Today’s “duh, who knew?!” newsflash comes to us from this yarn in the NYT which reminds us that Internet companies like Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, MySpace etc collect copious amounts of personal data.

This idea has of course already surfaced before in the form of different ideas, such as the attention economy and the attention trust. The point is that all of us implicitly or explicitly make an exchange when we use the Internet. We get access to oceans of content and data, and some of the service providers collect tolls along the way - in this case the search engines and digital media companies that store, mix and exploit personal data. And that data is valuable. There’s no great socialist conspiracy here (to the best of my knowledge) - it’s simply the way the ‘net works.

But food for thought raised here is that there’s been a shift in the balance of power away from traditional media. In times past, media companies drew their strength from understanding and knowing reader behaviour. An editor is at his or her best when decisions about editorial and the media business are heavily influenced by reader behaviour.

Now, that situation hasn’t changed. Editors still understand their readers and publications. But the vast computing power being deployed by Internet giants continues to change the game regardless. Here’s a quote from the NYT piece:

The rich troves of data at the fingertips of the biggest Internet companies are also creating a new kind of digital divide within the industry. Traditional media companies, which collect far less data about visitors to their sites, are increasingly at a disadvantage when they compete for ad dollars.

The major television networks and magazine and newspaper companies “aren’t even in the same league,” said Linda Abraham, an executive vice president at comScore. “They can’t really play in this sandbox.”

During the Internet’s short life, most people have used a yardstick from traditional media to measure success: audience size. Like magazines and newspapers, Web sites are most often ranked based on how many people visit them and how long they are there.

But on the Internet, advertisers are increasingly choosing where to place their ads based on how much sites know about Web surfers.

So where does this leave big media? Do you rush out and buy sophisticated web analytics services or software? Wait for the consumer privacy outrage to swing the pendulum back in your favour? It would be foolish and simplistic to say there was one easy answer.

But for me, an interesting subtext to this piece is that what counts more than ever is the opinion of advertisers and marketers when it comes to online spending expectations. In Australia, we’ve got some really savvy online marketers, and plenty of others who sadly think digital media still equals a flashing web banner.

Reminds me of a video that I helped Foad Fadaghi produce for BRW (bottom right side of the page) for his Digital Generation report. If advertisers want accountability and metrics, and you’re in the media game, then now would be a really good time to evaluate or re-evaluate online measurement tools.

If you read between the lines, there’s a sense of uneasiness about social media in 2008.

Facebook was the Internet’s darling in 2007, having effectively squashed MySpace’s mojo and diverted much of the blogosphere and traditional media’s attention away from discussions about blogs, podcasts and vodcasts. But as Facebook hurries in its efforts to grow up and get a real income, Facebookers like myself have taken a good hard look at the information we publish about ourselves online. Heck, if you breach the social network’s code of ethics you could get struck off, like Robert Scoble. (It’s old news now, but apparently he committed a page-scraping crime in the name of innovation.)

Regardless, it’s dawned on the Facebook community (again) that this social network is not their network. They provide content to Facebook, but ultimately they don’t own that content. Not that this should be seen as some new, evil crime by a big company, mind you. Those of us who work in the media have long understood that the trade-off for a salary, or freelance invoice, is that we surrender copyright to the organisation that publishes our work. That’s life.

But to step back a moment, these Facebook and user-generated content debates highlight an important trend that’s unfolding in 2008. We’ve become social media and online content snackers. We browse Facebook, YouTube, scan Digg for some interesting yarns, poke around on our local newspaper website, scan some RSS feeds, then get back to work (unless reading and blogging is your real job, of course).

Trend Watching has wrapped the term “Expectation Economy” around this trend, and made a good point. Our high expectations for instant access to free, engaging content on the web is also making us irritated and indifferent. Kind of like eating sugar all day. At some point you just want a really good steak (or vegie burger).

A parallel trend here is the proliferation of social media marketing tools. Vandelay lists 233 different social networking sites you can use to market your blog, or get plugged into online conversations. Now, I’ve just resurfaced last week from a long Christmas and New Year holiday. With the exception of checking email and a bit of web surfing, I was basically offline for a month. I do it every year as a way of resetting the brain. But the good thing about getting reconnected again is the sites Vandelay lists will get you up to speed really quickly. The downside is that I’m not particularly loyal to any of them. Actually, to use Twitter as a case in point, I’ve virtually abandoned the service because I found it too distracting and wasn’t delivering value. So I move on to snack on other stuff like Spock.

But there is an interesting upside. In November I invited some of my business contacts and friends to do a quick online survey on how they were using social media. I received 35 responses - all from people who were high net worth individuals, ran a business or occupied some form of senior business management role. To my surprise, they’re strongly in favour of using social networking tools to recommend products and services (see slide below). That tells me we’ve started to move beyond snacking to eating bigger meals, as it were. Product reviews, particularly by business users and consumers, are one of the most powerful developments in social media. That should be music to marketing ears and for the industry at large. What about you, how do you feel about using social media to rate, evaluate and share your experiences with products and services? And should this be the greatest utility to come from social networks?