• by John Capone , May 29, 2009

And the survey says ... nothing? Magna's social media forecast isn't a forecast so much as a definition, or maybe a quest for a definition. When Magna Director of Global Forecasting Brian Wieser embarked on his online social media "forecast" (quotey finger theirs) on May 18 (with Mediapost's Joe Mandese riding shotgun) he chose to "deliver" (again, quotey fingers theirs) it via social media -- talking to industry experts using social media tools in conversations anyone could join in on. The unorthodox nature of this exploration prompted Mandese to ask in OMD the next day: "What if they gave no forecast and everybody came?"

So the forecast now boils down to this: Magna has added its own findings to the public definition of Social Media on Wikipedia. The Magna definition of social media as "a set of technologies, tools and platforms facilitating the discovery, participation and sharing of content" is now part of the wiki definiton (until someone amends those words, of course).

"Historically, forecasters have been known for producing forecasts featuring absolute numbers and growth rates. With respect to Social Media, we have even produced forecasts in the past ourselves. But on Monday, May 18th we took a step back to explore first and foremost: what is social media?," Wieser wrote in an entry on Magna's Facebook page (link), adding: "'Social media' is a term without common meaning -- any definition is necessarily somewhat arbitrary. And even given a definition, the resulting focus on a 'number' trades off a true narrative of the potentially outsized impact of the medium for the sake of a number which could never reflect the potentially ubiquitous nature of its outcomes.

"We chose to 'deliver' the forecast by socializing in public and using social media tools in order to highlight the relative ease of using social media (for those still unacquainted), its advantages as a platform (anyone can add to the conversation) and its limitations (most people still consume most social media content in a passive manner -- which begs the question of whether or not our social media content was in fact social in nature, or more akin to traditional media)."

In his last emerging media forecast released in July 2008, Wieser predicted that spending on social media platforms, including social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, would grow 37.4% this year to $1.474 billion from $1.073 billion in 2008.

In some of his recent forecasts for other emerging media platforms such as mobile, advanced TV, and online video, Wieser has downgraded his projections for the rate of growth this year due to the impact of the macroeconomy, but most remain at relatively high double-digit rates of growth.

In lieu of ad spending estimates, Wieser is providing a collection of definitions for social media that may help marketers and agencies think about how to utilize the medium, and tools, to fulfill their marketing objectives, (which can be seen on the Facebook page, where discussion is invited, of course).

In so doing, Magna has effectively taken social media ad spending out of its official emerging media tracking.