Let's play a game. I'm going to throw out a bunch of statements, each one of which builds on the one before it. Your score is the highest numbered statement that describes you. Be honest, as there's no reward for having the highest score. 1) I am a person. 2) I use a mobile device. 3) I at least occasionally engage in some form of social media usage via my mobile device, such as social networking, tweeting, blogging, or sharing multimedia.

With due apologies to the guy -- @jeffjarvis -- who had the good sense (but the bad timing) to start up the #fuckyouwashington hashtag last Saturday night, I'm disappointed in social media right now. As this column is the best platform I have on which to rant, here I go.

Some moments can last forever. As a marketer, you have the power to create such moments yourself. Are you ready for your moment of truth?

The alleged insight I'm about to impart here started, nefariously enough, when I heard polite, British cries of, "Oh!" and "Outrageous!" emanating from my MacBook yesterday. At the time, I'd been sending out emails to do with the upcoming Social Media Insider Summit (plug!), with The New York Times video stream of the Parliament hearings with the Family Murdoch playing in the background. By the time I clicked over to nytimes.com to see what had caused the commotion, the stream had been temporarily shut down. I immediately went on the hunt for what had happened.

In 2011, do marketers and their trusty agencies really need a reminder to tie social marketing programs back to their overall marketing strategy and objectives? Yes. For Exhibit A, I present Google+.

I know you're probably expecting me to write about Google+ again this week. Sorry to disappoint, but today I'm going Big Picture, to make sure anyone who reads this gets a much-needed feel for what some people think social media people do all day. The answer? Nothing. Nothing of value, anyway.

Google+ is the future of social media! It's better than Facebook and Twitter and CatPaint combined! Or maybe not.

In case you're keeping score -- and I kind of hope you aren't -- this is the fourth Social Media Insider column in a row about Google+. My partner-in-crime, David Berkowitz, has written two so far, which you can read here and here. And this, dear oversaturated reader, is my second. So why aren't we done? Frankly, it's because in the three or so years I've been writing this column, I haven't seen this level of excitement in the marketplace about a new social network

I'm done writing about Google+, at least for today. Fortunately, I have enough material for a column thanks to the powers of crowdsourcing -- the act of tapping the community to achieve a common objective. In this case, I posted a message on Google+, publicly asking, "Why does Google+ matter?"

By now, you've had a chance to try out Google Plus or read countless posts about it from the lucky thousands or millions or however many have access. If you're like me, you've jumped from one column saying how it's Google's best homegrown social service ever (compared to Orkut, Buzz, Wave, Knol, and Lively) to the next saying it follows in the footsteps of Google's other homegrown social services (see Orkut, Buzz, Wave, Knol, and Lively). You don't have time for any more of that. Let's cut to the chase with an FAQ, penned by someone who has no …