All three opening commentators - MediaPost's Ken Fadner, Social Vibe's Joe Marchese and eMarketer's Geoff Ramsey - referenced the "fear" and panic surrounding financial markets, and the implications for the online industry.

Recently, Marketing Daily posted a story too early on accident. So our techies went to Google and asked Google to remove the link from any Google search.

That's right, that's the "breaking news" story about our industry, according to OMMA Expo emcee and host Joe Marchese. By "our" industry, Marchese actually meant the social media component, which is what his Social Vibe operation is trying to bring some marketing order to. After meeting yesterday with Coca-Cola Co.'s Mike Donnnelly, Marchese learned a startling, but milestone statistic: that "social media traffic has tooped porn as the No. 1 traffice on the Internet."

MediaPost Founder and Chief Ken Fadner got OMMA Expo New York off to a "tasty," but shaky start this a.m. To a standing-room-lonely crowd, Fadner got things off promptly at the 8:15 start, but quipped, "I guess an 8:15 start looks a little bit early for the 400 or so people we have coming today," Fadner quipped to the spotty early risers - though the house looked pretty full by the end of Fadner's warm-up act.

So Ken Fadner and the OMMA organizers have an uncanny knack of timing their conferences to days when the financial markets are in upheaval. Everytime I guest-blog the show I feel a civic duty to recommend Minyanville.com as THE place to follow and understand what is happening. Founder Todd Harrison has been calling this day for years. It's always fun to be back among the media people. I'll be presenting an OMMA Award tonight for Best Integrated Online campaign. (You'll have to come to the party or check back here later to see who won!) Coffee is top …

I'm in one of those moods that just annoys the crud out of everyone in the office.  Tomorrow is the big start to OMMA Global New York!  Persia Tatar, Director of Marketing, has run by my little messy cube at least 6 times already today.  I'm getting set up with a MUCH better laptop than the one I had at OMMA Hollywood so I can edit photos on the fly and hopefully get things out nice and fast so everyone can see their beautiful Media, Marketing, and Advertising faces. I'm told by IT guy at large, Ryan Nation, who …

There are three metrics to determine what Circuit City defines a successful social marketing campaign, according to Stephanie Pike, Strategic Program Manager for Digital Marketing, Circuitcity.com “We use close rates (really conversions,” said Pike. “But we're trying to migrate away from that.” Then, “There's net promoter rate -- Is it improving our brand equity?” Finally, “Gross margin dollars per year (We hope to bring that down to per customer per year,” said Pike. “Looking at bottom line revenue, rather than top line revenue.” “We used to use impressions,” Pike added.

Just as we were getting use to tweeting, Adam Weinroth, Director of Product Marketing, Pluck Corp., comes along and tells us we should be plerking. Noting that most of the people in the room at OMMA Social may only have been on Twitter for a matter of weeks, he said the next big new social media platform is actually something called Plurk. It's not affiliated with Pluck, Weinroth disclaimed. According to Plurk's Web site, it is, “a place that let's you publish and share your thoughts, emo-ness, #^@%(& loves.” I …

MySpace looks at data two ways, according to Heidi Browning, SVP, Client Solutions, MySpace. To paraphrase Browning's strategy: “We looking at data from an effectiveness standpoint (how they are driving profitability, for example); and looking at data from an insight standpoint, so you're smarter going forward.”

In recent memory, Sprint was responsible for as the biggest sinker during the afternoon panel, "Sink or Swim: The Best and Worst of Social Media Marketing."