone. Witness Yahoo. Though it seems to have a few of its nine lives left to live, it nevertheless appears to have entered its sunset years. The drive that creates successful companies and sustains them over time seems to have been lost, the inspired Yahooligan gone forever.

Oh man, I'm worn out. This past week was SMX East in New York. Three days of expert search marketers chitting and chatting about all things search. It's the fact so much of the conversations happen at 2 in the morning that's catching up to me in declining years (Yeah, Aaron Goldman - you'll feel the age too, one of these days). So what do you, my favorite readers, get after I've been to a conference the week my column is due? The Big Bucket of Odds and Ends, of course.

A few weeks ago, I was at a conference where the future of advertising was being debated. One of the topics that came up naturally was the future of advertising agencies. What will they look like in the future? It's a stone-cold cinch that they won't look much like they do today.

Tis the season for columnists to begin reminding everyone that the holidays are around the corner, and the time to prepare is now. While I certainly can't call "First!," I'm fairly certain I'm first among Search Insiders. So, readers, take heed!

In September 2007 I wrote a column called "When Search Turns Cannibal," in which I discussed the difference between the passers and the catchers of search. Passers, like Google, are set up to quickly hand the user off to another site, if they're lucky collecting 50 cents along the way. Catchers, like eBay, are set up for people to arrive at their site and never leave. If the Facebook folks play their cards right, they have an incredible opportunity to do both: to send people on their merry way for a dollar cost per click, or to sell them some …

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