I watch a post proliferate late last week about the top 50 branded Facebook Fan Pages from back in July. The nice thing is the post presents a ton of data and then tries to interpret the data and guide readers to action after learning from the data. The trouble is the data.

The data comes from a web app created by Vitrue which boasts to have the ability to quantify Social Media into Return on Investment (ROI) figures. Before you go run and try to calculate your page’s dollar value know that the point of a social media presence isn’t dollar value. I’m not the only one uneasy by Vitrue’s misleading ROI calculations and dollar values for fans.

MySpace is a ‘technology company connecting people through personal expression, content, and culture.’ Facebook gives ‘people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.’ The point of these two major social networking sites is to connect people.

How do you value a relationship? Is it pure dollars? How would you calculate any form of ROI based on relationships, in this case between a brand and followers/fans? Let me throw two thoughts out there: (1) communicating through social media channels is the same or similar to driving traffic from a blog: you provide something your readers/followers want, they identify and discuss around your content. (2) Besides very few, how many people are purchasing goods and services from a Facebook page, or as a result of traffic from a Facebook page to an eCommerce website? How can any Facebook page or social media campaign even guess at potential ROI?

I’m throwing hypotheticals out there to guide you to my point: the bottom line is Vitrue adds false dollar value. Their calculations are not based on analytical data translated into dollars and sense but made on unsubstantiated speculation. The real problem ends up not being with Vitrue’s faking ROI values, the real problem exists with the Web Analysts at corporations (Fortune 200′s to small businesses) who buy into the idea that fans X daily interactions X percentage of annual revenue could equal ROI.

Despite how upset I may be with the concept of ROI association with social media interactions, we should probably ask: Are the folks at Vitrue jerks for obscuring social media value or are they geniuses taking advantage of naive Web Analysts’ and large-scale companies who don’t know better?