I first became familiar with the term “critical mass” in the early 1980s as producer of The 700 Club. Most people don’t realize the extent to which the program and its founder, Pat Robertson, were driven by research. Little was left to chance back in my days there, which is why executives would occasionally gather at an enormous country house at the Homestead in the Virginia mountains to talk about culture and trends.

I remember one such occasion when our marketing director spoke of the rise of the remote control, and what it would mean once it reached 50 percent of the households with TV. Half of consumers is known as “critical mass,” a magical threshold that somehow validates the concept in the world of marketing. We all know what happened with the remote control, but now a new concept has crossed into validity — Web 2.0.

According to an article in Online Media Daily, the latest installment of an ongoing tracking study from Interpublic’s Universal McCann unit reveals that text messaging, blogging and social networking have reached critical mass, with more than half of all adults in the U.S. using one of these to communicate with friends, family, or colleagues on a regular basis. But the big story — and it is huge — is that nearly nine of ten in the age group 18-34 use these, making it the most dominant form of communications for the group.

Yet we wonder why traditional media methods of communicating are dying.

In ten years, this group will be 28-44, and the new 18-34 year old group will be even more socially connected.

Text messaging, meanwhile, proves that mobile media also is becoming a dominant source of personal communications beyond the cell phone, even if mass marketers haven’t yet figured out how to crack the potential of marketing through the medium. The percentage of U.S. adults who say they’ve never sent a text message fell to 41% this year from 49% a year ago. And among 18- to 34-year-olds, it dropped to 22% from 38%.

“Even if mass marketers haven’t yet figured out how to crack the potential of marketing through the medium?” Good grief, let’s hope that never happens. It would be like a phone call being interrupted for a brief commercial announcement.

Hopefully, I’ll be long gone before that ever reaches critical mass.

The unveiling of Google’s new “Friend Connect” program this week is very big news that must not be overlooked by local media companies as we work to become more web-centric. Friend Connect is the latest from Google’s “Open Social” project, which is designed to allow users to aggregate and take with them various important aspects of social networking sites. The logic is simple (and typical Google): the walled-garden approach to the Web is archaic. What’s needed is portability.

So as MySpace and Facebook duke it out to see who can gather the most users, Google says “let’s make it possible for people to take social elements with them wherever they go (if they wish).” To Google, the Web is the platform. To Facebook, for example, Facebook is the platform. This, Google argues, is limiting, so the Open Social project is a natural extension of the Google model.

Open Social treats elements of social networking like widgets (Google’s term is “gadgets”) that can be moved anywhere. Software developers can use the “open” aspects of the project to create gadgets that can be used by anyone on any site anywhere. Friend Connect makes this possible, and local media sites need to jump in as soon as we can. Google is moving slowly with the project, they say, so they can study potential privacy ramifications, among other things.

Google provides the code, which can be embedded anywhere on your pages via iFrames (code that displays, essentially, a site within a site). When completed, users are able to interact with your content socially by inviting others within their established social networks into your site, ranking stories, sharing comments, and meeting new friends. Publishers who use Friend Connect don’t have access to the data involved, but that shouldn’t stop people from using it. In its introductory materials, Google concludes by saying “Everyone wins in a friend connected web:

• You, the site owner - Google Friend Connect gives you a snippet of code that, when put into your site, will equip the site with social features, including the ability to run third-party social applications. Moreover, it enables your visitors to log in with existing credentials, see who among their friends is already registered at that site. It also gives them one-click access to invite friends from their existing friends lists on other sites, such as Facebook or orkut.
• Your site’s visitors - Visitors no longer need to create a new account or develop yet another friends list just to use the social applications on your site. We create the infrastructure that allows one login to be used across multiple sites and the ability to reuse existing friend relationships that the visitor has already established elsewhere.
• OpenSocial developers - With Google Friend Connect, any website on the web can become an OpenSocial container. Their social applications can now run on social networking sites and anywhere else on the web that uses Google Friend Connect. By placing these applications on sites where users already visit, these application will be seen and used by more users more often.
• Social networks - With Google Friend Connect, social networks thrive as hubs of activity while giving their users more opportunities to bring their friend relationships to other websites while simultaneously bringing their friends and activities from outside the social network back in — with people having the ability to publish their activities across the web into the activity streams of their social networks.

However, not all observers are impressed. Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web thinks the Google initiative simply buries social connections in a “dark little box” and dismisses privacy concerns along the way.

Google could have worked with other large companies and with the creators of these standards (some are in the Data Portability Working Group that Google joined, for example) to tackle the hard questions around data exposure, integration and privacy. Instead they are pushing their Open Social standard around in an iframe. Easy is very good, but co-operation could have come up with something better than this.

Kirkpatrick and others are also noting that the service isn’t widely available yet and that Google is limiting access in order to let others help them build it.

Still, it’s hard to argue with the essence of what’s taking place here, and Google’s involvement will accelerate the work of others in developing social portability. MySpace (Data Availability) and Facebook (Connect) are both trying to accomplish similar goals, but both want to be THE platform leading the charge. Google (again) takes a bigger view and says the Web itself is the platform, describing Friend Connect as a form of “social plumbing” for the Web.

And the message to media companies is clear: we need to be in this space in ways beyond providing simple content widgets that can be swapped and shared. We need to be developing gadgets under the Open Social standards, so that we can participate even beyond just bringing “social” to our sites.

After all, “social” is still largely “local,” and that means opportunities beyond that which the big platforms currently provide.

Doc Searls has been justifiably irked about certain aspects of Facebook (namely those relentless friend requests), but I apparently don’t know enough people for that to be a problem. I do, however, have a serious bone to pick with Linked-In and their endorsements and recommendations application. “Endorse so-and-so. It only takes a minute.” Well, what if I don’t want to?

It seems innocent enough, but here’s my quandary: how do I endorse some and not others in such a public place? If I endorse Joe but not Bill, how’s Bill going to feel if he finds out I’ve endorsed Joe? I also just don’t like the feel of a “request for endorsement.” It seems so, presumptuous, doesn’t it?

I think I object mostly to the expectation of acceptance that’s implied, so rather than use the thing as I suspect it was envisioned, I just refuse to endorse or recommend anybody. It’s not personal, folks.

Variety has decided it wants in on the social network frenzy, so it has created “The Biz.” Puh-LEEZE.

You know, here’s the deal. Variety may provide a unique way for people in — I hate myself for this — “the biz” to connect, but I doubt it. We already have social sites aplenty, and I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sick of joining walled gardens.

The inevitable killer social app will be the one that allows me to put all of my connections in one place. There are many folks trying to do this, but they all fall short, because MySpace and Facebook don’t want to have anything to do with them.

But until there is such an animal, I’m just not going to join. Fair enough?