Amen brother. The reason is that most ‘PR bloggers’ do not write about public relations and are scornful of media relations because they don’t understand it. Shel Holtz, often ranked as one of the most influential of ‘PR’ bloggers, commented on Michaels’s post that he would make no comment until he could see some action, meaning he didn’t know what he was talking about and declared that he would say nothing.

I can understand Shel’s reluctance to offer a snap judgment. After all, Dow Jones has only been around since 1882 and Rupert the Wily has only been hunting the world’s big media game for over 40 years. Perhaps we should check back with Shel in 2010 when he can offer wizened reflection on current events.

Actually, the response of the shel of his former self is the du jour message of PR ‘thinkers’ these days – pump the conversation, offer no opinion, don’t engage. It’s like you’re at a convention for conversationalists who won’t talk. And that is why all the supposed metrics I have seen for measuring blogger influence are bogus to the core. Popularity is no assurance of relevance and influence, often it’s the opposite. The wisdom of the crowds dictates that the blogosphere, like anything else, will always settle at the lowest common denominator and the river will naturally flow where the earth is most deeply etched.

That’s why I like Jason McCabe Calacanis, a guy who does not seem to be happy unless he is actively pissing off at least half his sizable audience. Jason threw a bomb to the social media digerati when he declared “Facebook bankruptcy” at the beginning of the week. He was sick, physically, and he was spent emotionally. Too many requests for friends of friends to approve this information and that, to connect whatever to something else that all seemed like a huge waste of time. To really punctuate his disgust he turned off comments on his blog.

Yeah, Jason was channeling his inner Brooklyn bitch but he was asking important questions: “ … are we creating a social system to communicate with each other at a distance because the reality of creating and maintaining that social network face-to-face is, well, scary?”

Scoble disagreed. He said he was thrilled to have 4,000 Facebook friends who could lead him to other friends who might be interested in his Twitter about how much sleep he got last night. You know, when I go to Yankee Stadium I am surrounded by 56,000 friends but they all head for the exits when the game is over. With Facebook, although the game just started, it feels like we are already in the bottom of the 8th inning.

Mark Rose is editor of PRBlogNews - a web publication focusing on public relations practices in the digital age.