It may be a surprising question.  Google, after all, is a search engine, Facebook a social network that by all appearances is the hot property over the past 12 months.  The number of users is growing exponentially, and investors believe it is worth billions of dollars. But there is real evidence that Facebook is inadvertently losing its primary attribute– intimate social interaction– that truly differentiates it from the all-data driven promise of Google.  It may seem counter-intuitive and will, take a little explaining, but it all became clear when reading Time Magazine’s Person of the Year cover story in December on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s erratic founder.

The gist of the difference between the world’s largest search engine and the world’s dominant social networking site goes something like this:  When you look for information on Google, such as restaurant critiques, movie reviews, suggestions for vacation resorts, or anything else you can think of, you are getting the wisdom of strangers.  When you seek that same information on Facebook, you are getting the recommendations from friends.  The latter would seem to be more valuable for most people because it is from individuals with whom they have those types of relationships, and not from faceless (and often nameless) Internet personalities.

That’s just one example of the utility of Facebook.  It is also much more of a place to have a dialogue with people with whom you have a relationship with– to see what they are up to, what they are reading, or how their families are doing, or just to look at their photographs.  In other words, where Google is about broadcasting information, Facebook is about engaging in conversation with friends.

But look what’s happening on Facebook when it comes to having “friends.”  The definition has changed– dramatically.  In the off-line world, friends are people with whom you share experiences, spend quality social time, and interact with on a personal level.  In the Facebook world, the meaning of the term “friend” goes far beyond that– it is anyone who hits the “accept” button.

My daugthers each have well over 800 friends on Facebook.  In their off-line life, the number is a fraction of that.  I have one colleague who has more than 3000 friends on Facebook.  When he asks for movie recommendations, even from his Facebook friends, the response is no different in my mind than from a Google search– it is merely the opinion of strangers who happen to be friends by this new definition.

From a practical stand-point, there is no way he can follow the news feeds of those 3000 friends, not can he engage in any meaningful conversation.  When he posts a status update, links to an article or video, talks about his weekend, he isn’t engaging in dialogue on a personal level with anyone.  He is simply broadcasting his posts, hoping that, as with Google, people will see it.  When online friends don’t really have the same attributes as off-line friends, the social networking component disappears.

What does this mean for communications professionals?  For one, Facebook can be a great place to broadcast information far and wide. But it’s going to become a more difficult place to actually engage key audiences– be they consumers, customers, employees, policy makers, or just friends.

“Markets are conversations – talk is cheap, silence is fatal”

The quote above should be taken very seriously by every marketer. While niche consumer brands took this course over the last few years, 2011 is the year that all brands need to aggressively embrace this position in the marketing talent mix.

While it can be an outsourced position at first through agency augmentation (this is what I see often), over time agencies should function as client mentors and best practice trainers to help build a social media conversation capability in house.

This position should be deployed to be a content curater, creating and engaging in conversations that are critical to shaping the overall brand sentiment. In a broad sense the position should include:

Content – This is your in house blogger, content advocate, white paper generator, and any other digital publishing superstar, developing everything from Podcasts to webinars. Most importantly this person must stay up to date on the latest and greatest social media properties to ensure your brand has an optimized presence on all social destinations your particular brand personas visit and interact with.

Context – Aggregating and filtering content and conversations from every digital and traditional channel is critical for delivering compellling content to your customers and prospects.

Connection – All brands play in a market ecosystem that includes partners, customers, competitors and analysts. Content development can have many mutual benefits that drive conversation and brand visibility. Your Chief Conversation Officer should be in charge of developing ways to create these partnership opportunities and empower the conversations you encourage to become a strong referral source for direct business, link generator for search optimization, and follower acquirer for your social media strategy.

Community – The conversations you drive must eventually come together as a community. The ultimate success is creating dialog between all consituents that you start, guide, facilitate, and shape. Being the conversation platform and curator will drive much higher brand recall, and enable you to achieve all the key performance indicators that your social media strategy outlined upfront.

The primary tool for this new c-suite role is indeed social media, but don’t forget traditional forms of conversation as well. Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, blogging and other forms of digital media must supplement phone calls, thought leadership, salon dinners and the most effective still – the handwritten letter – to produce the ultimate, full-bodied, authentic, value-based conversation.

Perhaps you can’t yet convince the powers that be that this role is needed in a full-time capacity. I would recommend you work with your agencies and consultants to create a staff augmentation approach, show value over time, build an ROI case, and before too long your CEO, CTO, CIO, CFO, and COO will have a new friend down the hall to “chat with.”