Following my previous comment -- here's a nice take from HP blogger, Tac Anderson (disclaimer: HP is a Porter Novelli client) from a recent interview:

I used to get a lot of people ask me about the difference between Web 2.0 and social media. I explain Web 2.0 as the technologies and tools that enable social media (RSS, JAVA, blogs, wiki’s etc) and social media is the trend in online content/media/whatever that enables people to communicate with each other directly. It’s media that you help shape and influence.

I don’t get the Web 2.0 question much anymore, I think that peaked in early 08 and I’m already seeing a lot fewer questions about social media. We’re really getting to the point, that we all knew we would, where all online content is social in some way. If it’s not now it will be in the next 2 years.

Nice post. Bear in mind of course the context for your story. No-one's going to publish another dog-bites-man story about Social Media. It's had front covers of Time and Business Week for so long that a "social media rules" story won't get cut-through for a smaller operation like MENG. Their research is pretty linkbait-y and somewhat questionable. But it's possible of course that many US marketers -- having had their expectations overinflated by force of sheer media coverage alone -- are now in the trough of disillusionment. It could even be the economy.

In Europe, where (perhaps) there's a more conservative marketing culture, there has been less of a peak over the past few years - instead we've seen a slow build up of interest, with (I would suggest) less of a backlash. I'd say that the marketers to whom I talk, having invested less in wildly optimistic and enthusiastic programmes and having had perhaps as a result, less of a rude awakening, are still positive about the digital market.

Porter Novelli's own digital team and I have been somewhat cynical about the overuse (and gross misuse) of the phrase "web 2.0" for at least a year -- see my post What is Web 2.0? on our old blog, PNeo. Short summary? Web 2 doesn't mean what people think it means. (NB - we've since moved our posting activity from PNeo to Clicking and Screaming.)

Sloppy misuse of terms like web 2.0, "viral", and "social media" has caused more confusion and poor thinking than actual ignorance. At least a state of ignorance implies that one knows one knows nothing!

At Porter Novelli we've been working on lots of best practice for "digital channels" - most of which has been well-received by both our peers (like the Draft Social Media Policy we shared last summer and bloggers (like Kerry Gaffney's How to Approach Bloggers.)

The important thing, I think, is to share the best practice out into the world for comment. We've not been great at publicizing what we're doing - although we're getting better.

I believe -- in fact -- that our current activities are getting more awareness externally these days, and excellent projects like your own #PNobama project are helping create that internal buzz that we so clearly need to drive this!