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Social is about retention, right?
It's about connections, right? It's about friends, sharing with trusted sources, expressing a "like" for a brand or entity, endorsing products and services.
According to recent numbers published in Mobile Marketer, Facebook, the 25 billion- pound gorilla, has something like 500 million users, 50 percent of whom visit the site multiple times each day. There have been more than 550,000 apps developed, and people spend countless hours growing their farms and whacking enemy mobsters. That's social, right?

A few more stats to paint a thorough picture: Facebook's user base (500M+) is almost twice as large as the population of the United States (~300M). This user base is constantly connecting, evolving, "liking" and endorsing products, and has a presence in all corners of the world. It's not a stretch to say Facebook has become a global marketplace.

And according to the same Mobile Marketer article, Mike Murphy, vice president of global sales at Facebook, said users who "like" something are four times more likely to make a purchase in real dollars. A global marketplace with potential customers four times as likely to buy something? Do I have your attention now?

The network is evolving tools for the marketplace
Last week we learned that Facebook created an administrator panel to allow the owners of websites that were "liked" by users to more easily and seamlessly contact them.

If we assume Mike Murphy is correct and that users who like something are four times more likely to make a purchase, how many of them would agree to opt-in to receiving email and offers outside of Facebook if they were contacted by the owner of a site or page they "liked"?

So to answer the question, yes, there is a kind of "social acquisition," but you can't think of it using yesterday's tactics. The new Facebook feature should be thought of as a kind of organic acquisition and used sparingly, because it's important to nurture dialogue and not act overly big-brotherish.

Through the new Facebook admin panel, savvy marketers can incentivize individuals to join their email list with exclusive offers and discounts. But the real advantage to marketers taking this approach is that the average Facebook user has 130 friends, which means your organic growth has 130 chances at becoming viral. Now that's what I call social.

But mobile is totally different from social, right?
Social networks are driving the adoption of smart phones--the technology lends itself to social engagements demonstrated by the 150 million mobile Facebook users. Regardless of what you might think about Microsoft's recent attempt at a socially optimized cell phone, the Kin, it does point to and acknowledge the interconnectedness of mobile and social.

In a recent Nielsen study the users of mobile devices primarily spent their online time reading/writing email and engaging in social networks. If we take a closer look at what's happening around the world and how smart phones are being used, we see high volumes of images being shared on social networks via mobile devices. Therefore we have to assume that part of a mobile device's raison d'etre is its ability to generate content on social networks.

Here's a personal story: I'm planning a wedding and coming to the not terribly bright conclusion that it's complicated. Since I'm not the most organized individual, I need help. I've downloaded a few apps, yes: wedding apps, little organizers that help me keep track of budgets, time lines, and other various details. However, when I first fired up Wedding Wire I was prompted to create an account. The link in the app spawned a mobile browser on my phone and had me fill out an opt-in online in order to activate the features on my phone. Part of the registration included an option to integrate Facebook and receive offers from a half dozen other wedding-centric third party advertisers and services. Hey, at least they asked nicely.

If you build it, will they really come?
That's the question we're all asking about the brave new socially mobile world. We are overwhelmed with free content and applications. In many cases where apps require payment for enhanced features there is another app that will offer nearly the same functionality for free.

To some extent, growth and acquisition for a user base on either mobile or social channel requires the intersection of both, which makes sense as the two are approaching parity. Like the Wedding Wire's sign up page that had a link to Facebook, marketers who are intent on achieving social success need to take into account mobile and how that plays into the social realm.

What the users of smart phones are teaching us is that they are increasingly multichannel, reading and engaging with content across mobile, web, and desktop email clients, and accessing social networks on different platforms. The question is not do you have a mobile campaign or a social presence, the question today is how many intersections between mobile, social, web, search, email offline do you have?!

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About the Author: Len Shneyder is senior product marketing manager of Unica/Pivotal Veracity