As a follow-up to the “experts” link I posted earlier today, I’ll draw attention to this nugget from a post by Jason Baer over at Convince and Convert:

You know where you stand in old media. Flawed though they may be, entire industries have been built around measuring and ranking traditional media like television (Nielsen), radio (Arbitron), and print (Audit Bureau and others). I can use Google to find the top 10 TV shows, top 10 daily newspapers, top 10 magazines and an almost limitless supply of other data points about who’s garnering the most eyeballs.

New media has more data, but less insight.

There are exceptions to every rule, and when it comes to my rule on social media experts, Jason is definitely top of the list.

Most so-called experts hate being judged, graded, or otherwise taken to task. The real experts in any field are those who demand metrics by which their assertions can be judged.

Nicholas D. Kristof, in an op-ed on the New York Times:

The predictions of experts were, on average, only a tiny bit better than random guesses — the equivalent of a chimpanzee throwing darts at a board.

This sums up my opinion of self-proclaimed social media experts quite nicely.