I’ll admit that the first time I heard the term “social media,” I thought immediately of NFocus, the fun, local monthly chronicle of parties, pedicures, paninis and papaya mud wraps at the spa de jour.

A few months later, social media is creating a whirling-dervish effect on our culture and, in the practice of public relations, we are confronted with providing appropriate counsel to clients that allows them to maximize this universal dialogue.

Social media isn’t haute journalism. In fact, it’s the New Journalism. Think blogs, digital stories, RSS feeds, wikis and social networks. What’s news is no longer dependent on the newsprint lying in the front yard each morning or the snippets of video strung together by the trained news technicians of television. Rather, have you checked out youtube.com? It’s the ultimate in video-on-demand, programmed by consumer content managers. Don’t forget podcasts in this mix, the audio-on-demand format downloadable to an IPOD, MP3 player and upscale cell phone near you.

If you question whether all of this is a mere fad in the cyber-universe, forget it. Follow the money: Combined spending on blog, podcast and RSS advertising grew 198.4 percent to $20.4 million in 2005 and is expected to grow another 144.9 percent to $49.8 million this year, according to researcher PQ Media.

The 15,000 new-blogs-per-day statistic reminds me of the Web site boom 10 years ago. Everybody had to have one – what the organization did with it was another matter. It’s impossible to forecast how many of those new blogs will be around 10 years from now or 10 weeks, for that matter.

What I do know is that social media, and blogs in particular, is driving a gigantic shift from the “old-style” mainstream news media telling us what was news to this personal communications – a two-way conversation between the individual journalist and his or her audience.

For clients, social media offers an unprecedented opportunity to develop an ongoing dialogue with an organization’s principal audiences. It’s time to speak up. There’s no better time to come to the party.