Hello, Harold,

This is what companies do -- they appropriate trending topics, send it off to marketing and sales to get the term incorporated into a product line and sales outreach, and then they push it in conferences as "the next big thing" -- with the implication that they were there first.

It's happened with e-anything, social anything, and open-anything, to the point where these terms that once had meaning have been sucked dry through repeated inclusion in lifeless, meaningless marketing copy.

RE Talia's question: "How do you want to be approached by someone who has genuine interest in you and YOUR site, and honestly believes their product can help you or your readers?"

I receive countless emails like this, and I never, ever, respond. And when people ask me about those companies, I discourage people from using them, because any company that knows anything about social [insert buzzword here] *should* know that a hackneyed approach betrays a superficial understanding of the market they purport to understand.

The same is true of twitter marketing, facebook marketing, etc, etc. At some point, people might understand that a good product blog, combined with a strong support community that engages its current clients, combined with actually listening to people can provide a strong message to those who want to receive it.

Cheers,

Bill