I’m warning you.

(MoneyWatch) General Motors (GM) will cease running paid advertisements on Facebook, according to a source close to the situation who spoke to CBS MoneyWatch.com on condition of anonymity . . . The move by GM, the third-largest advertiser in the U.S., to back away from Facebook comes at an awkward time for the social network. Facebook is expected to go public on Friday in stock offering that could value the company at more than $100 billion.

Facebook is a Count that produces no Change. Get in on the morning of the 18th and out by the afternoon.

This is just a haphazard sampling, but with an Effect Size this Stupendous, even a focus group will demonstrate it. Start with a recent article about the Obama re-election effort.

CHICAGO — With a “chief scientist” specializing in consumer behavior, an “analytics department” monitoring voter trends, and a squad of dozens huddled at computer screens editing video or writing code, the sprawling office complex inside One Prudential Plaza looks like a corporate research and development lab — Ping-Pong table and all.

Now, the popularity of hiring statisticians in business.

Arcane statistical analysis, the business of making sense of our growing data mountains, has become high tech’s hottest calling. There are billions of bytes generated daily, not just from the Internet but also from sciences like genetics and astronomy. Companies like Google and Facebook, as well as product marketers, risk analysts, spies, natural philosophers and gamblers are all scouring the info, desperate to find a new angle on what makes us and the world tick. Computing has become cheap and available enough to process any number of formulas.

Finally, a scientific breakthrough for data mining.

Are there subtle patterns lurking in data that can foretell of a coming financial-system crash? What can explain the variations in sports-star salaries? How about the complex relationship between genes and certain diseases? Scientists in various fields have been searching for better ways to analyze large piles of data for such patterns, but the difficulty has always been that they need to know what they’re looking for in order to find. A new software program, described in the latest issue of Science, is designed to find the patterns in data that scientists don’t know to look for.

You’ve read variations on the Big Numbers theme. There’s Truth in them thar Hills of Data and if you know how to Mine Them, you can Change the Other Guys, win elections, earn trillions, and sit at the Cool Table. Particularly among aspiring persuasion mavens, Big Numbers with Big Data and Big Statistics is the New New Thing. Since everyone is living in Web 2.0 everyone has torrents, tides, and tsunamis of information about Other Guys which has got to lead to Change. Right?

While there’s a ton of nuance in the answer to that question, the First Nuance for me is:

Numbers without Theory is just a million Monkeys at the Abacus.

Just as those monkeys at the typewriter won’t produce Shakespeare, neither will these monkeys at the abacus produce Fishbein and Aizen or Petty and Cacioppo or, to be more famous about it, Kahneman and Tversky. Yet, the New New Thing rush to Big Numbers pretends you can drop the theorist and as long as you have monkeys with degrees from Stanford or Carnegie Mellon armed with quantum computers, you can discover like Einstein.

You see my bias. I’m a theory guy and that reflects both my nature and nurture. Without a schematic, a blueprint, scribbles on a paper cocktail paper, you will not find Truth whether for elections, business, or science. Theory is the One Ring that binds all other Rings. And the better your Theory, the better everything else about your persuasion.

Sure, If You Can’t Count It, You Can’t Change It. But remember.

Just Because You Can Count It, Doesn’t Mean You Can Change It.

The New York Times continues the Adoration of Zuckerberg in a Sunday Review profile of the Facebook CEO. You know they launch an IPO on May 18, doncha? And, in case you’ve forgotten just how great Zuckerberg is, nearly a child genius you could say, you need to read the profile. Might help with your investment decision.

Among the many heroic attributes the profile reveals, the close is the best.

On some evenings, as dusk falls in Menlo Park, Mr. Zuckerberg and a small circle of his lieutenants play roller hockey, and maybe knock back a beer or two, outside Facebook’s headquarters. The game is a relatively recent arrival there, although Mr. Zuckerberg has played it since his boyhood in Dobbs Ferry. Out in the courtyard, the crew — almost all of them men, almost all in their 20s — hoot and skate until it is almost too dark to see much of anything. Across the courtyard floor, giant black tiles spell out the word “hack.” They’ve nicknamed their rink “Hack Stadium.”

Roller hockey. Men . . . in their twenties. Counts like a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan. You learn a lot about a leader when he’s in a fire fight around the net.

The Facebook boys and their captain, Mark Zuckerberg, skate hard. They line up shots with care. And they play to win.

Okay, mavens, this is PR Hack 101 and it serves its purpose. Burnish the brand in front of a potential $100 billion payday. And, if you can get enough Other Guys to put out on May 18 with ridiculous prose like this then that’s what you do. A small price to pay for success.

I have no idea how well the IPO will float, but I sit slack jawed at the persuasion lessons behind it. Facebook is a PT Barnum play and still proves there’s a sucker born every minute. Jeepers. I’m not even sure this is persuasion.

