There is little doubt that Facebook is well on its way to becoming the dominant homepage for many online users in the United States.

Not to mention the social network’s slow but steady rise in popularity around the world.

For marketers, it is a basic concept.  We want our message to be in front of as many consumers as possible for the lowest possible price.

Put 350 million people in one place, online or otherwise, and marketers will fall over themselves to hock the value of their product or service.

In the case of Facebook, we know the audience is there, but are they listening to the message?

For example, take our recent tweet from @travel2dot0:

“Facebook users will vote for anything if you ask: http://ow.ly/12Cy8 Which state will reach 1mil fans first. Did DMOs miss something?”

The tweet is referring to an article about one of the many flavors of the week on Facebook – numerous pages devoted to which US state can gather 1 million fans first.

Alas, these state pages have been created specifically for this contest and do not represent the official DMO Facebook pages.

That said, in less than a month, Texas has amassed more than 714,000 fans in this very unscientific survey.

But what types of users are represented in the 700,000 number?  As a DMO, we want to be friends with all of these users, right? Are these users as valuable as all others?

We have some thoughts on that.  We call them status hoarders.

Of course, there are numerous users within Facebook who are brand advocates for their favorite destination (Breckenridge), coffee shop (Starbucks) or sports car (Ferrari).  We need to be careful not to paint everyone with the same broad brush.

Status Hoarders:  Users who attach themselves to numerous groups, typically relating to a pop culture or fashionable topic, in order to maintain a hip or favorable perception among other users.

Ah, now we are getting somewhere.  As we mentioned in the tweet, users on Facebook (or Twitter for that matter) will vote for anything… Avatar, the Oscars and, apparently, states around the US.

This is a perfect example of how Facebook exaggerates the already existing social tendencies of our culture online.

The majority of us care deeply about the perception of others, how cool we appear and what products, people and things we are associated with – not to mention our inherent competitive nature.

Which brings us back to the state popularity contest on Facebook.  The article asks several questions about the post-vote existence of these pages:

So what happens to these pages after the first state reaches 1 million fans is a good question. Will Facebook roll them into the states’ official pages? Will states try to obtain them and turn them into tourist or government-focused pages?

Um, no thanks. And here is why.

The users who have become fans (ah, such a nice term) of these pages are simply passing through and have no real loyalty or interest in a deeper conversation.

They are, for the most part, status hoarders, voting for their state in one of several non-productive breaks during the work day.  I am pretty sure they also voted for their favorite Jersey Shore cast member, some sort of Star Wars vs Trek debate and probably a celebrity-related fashion question.

No, you can keep those users; DMOs really don’t need fans like that.

What is my agenda for the site, what do I say, what is my voice, my goal, my cause, what will I write about?

 Those of you who know me well are already aware of what drives my personal ambition as well as my writing:  travel, technology and the environment.

And while future posts, articles and theoretical ramblings will present a stronger focus on tourism technology, I felt it appropriate to address a larger subject.  Global, if you will.

At present, while you sit at your desk or check in on your various RSS feeds via the ubiquitous Blackberry, the world is changing.  At grassroots gatherings and worldwide summits, such as the recent Climate Week in New York City, thousands of our peers are addressing the issue of our time…climate change.

I submit to you that climate change is not simply an issue for Greenpeace and the United Nations; it is now an issue for you, for us and for our industry.  The time has arrived to lend our voice to the congregation and become a part of the solution.  The travel industry…utilizing technology…can help lead the way.

Sounds good you say, but how?  And furthermore, why?  Why us?  Why me?

All of us love (or should love) to travel.  We travel to see the world, to experience different cultures and to embrace the variety of natural wonders that exist on our wide-ranging planet.  Beyond that wonderful and sugar-coated fact, we sell destinations and, for the most part, we sell the natural surroundings that exist in these destinations.

Our budgets, profits, local taxes, salaries, families, friends and bankers depend on the revenues that are generated due to the splendors of these amazing sites.  On top of that, our jobs depend on the environment that we sell so eagerly to willing travelers.  That fact alone should be enough cause for you to read on, regardless of personal opinion.

But, as quickly as these wonders of the world are being discovered by the masses, they are at risk of being destroyed due to a changing climate.

The crumbling and deteriorating ruins throughout Greece and Egypt are under attack by the acid rain produced, in part, by exhaust of the rental cars and buses that bring thousands of tourists to these marvels in the first place.

Or, take the first 90 degree day in the Valley of the Sun… Phoenix…a location from which I speak with experience.  According to yearly readings from NOAA, the first 90 degree day in Phoenix over the past 25 years is, on average, April 1, however when isolating the last 10 years, that date jumps to March 29.  On paper, only a two day difference, but in terms of evolutionary time, those two days (over such a short period) represent a large shift in climate patterns.

As you can imagine, it becomes difficult to sell the idea of a lovely alfresco lunch when the temperature reaches 120 degrees.  Trust me; all the misting systems in the world will not cool you down.

Perhaps the most startling and troubling example of this disastrous trend is the tiny nation of Maldives.  The archipelago lies just off the coast of India and is literally being washed off of the map due to our lack of action on such issues as capping carbon emissions.

And the list goes on…drought in Australia, an overpopulation of pine beetles in Colorado and much of the Rocky Mountain West as well as glaciers disappearing from mainland Europe.

The destination that we sell is being destroyed, or at best, becoming nearly unrecognizable.

But we have a green program, you say.

Nothing more than talk, I say.

Sure, you have a couple of recycling cans in the office, perhaps you even buy locally grown produce for your restaurant and let us not forget about that expensive ‘We are Green’ brochure on your website.

Kudos, perhaps the people of the Maldives can build rafts out of those shiny new brochures and sail off to a new island home.

We need to do more.

We need to be at the head of the table, providing real and tangible ideas and solutions for our community to survive.

Solutions like the E-Move Charging Station in Denmark.   The newly unveiled carbon offset kiosk at SFO. Bicycle exchange programs such as the successful experiment in Paris.  Recycling programs like RAFT in Denver, which provides school supplies to teachers from leftover convention materials.

We need to use technology to educate our consumers about the natural beauty that surrounds them and what we, as the travel industry, are doing to protect it on the local level.

We need to stop printing guides, materials and mailers that consumers do not want and start thinking about how our decisions can be improved with technology and how that technology can improve the natural world.

Simple answers do not exist in this post or topic.  This is a serious issue that calls for serious and thoughtful solutions, which unfortunately cannot be provided in a nice, neat bulleted list.

However, I can provide one solution for this paradox that I have so willingly unleashed on these virgin pages.  We, the travel industry, need to start talking.

We need to start talking to each other, to our consumers, to our peers, to our politicians and to the world.  All too often we spend endless hours discussing the best way to entice visitors to our destinations without even mentioning or blatantly ignoring such issues as air quality, carbon offsets and the potential for environmental damage.  We have trained ourselves to focus on short-term gains and let someone else worry about long-term effects.

Technology is standing by and ready to make an impact on more than the way we communicate with tourists.  Technology is ready to help us change the future.  We simply need to start the conversation.

If you have made it this far into the post, then congratulations, I can assure you that future rants will provide more actionable solutions than the previous novel.  And we will certainly talk at length about Twitter, AR, GIS, GDS and every other techie acronym that we can think of, but this subject is beyond important.

I leave you with one final thought.

It is our responsibility to protect and preserve the destination that we sell to millions of travelers each and every day.  It is time we accepted this monumental task and stopped providing excuses.

Otherwise, our children might have no other choice except to visit the Maldives on Wikipedia.