Once upon a time, there was a little data. People thought it was important but not all that sexy. Then it grew up, and everyone started calling it Big Data. Now it's on all the Sexiest Trend Alive covers, and there are rumors that it is having affairs with all of the Kardashians, including Bruce Jenner.

I knew some big advertiser was going to pull out of advertising on Facebook, as General Motors did earlier this week. It was predictable, as predictable as the fact that The Wall Street Journal would exhibit positively exquisite timing in breaking the story less than a week before the Facebook IPO. The details -- on the off-chance you missed them -- are that GM, which had been spending about $10 million on Facebook advertising, has decided not to anymore. (It will continue to market on the platform -- on its corporate and brand pages -- just not by buying ads.) …

Happy Internet Week! Did you realize it was that time of year again? It's one of the holiest weeks on the digital media calendar, nestled between the first and second Social Media Weeks, and well ahead of Advertising Week and Social Week. Also, don't confuse it for Foursquare Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day, neither of which take place during Internet Week, but they keep the spirit alive year-round.

With the Facebook IPO a little more than a week away, Facebook -- and, in particular Mark Zuckerberg -- is everywhere. Zuck is on the cover of New York magazine, and his every move is being watched, whether he is emerging from a black SUV to go to a roadshow presentation, or wearing his trademark hoodie to the roadshow, a fashion statement that one Wedbush Securities analyst called a "a mark of immaturity." Since this column is not devoted to fashion, I'll beg off any commentary on that one, except to say that the wearing of the possibly "immature" hoodie …

Is reality broken? I've been grappling with the idea ever since reading "Reality is Broken" by Jane McGonigal, who argues that games provide a better, more motivating version of life than reality. Almost inherent in her description of gameplay is the social component, as the vast majority of her examples involve games people play together -- usually virtually.

When a big technology client asked me to be its eyes and ears in a big online technical community, my initial reaction was "Whom did I offend?" This 1.8 million-member online community of technology specialists thrives on topics like storage arrays and server scripting. Was I intimidated? You bet. During four months of trial and error, though, I learned how to appreciate and even enjoy the unique language and style of the uber-geek community. If you're a marketer trying to reach technical types through social media, here are some tips:

I'm hoping that even all of the techno-forward people who read this column still experience occasional moments of wonder at what all of these gadgets we own can do. I had two such moments this week:

What if you didn't need a mobile phone to share content? What if you could share your literal point of view? What if "always on" didn't just mean an Internet connection that was constantly active, but referred to a device you wore that was always on you, ready to share your thoughts practically as soon as they came to mind? That's the idea behind Project Glass, Google's latest foray into hardware.

Much has been said about the amendment to Facebook's S1 this week, but, for the Social Media Insider, it's still not enough. Something has been troubling me about the newly revealed numbers in the S1, and it has a name: seasonality.

When you read or watched "The Hunger Games," did you catch all the lessons for social media marketers? Any story about a post-apocalyptic society sacrificing 23 teenagers annually was clearly written with marketers in mind. Maybe that's not the case, but there's still plenty marketers can learn. Here are 10 lessons coming all the way from Panem, the nation featured in "The Hunger Games":