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Social media is oversold as a marketing channel and undervalued as a customer connection. Sales by conversation are an illusion created by people more focused on building personal brands than exploring and developing a new channel. The new media gurus adopted a "sell and destroy" strategy that effectively promoted networking as the only future of marketing and blamed failed attempts by others on insufficient awesomeness.

Creative valuations of marketing campaigns are part of the sell strategy. Traditional success metrics like sales, customer acquisition, and return on investment are replaced with followers, fans, likes, retweets, and comments. Creating viral content that generates buzz replaces increasing revenue and profitability as marketing goals. To the uninitiated, this shift seems ludicrous, but it has become the social media standard.

Questioning this standard activates the destroy part of the strategy. Anyone daring to ask for data proving that social media works is belittled for being clueless. Questions about how to create successful campaigns receive answers like "Be awesome and it will happen" or "Remarkable content creates remarkable success."

While acting more like snake oil salesman than thought leaders, self-appointed social media experts missed the real value of social networking – customers connecting with companies.

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"Social networking" has been around forever. It's the simple act of expanding the number of people you know by meeting your friends' friends, their friends' friends and so on. In fact, many of us today use Twitter and Facebook to promote our existing and upcoming businesses. And people looking to connect with other business-associated contacts usually move to sites like LinkedIn, but one need to understand that social media is beyond Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Blogs. After observing and running an analysis on hundreds of Social Networking sites I have listed down 40 most popular social networks across countries.

1. Facebook: To access Facebook.com, you must create an account on the site which is free. Facebook's terms of use state that members must be at least 13 years old with valid email ID's. After updating you're details, your Facebook profile is generated. Using Facebook.com you can:

o Browse and join networks, which are organized into four categories: regions, colleges, workplaces and high schools.
o Pull contacts from a Web-based e-mail account, into Facebook.com.
o Find friends in several ways, including search engine to look for a specific person and lot more.
o Facebook has recently crossed 500 million users and is the most popular Social Networking site of the world.

2. MySpace: On MySpace, your social network starts growing from the first day. When you join MySpace, the first step is to create a profile. You then, invite friends to join there and search for your friends on already profiled on MySpace these friends become your initial Friend Space. Once the friendship is confirmed all the people in your friends' Friend Space become part of your network. In that sense, everyone on MySpace is in your Extended Network. As part of terms of MySpace, the user must be at least 14 years old to register.

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Younger viewers have less video ad recall than their older counterparts

Are millennials online video viewing habits substantially different than those of older viewers? Data from a November 2013 survey of online adults in the US conducted by YuMe and IPG Media Lab seems to indicate the answer is "yes."

The survey found that millennials, defined in the survey as those ages 18 to 34, were more likely to watch digital videos in almost all content categories than their older counterparts. While 37% of millennials watched TV shows online frequently, only 26% of Generation Xers (those ages 35 to 54) and a mere 16% of baby boomers (those age 55 or older) did the same. The gap in watching user-generated content was also dramatic, coming in at 33% for millennials, 21% for Gen Xers and 15% for baby boomers. The only content category for which millennials did not lead other age demographics was online news.

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2013 has been a banner year for social media.

Twitter went public.

Google+ broke 1 billion users.

Vine, Instagram Video and Facebook hashtags hit the scene.

And there were tons of notable social media moments from brands around the world – both epic wins and total fails. As 2013 comes to a close, let's take a look at some of the best social media success stories of 2013.

Best real-time response: Oreo

Football fans everywhere panicked when the lights went out during Super Bowl XLVII. The game resumed quickly, but one brand took advantage of the 35-minute power outage: Oreo.

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In his book Tweet Naked, online marketing expert Scott Levy provides the critical information entrepreneurs need to craft a social media strategy that will boost their brand and their business. In this edited excerpt, the author discusses how to choose which is best for you, a personal or a business brand.

Before you can launch your brand, or take your current brand onto social media, you need to determine which direction you want to take; a personal brand or a corporate image. In some cases, you'll have both. If you have the opportunity to build a personal brand, you should do it. A lot of businesses fail for reasons beyond their control; people sell or move on to new projects or companies. If you have a personal brand, your followers will be with you, eager to see what you do next. Your personal brand follows you to your next endeavor.

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Your profile picture is an important tool. It is likely the first thing someone is going to see on any of your social media accounts. Some types of profile pictures an actually sink you and your company at a steady rate instead of helping to boost views and engagement. The sad thing is that many people have taken their profile images in the wrong direction.

You Are Selling Yourself

Every professional is actually selling themselves. Whether you own a business or simply work for one, you can have a huge impact on the way your business is perceived by the general public. Business owners often realize this eventually, but start ups may not have yet. The idea is that you are representing your business. If you act unprofessional, your business will be viewed as unprofessional. You must be above reproach at all times, even in your personal life.