Matthew Zeitlin over at The Daily Beast thinks that may be the case.

… $16 billion.

That’s about how much revenue analysts back in July expected social media sites to generate in 2012.

That’s also the amount that ClickZ says has been spent online this holiday season.

Coincidence? Hmmmmm …

They don’t exist.

David Pogue explains.

Now knock it off.

I like the HubSpot blog. I really do. There’s a wealth of great information on their site.

But I hate posts like this: Create a Facebook Business Page and Tap 53 Million Users (For Free!).

The implication is that all you need to do is create the page and people will be lined up at your door like turkey-hungover masses breaking down the glass doors at Wal-Mart to buy a two-dollar toaster.

It’s not the case, and it never will be. You might as well say: “Open a hot dog stand in Manhattan and tap into 8 million hungry New York City residents!”

Uhhhhhh … what about the competition? The maintenance? The marketing plan? You get the idea.

A Facebook business page is a tool. It’s a pretty good tool, in many cases, but it’s no silver bullet solution to anything, and it’s not an end by any means. It’s simply one of many, many tools at the online marketer’s disposal. Whether or not it’s an appropriate tool depends on your company’s overall marketing communications strategy.

Please, people, let’s lighten up on the hype, okay?

Takeaway for marketers: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Duh.

Marketing Tech Blog has posted an infographic that serves as a nice digital primer for small businesses. Of all the tips you’ll find there, though, I think action item #1 is to nail down your professional email address.

It’s remarkable how many companies use a a google.com or a yahoo.com or a hotmail.com or a (shudder) aol.com email address as their primary business address. It’s wrong. Not that it’s wrong to have those email accounts — hell, I’ve had an AOL account since they were charging by the hour, and I still use it as the catch-all address for mailing lists, newsletters and such.

But if your business is not using yourname@yourbusiness.com as an email address, you need to fix that immediately. Anything else is just unprofessional.