Don’t trust anyone who says they’ll reveal the “secrets of social media.” There are no secrets of social media. As someone who’s seen the bubble of the early web and new media business burst, I’m feeling a sense of deja vu.

There are people who make a good living off hype and the naivete of others. They see a short window of time when people are still in learning mode or “behind the curve,” and they swoop in with shiny promises bathed in snake oil, take as much money as they can get, then run.

The rest of us are left here in their greedy and destructive wake to pick up the pieces and, worse, to deal with the disillusionment of people who’ve been burned by a con artist claiming to know the “secrets” of social media that will make everyone rich.

We’ve been here before. Some new technological developments (the web, for instance) have had a major impact on how we communicated and did business. Unfortunately, everyone treated these technical advances as the silver bullet, the cure-all magic potion, the most important thing we must all now embrace lest we get left behind and suffer in a life of failure.