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When is social media no longer social? When you're playing it for the numbers. It seems the great promises of social media have fallen by the wayside, as users play a game of one-upmanship with each other, trying to have the most followers, tweets, comments, what-have-you. You know what? That's not social media. That's asocial media.

Social networking and media began as a great idea. Connect to friends and family, and anyone of similar interest over the internet! Build relationships, ideas, and projects with people you might never have met. And be heard by even more people. Unfortunately, the promises of the social web introduced its own metrics and statistics. And once these become visible to users, natural human greed took over. Once, where people looked to connect with others, they now only care about the numbers. It's become quantity, not quality. And the social aspects of all these services are dying.

These days, social media isn't about being social at all. Companies look to social media as a way to make more sales, not as a way of connecting to customers. Bloggers and other mindshare leaders use it to measure their value, how many ears they hold on to. (Well, not all of them do that, but…) No matter how you look at it, it has become just one more way to turn a quick buck. And people are recognizing this.

I'm not immune to this either, although I wish I were. I can't help but stare at my Twitter statistics on various services which provide them. I peek at how my posts on FriendFeed are liked or commented upon. I panic every time I hear of some problem with FeedBurner, concerned with how it might report how many people follow this site's RSS feed. I'm ashamed about that, because I'm on these services to connect with people, not to measure up against the big fish.

Is it possible to turn back from this asocial media, and return to the promises of proper social media? Perhaps. For all the asocial changes in the field, there are still many, myself included, who are simply looking to share ourselves. While it'll be impossible to rid ourselves of the numbers game, so long as we concentrate on those values which can't be measured with statistics and metrics, but rather with feelings and ideas, social media can still deliver on its promises.

As long as we concentrate on quality, not quantity, social media will not die. It will not be totally replaced by asocial media. And we'll be able to keep on truly connecting with one another.