Doc Searls is blogging from Defrag,  a conference where many social media conversations are happening.  Doc has some important observations about the “walled gardens” we have presently (even though it seems oh so open and well,  SOCIAL, it is still owned by Twitter, Facebook, etc.

a framing issue for social media that has bothered me for some time. You can see it in the survey’s first two questions: What Social Media platforms do you use? and How often are you on social media sites?

The frame here is real estate. Or, more precisely, private real estate. Later questions in the survey assume is that social media is something that happens on private platforms, Twitter in particular. This is a legitimate assumption, of course, and that’s why I have a problem with it. That tweeting it is a private breed of microblogging verges on irrelevance. Twitter is now as necessary to tweeting as Google is to search. It’s a public activity under private control.

Missing in action is credit to what goes below private platforms like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook — namely the Net, the Web, and the growing portfolio of standards that comprise the deep infrastructure, the geology, that makes social media (and everything else they support) possible.

Doc Searls Weblog · Beyond Social Media

I have a deep respect for Doc’s take on things.  As one of the Cluetrain Manifesto authors,  he was a major influence on my beginning to blog in 2002.  To be “up”on Social Media,  read him for what you often miss in all the hype (both deserved and undeserved).