Let me conflate three headlines from the last few days into one question, which I'll get to below: 1.What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity 2. Ouch: AOL misses low earnings expectations 3.Facebook Advertisers Boost Spending 10-Fold, Sandberg Says And now for the question: Are portals obsolete?

Tell me, when's the last time you were delighted to receive constructive feedback? For most of us, the answer to that question would have to be never; I know that's the answer for me.Given how painful this process can be, it's a wonder we would ever consciously invite it -- and yet, that's exactly what we do with social media. We put ourselves and our companies out there and we invite feedback, good or bad. This is a scary thing to do.

Not to obsess about Old Spice Man or anything, especially since I know full well he's stopped issuing video responses, but I just knew Wieden + Kennedy's social media strategy of a few weeks ago was going to work.

Surely, in the course of your social media work, you've experienced a certain moment of frustration. It may have been with a client or with your very own company, and, in your head, it would have sounded something like this: "Why aren't we sharing all our YouTube videos on Facebook or on our website?"

Quick. Name a memorable social media campaign -- besides Old Spice Man. Stumped? I'm not surprised. Because, as with so many other things in advertising, there aren't that many memorable social campaigns. But, getting back to Old Spice Man, that just-concluded phenomenon is an example of the fact that social advertising creative is getting better, a lot better, and that it has the ability to be far more memorable than much creative that has gone before. Why? Because the best of it engages not only you but your friends, especially when it mixes content deftly with the social graph.

I had the good fortune today of having a conversation with the visionary John Marshall Roberts, whose focus is on igniting inspiration and overcoming cynicism. By understanding the lens through which people see the world, Roberts suggests, we can better appreciate each other, communicate with each other, and connect with each other.

Want to know how to get invited to speak at events, get tweeted, and not come off like a jerk afterwards? I'm sure there's a self-help book here waiting to happen, but in the meantime I've got just the column for you.

Even if Twitter can't seem to kill the fail whale -- maybe its engineers could be used to save animals out at that oil spill, come to think of it -- it's still swimming in the right direction with its continuing attempts to build viable revenue streams. The latest is the @earlybird Twitter account, which shows that while monetizing Twitter in an organic way is harder than it has been for Google, it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, either. As is so often the case, the best ideas are the simplest.

The world may not need a Google-branded social network along the lines of what Google is reportedly building. My fellow columnist Cathy Taylor made that perfectly clear last week. Yet I can offer a barometer to show whether Google will launch a great product: the more boring Google makes it, the better it will be.

And here I thought Google's new social network was called Google Buzz -- but reports this week say it's actually named Google Me. This is an offering that Google is apparently very serious about because Google Buzz, which launched earlier this year, didn't stop Google's social networking itch. No surprise there, as Google Buzz doesn't seem to have much, well, buzz. After an initial burst of publicity -- much of it to do with the early misstep of having user accounts auto-follow one another -- it's not exactly the talk of the town, which means it's not the social net …