By Senior Editor – Kris Smith (@croncast)

Quite possibly in popular vernacular or in the agency world, yes. I’m not sure that people have meant to do it but it is happening.

comScore released a small set of data from a survey that they performed about holiday this year online. Not surprisingly, it is up compared to previous years. The surprise comes in the form of how this data is displayed in a “Social Media Influence” table.

I think somebody pulled up in a semi truck loaded with hype.

Or, maybe, it is that the respondents now identify social media simply as talking with friends. Have a look at the table:

At face value, 28% of online Holiday shopping being influenced by social media is believable and insanely large number. Good for all those social media experts out there! But looking a the rest of the data in the chart, which covers every major form of social media – Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Fan Pages, Blogs and generic status updates, something is missing.

Did the respondents want to “feel cool” by responding yes to this? Were all the respondents extremely dialed in to social media? Does standing around the water cooler talking about Lego sets equate as social media?

I raise these questions because the subsequent percentages that have taken this type of action based on social media doesn’t add up to me. I fancy myself a stats guy but these numbers sound like they are missing something from this public release. It sounds like a lot of hype.

It may not be, and I am not doubting that comScore performed a valuable and accurate survey. I’m just not sure that this data is being represented to its fullest due to missing information. Or a cultural shift to think of word-of-mouth as social media.

Does this sound accurate to you?

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