• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 23, 2008

Well, not your real friends, but the descriptor “friends” that people use to describe their contacts on social networks, is nothing more than “B.S.,” the former Madison Avenue research and consumer insights muckety-muck said.

“This idea of friends is BS,” he said. “Start looking at the friends list and it averages 201. I don't have 210 friends.”

What Plummer does have, is a lot of followers. Among them are the students he's been teaching over the past year, who like many in the room at OMMA Social, sit listening to him while working on a laptop.

“I have no idea if they were paying attention to me, or playing Tetris online,” Plummer confided, offering the same sound advice to the roomful of industry pros that he's been providing his students.

“You have to turn the world upside down. You have to start with the people you'd like to be your prospects rather than starting with what you want to do, or what your media perspective is,” Plummer said.