And I don’t care what anyone else thinks or says. No way the NYT has money riding on this. No way.

Dancers beware!

Facebook is, blush, pleased and honored to announce that its dance card for the May 18 IPO Prom is filled! More dancers have requested dances than Facebook can, blush, provide that day.

Assuming, blush, that all the said dancers do indeed attend the Ball on May 18!

When It Is Rare, You Must Have It!

P.S. When the Belle of the Ball is working this hard, you have to wonder just how bella the Belle is. Facebook isn’t glowing, it’s sweating.

The Facebook IPO is scheduled for May 18, 2012. For the overwhelming majority of people who buy stock, an IPO like this is typically out of reach. Most often on the first day the IPO launches, institutional units get the shares, often with an eye of selling them that day when interest and enthusiasm is greatest; they buy at 9am, sell at noon, and pocket some profit. However, Facebook is playing this one differently than most IPOs.

. . . but Wall Street executives estimate that the retail share could be as much as 20 to 25 percent of the offering. Some of that increase is likely to go to brokerage firms like TD Ameritrade or E*Trade, which cater to small investors . . . The company is seeking to give retail investors a bigger cut because it sees itself as a service created for, and driven by, consumers. One person briefed on the offering, who declined to be identified because of regulatory restrictions, said Facebook sees itself as “the people’s company.”

This story is persuasion interesting for two reasons. First, see how Facebook is using social Cues to sell its IPO stock. Second, see how Facebook is using the New York Times as a vehicle for persuasion.

Start with a Little Guy investor.

“I would love to get Facebook stock,” said Joseph Quigley, a 32-year-old insurance sales and marketing manager in Maryland. Mr. Quigley is an active trader, buying and selling stock worth several thousand dollars a year.

Making the IPO available to small investors like Joseph Quigley will certainly help the price. Small investors, also known as John Jerk and his cousin Odd Lot Robert are the targets here, good folks who think they can swim in the financial ocean without encountering sharks. Usually the sharks are the institutional investors. In this case, Facebook is the shark. If you read the financial press – not the New York Times – much digital ink has been filed detailing the flaws with Facebook, its business model, and the IPO. The Big Boys and Girls are wary on this one.

If you’re Facebook and worried that institutional investors may lay back, you need to change the market. Don’t restrict the IPO to big professionals who doubt you. Encourage John and Robert and Joseph to participate on that first day. This move will create pressure on the price in a Scarcity play.

If It Is Rare, You Must Have It, drives this Cue. Facebook wants its IPO to be rare because that will push the price up. If the Usual Gang of Suspects is laying back, bring in some new guys for the Lineup. These unsophisticated buyers will succumb to that People’s Company line and overpay on the first day. That may tempt smarter professionals to briefly panic and buy higher than they would prefer.

You’ll recall that Facebook ran the Scarcity play earlier in the secondary market when they received permission from Congress to increase the number of private investors Facebook could have. They added a few more positions in the face of considerably higher demand. Adding some, but not many new positions increased pressure on even more to bid for those slots.

See how you can manipulate Scarcity with either More or Less. We observed Groupon reduce the number of shares available in its IPO (Less) to create Scarcity which helped keep that first day’s prices higher. Facebook will bring more buyers into the first day (More) to keep the price higher which will make shares scarce for bigger investors.

Now, the second Facebook persuasion play. Over the past few days, the New York Times in particular has been running favorable Facebook stories. Recall the Facebook organ donor persuasion fantasy. Now, in the current NYT story, the Times admires Facebook for opening up the IPO to the Little Guy. While the Times can write whatever it wants about anything or anyone, I find it peculiar that the financial press ranges from ambivalent to hostile in its coverage of Facebook. Here, for example, is a kind take on how people should consider buying Facebook on the first day of the IPO.

1. Don’t buy at the open.
2. Use a “limit” order.
3. Bet small.
4. Don’t be shy about taking profits early.

This is a cautious and thoughtful plan. Very High WATT. Nothing about the People’s Company or cheers for an organ donor box that won’t change anything for the real world. If you think about this plan (from the Wall Street Journal), that last line spills the beans – don’t buy to hold, buy to sell. That’s not a ringing endorsement.

So, why is the Times lately cheerleading for Facebook? A persuasion perspective suggests a relationship between the two companies. Perhaps key leaders at the Times own a piece of Facebook in that secondary market and would like to sell at a larger profit. More unsophisticated buyers on the first day aid that. Maybe key leaders at Facebook would like to get in on the first day IPO and are helping Facebook to get a better seat at the institutional table. Maybe Facebook made a straight business deal and bought the stories. Maybe, it’s just two companies helping each other out in hard times. Certainly, anything is legal. And persuasive. Facebook feeds socially relevant stories to the Times about organ donation and little guy outlets for the IPO and the Times shouts them into their megaphone.

And you thought it was just about money, market, and quality.