I don't care what part of the media business you're in - print, television, out-of-home, you name it. And I don't care if you are planning it, buying it or selling it. Whatever field of media you work in, wherever you are, you've heard of it: social networking.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail solicitation from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (yes, such an organization does exist) to register for what has been billed as "Word of Mouth Marketing University 2008."

My fingers are tired; so are my eyes. I have spent the last hour checking my eight e-mail accounts (one work, one personal, one for mailing lists, five on social networks). I barely managed to read all of those messages. Instead, I weeded through them and replied to just the most urgent. I suppose this is what ER doctors mean by triage.

Finally, scientists have identified the human brand-preference gene. The discovery radically changes marketers' approach to demographics, bringing campaign targeting to near 100 percent accuracy. Okay, not really. But this may not be as far off as you might think.

Perhaps it was inevitable. As we increasingly live out our social lives online, we begin to seek a digital equivalent to death. The concept of profile "suicide" - not simply abandoning one's profile, but actively deleting all traces of it with extreme prejudice - has become something of a phenomenon.

Just before sitting down to pen this letter, I met with Paul Parton. When he's not a writing a monthly column for Media ("The Consumer"), Paul is a partner in The Brooklyn Brothers, a spunky ad agency known for creative campaigns that leverage acute consumer insights.

"Protect yourself," I read, "use the rhythm method." But I'm not even Catholic, I'm about to protest until I realize the tagline refers to the rhythm of my typing on the keyboard. The punchy slogan touts bioChec, a company selling keystroke-biometrics security solutions. And unlike that other rhythm method, this one actually works. (Sorry, Johnny, Jr.)

Mike Hess spends many of his waking hours poking around inside people's heads to find out what makes the average consumer tick. As director of global research at OMD, the biggest buyer of media in the u.s., Hess is responsible for understanding when, where and why hundreds of millions of American consumers use media, and perhaps even more important, when their minds are most receptive to the ad messages of his clients - giant marketers like Pepsi, GE and McDonald's - who spend billions each year in the hope that their messages are seen, remembered and acted upon.

When your business is the gathering and sale of consumer information, you're bound to step into all sorts of privacy muck. A.C. Nielsen even goes as far as tracking traffic near outdoor advertising using a GPS-based device and satellites. Sounds like a big pile waiting to happen.

A dark shadow might have fallen across his face when he heard the question. "Of course I am concerned about Nielsen," says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, as if he'd been asked his opinion on a 10,000-pound gorilla combining forces with Godzilla - instead of the Nielsen-Google partnership. "Certainly Nielsen has a prominent place on the privacy advocate's watch list." Just wait until Mothra gets here.