Startup Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Madison Avenue has long been notorious for (over) spending on TV spots aimed at impressing other advertising creatives, or winning agency awards, rather than designing for the ubiquitous target audience–middle America, i.e., Wal-Mart shoppers.

The Social Web now also appears to be falling victim to an inward-focused, ill-conceived and short-sighted disregard for the psychographics of the online silent majority.

Don Dodge underscores the reality of a overwhelmingly passive, and perhaps reticent, Web audience which does NOT post and bookmark and edit and comment all over the World Wide Web.

In hailing his own investment opportunities, however, Union Square Venture’s Fred Wilson, nevertheless inelegantly hails “bullshit” regarding those real world stats, self-assuredly projecting that the entire online audience will soon be giddily “sharing” as he does, for (fun and) big dollars.

The real, real-world testimonial, offered by Tom Chamberlain, however, provides a refreshing outward-looking perspective that is indeed illustrated from the point of view of “someone else’s shoes.”

Tom Chamberlain: Rich people have no concept of privacy. It isn’t really their fault, they just have no need for it. Most people aren’t so lucky.

Really understanding the future of Social Networking means understanding the world as a whole and not just the guys you hang around with. The techies and “gadget hound business men” are pretty much saturated at this point. The key to the future is finding a way to bring other people into the mix. If your a person who thinks everyone is going to make everything about themselves public I don’t think you stand much chance of pulling that off.

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