The rise of social media has given rise to a cottage industry manufacturing and distributing spurious statistics. The best ones are anything with dollar values attached, the bigger the better; they might not be helpful, but it's fun debunking them. Here's a good one: Apparently employees goofing off on social media sites costs the United Kingdom £14 billion or $22 billion per year, according to a very authoritative-sounding study from MyJobGroup.co.uk, which operates the U.K.'s largest network of regional job sites.

Everyone's talking about Google's rumored project to build a new social network, tentatively called "GoogleMe," speculating about Google's timing, approach, and chances of success -- the "when" and "how" of it. There's also a good amount of talk about its potential partners, including various social game makers, which covers the "who." But there's one question that's receiving rather less attention: why?

Google really (really) wants to get into the social network business, and the company has identified social games as key fators in the success of Facebook, the social network to beat. At least, that's what I get from Google's overtures to social game developers including Playdom, Electronic Arts, Playfish, and Zynga, as it lays plans for a new social network, which rumor has dubbed "GoogleMe." Essentially Google is trying to reverse engineer a process which unfolded organically for Facebook. But can you really reproduce serendipitous success this way?

I hate having to admit that I'm wrong, so I'm not going to. However, I will concede that I missed a very important point in my post yesterday about the gender imbalance on Foursquare. Fortunately, a number of astute reader comments drew my attention to the fact that women may be avoiding location-based networks out of concern for privacy and personal safety.

Last week brought a report from Forrester suggesting that Foursquare, a leader in location-based social networks, is disproportionately male, with a male-female ratio of nearly four-to-one. As one might expect, this excited some comment in online forums. In addition to potentially discouraging single men from joining, much of the buzz around these findings seemed to imply, in a vague buzz-y way, that the lack of ladies -- or glut of guys, I guess -- somehow bodes ill for Foursquare's future as a marketing platform.

Stupid is as stupid does, mama always said. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I have a feeling it has something to do with giving money to people you don't know online. The rise of social media has been accompanied by all sorts of exciting innovation by clever crooks, for example burglars spying on social network users to figure out when they'll be away from home. But social networks are even better-suited for con men and identity thieves, who exploit the inherent sense of trust and affection between friends to scam unsuspecting users. That's according to New Jersey …

Second Life is a great case study in social media trends. First came the huge wave of hype in 2005-2006, when every marketer and his mother felt compelled to get into the pioneering virtual world created by Linden Labs, which was touted as the future of online virtual interaction. Then came the backlash, as self-identified "original" users bemoaned the influx of newbies and corporate brands, with some even engaging in acts of virtual terrorism. And then came the anticlimax: growth slowed dramatically, many newbies and marketers lost interest, and Second Life slipped from the headlines. Last month it was back …

This is something I've been wondering about (and hoping to see more of) for a long time: local social networks, functioning at the neighborhood level, which reflect real communities. That's the idea behind Neighbortree.com, a "free neighborhood website" which allows users to create their own neighborhood social networks, and businesses to deliver hyper-local targeted advertising. Neutrality is an important part of its mission, as highlighted by the disclaimer: "We are not your Home Owners Association's website."

Karl Marx may never have anticipated the contemporary corporate workplace or its Dilbert-esque conflicts, but I am going to invoke the Communist Manifesto nonetheless: workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your page views! The battle lines have been drawn, and I am pleased to report that the bosses are totally losing, according to the Cisco 2010 Midyear Security Report, which includes the results of a survey of employees from around the world.

With everyone struggling to figure out how to use social media for marketing and advertising, it's obviously helpful to look at examples where a big company gets its right, demonstrating what can be done with an appropriate investment of time and money (and planning). Today, Ford hit the nail on the head with its "2011 Ford Explorer Reveal" on the Ford Explorer Facebook page. Let's take a quick tour of the multifaceted project.