With apologies to Marshall McLuhan, when it comes to advertising commerce, the medium isn't just the message. It's also the metrics. Or, perhaps it's the other way around: The metrics are the medium. It's a lesson I learned early in my career, as a young reporter covering media for Adweek nearly 30 years ago. It didn't take me long to realize that what people on Madison Avenue were actually buying during their "upfront" network TV negotiations wasn't TV shows -- or even commercial units placed within those TV programs. What they were buying -- and what they continue to …

So by this point, I've pretty much figured out that Interpublic forecaster Brian Wieser has no intention of releasing a hard number associated with his new social media forecast, because his conclusion is that much of what we define to be social media, isn't media at all. And it's probably not much of an ad-supported medium. At least not in terms of the way advertising has historically been defined. So it was fitting that we ended the day with a conversation with Universal McCann San Francisco digital media guru Brian Monahan, who doesn't believe that social media is actually …

"It's not a one-way conversation," says Raquel Krouse, the social media guru at Interpublic's Emerging Media Lab. Krouse was responding to a query from Interpublic's Brian Wieser, who's been probing the industry's best and brightest gurus all day long to get at the heart of, and to define social media. In response, Wieser asked Krouse, "If I post something on my facebook page and nobody comments, is that social media?" Krouse answered that Zen riddle with one of her own: "If a tree falls in the forrest, and there's no one around to hear it?" And …

We're standing, because the ballroom seating is all full, indicating that social media is a standing-room-only event these days. Walked in mid-panel, so not sure who the experts are, but they're saying all the right things. This is an official part of Brian Wieser's social media whistle stop tour in Manhattan today. Not sure what Wieser's getting from this, or how it's working its way into his social media "forecast," but he's standing next to me and working his BlackBerry as fast and furiously as I am mine. But I'm posting for you. He's chatting on Twitter to …

Asked by Buddy Media's Michael Lazerow for a preview of what Wieser's social media forecast will net out like, Wieser confided: "There are no numbers," Wieser said, "This is the forecast. You are part of it."

That insight comes from Michael Lazerow, head of Buddy Media, a company that was founded to make money via social media. The way he sees that happening, is by associating brands and marketers with what's going on with social media, but not with social media platforms -- networks like Facebook -- themselves. So brian Wieser wonders "where the money is" for social media outlets. Lazerow doesn't necessarily think it's there from advertising. It's going to have to come from selling data, or "dating," or micropayment systems leveraging the connection of people on their pages.

Sitting in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel now with Michael Lazerow of Buddy Media, downstairs from where the IAB's social media conference is taking place. Lazerow is telling Brian Wieser that social media has always been around -- "since the caveman days." "Think about the eay we used to watch television as families. That was a social medium," he says. What's changed with online social networks is the speed and "ubiquity" of it. He calls it an "accelerant," something that takes social media interactions and accelerates and spreads it like, well, wildfire.

So I just learned that the backroom of Coffee Shop is not the best place to blog, or even microblog. At least not if Verizon is your carrier. No signal there, so not sure how many of Josh Stylman's pearls that I lost attempting to do so, but he had some good things to say. Right now, Wieser has suggested that if he ever does something like this again, he'll try to get a "b-to-b entity" to sponsor it, just so he can figure out what kind of value they get out of it. Stylman said the key …