The telephone is one of the first stable social media platforms. Private enterprise quickly figured out how to make money off the telephone going so far as making unsolicited calls into people’s homes. That ability was only recently banned by federal law and punishable by heavy fines.

Corporate America is now trying to figure out how to reach a growing market in online social networks. Proctor and Gamble’s experiment with FaceBook was featured in the NY Times yesterday. 

As for P.& G, the company permits Facebook to talk about the results of only a single P.& G. promotion, presumably its most successful to date: for Crest Whitestrips. The promotion began in fall 2006, when P.& G. invited Facebook members in 20 college campus networks to become Crest Whitestrips “fans” on the product’s Facebook Page. Facebook said it was a great success, attracting 14,000 fans.

One could argue, however, that with the additional enticements that Crest provided — thousands of free movie screenings, as well as sponsored Def Jam concerts — a brand of hemorrhoid cream could have attracted a similar number of nominal “fans.”

Becoming a “fan” required nothing more than a single click. When Facebook talks about its 130 million members worldwide, it’s careful to include only active members, defined as those who have logged on within the past 30 days. But when it shows the total number of “fans” on a sponsor’s page, it treats all fans as active.

Without endless investment, these sorts of promotions sputter out. More than 4,000 of the onetime 14,000 Facebook fans of Crest Whitestrips have left the fan club.

Ads as Proctor & Gamble knows them in print and broadcast miss a huge opportunity in social media.  The same way events create an experience, social media offers an opportunity to create a long term digital brand experience. That brand experience can be socially engaging or a third party interrupting someone’s phone call with a recorded advertisement.