The big change taking place in media and society isn't the breakthrough of a new technological platform, so much as it is the simplification of well-established ones. That's the view of B. Bonin Bough, global director of digital and social media at PepsiCo, and opening keynoter at OMMA Social in New York. Bough, who is one of the "pioneers" of social media, says the transformational technologies have been around since the early days of the Internet. What makes them different now, and why they are gaining critical mass, is that the "interfaces" for using them have grown simpler. …

Okay, this is just great. BabyCenter has created a smartphone app called BootyCaller which allows women to automatically notify their husbands when they're ovulating, for purposes I hope I don't have to explain here.

Asked about the threshhold for viral video or other content, Feed's Josh Warner declared that "Viral is a myth. What we like to do is dig deep and work hard to get quality engagement." He said agencies and brands use viral as an excuse to underbudget for campaigns. "You have to go out and earn it whether it's earned or paid media," he said, emphasizing that advertisers can't skimp on the creative execution. "It really does come down to the creative," said Warner, who prophecied that in a year no one will even be talking about viral. It's a mirage …

In the panel on paid and earned media, one of the questions arising is whether a brand has to be considered cool in th first place to launch a successful social media campaign, with Pepsi brands as an example. Would Pepsi's paid or earned media projects have taken off if they were pushing plumbing parts? Kristine Shine of PopSugar Media suggested Pepsi wasn't that cool to begin with, but by attaching the brand to environmental causes or people doing good, the company has been able to boost the brand's cachet. Technorati's Richard Jalichandra said ads for any product or …

In the morning keynote at OMMA Social, Bonin Bough, Director of Digital and Social Media, PepsiCo, explains that part of the beverage giant's approach to opening itself up to innovation is to send an undercover "mini army" of PepsiCo people to Internet and social media related events like Internet Week and SXSW. So next time you're at one of those events and someone's talking up Pepsi or Mountain Dew, you know it's probably a Pepsi plant.

More than Facebook integration and app development, publishers had better be thinking of new and creative ways to differentiate themselves from other publishers. “What we’re not hearing a lot is how publishers differentiate themselves,” commented Josh Jacobs, SVP Brand Advertising Products and Global Marketing, Glam Media. Added Mike Tatum, a Partner at Whiskey Media: “The normalization is killing our industry.” But, isn’t something like Facebook integration a perfect way to differentiate a media brand? Today, perhaps, but not likely tomorrow, said Michael Wolff, author and founder of Newser. To paraphrase Wolff, he said every publisher will soon be …

Is Vanity Fair -- host of the hottest Oscar night party -- really just an event planning business with a publishing business on the side? So suggests Rachelle Hruska, Founder and Editor in Chief of local party and event guide GuestOfAGuest.com -- though she actually credited the thought to someone else. Still, the question hits at the financial troubles facing so many publishers, today. Lockhart Steele, Founder of local blog publisher Curbed.com, admitted that he recently scored a sponsorship deal with Patron tequila thanks to his ability to bolster the deal with a physical event. Not happy with the …

Michael Wolff is a smart guy, but now he's lecturing Shive Singh on the correct meaning of planning and buying online media. Singh just said that its fundamentally all about buying and audience that can develop a "deeper relationship" with a brand. Wolff corrected him, saying that Singh is "missing the point" if he's just looking at the value of the audience. "It doesn't come down to the audience," Wolff said. "It comes down to moving the merchandise." We'll see who gets the last laugh re. this debate when Singh moves over to Pepsi  at the …

According to Newser Founder Michael Wolff, the big rush toward social media traffic may not be all it's cracked up to be. In particular, Wolff alluded to some new "data" showing him that conventional SEO traffic actually may be more valuable in the long run. "SEO traffic is stickier than social media traffic," Wolff said during an OMMA Publish panel discussion. Shiv Singh, the global social lead at Publicis' Razorfish – soon to be the social lead at Pepsi – says he agrees with that view. "It's not about traffic after a certain point. It's about quality …

Finally, A Member Of The Digerati Knocking Twitter (Well, Sort Of) It was Richard Gingras, CEO of Salon Media, talking about the impact social media has on driving traffic to branded content sites like Salon's. "I don't think Twitter even belongs in the same conversation," Gingras said, citing that almost none of Salon's traffic is coming from Twitter, and most of it is coming from Facebook. "It's not a knock against Twitter. It's just a statement of fact," he said. Gingras