Following up on yesterday’s post, I sought to get an answer to my question about Josh Bernoff’s comment that the change being driven by social networking solutions “is the largest thing to happen to American business since the Internet came in." Based on the relatively low adoption rates being reported by Forrester, what was the basis of this statement?
In an attempt to find out (and to hopefully learn something new), I attended a webinar hosted by Awareness Networks and Forrester titled: The Value of Social Networking for the Enterprise. Eric Schurr, VP of Marketing at Awareness was MC of the festivities and Forrester was represented by G. Oliver Young, an analyst responsible for Web 2.0 and Social Computing technologies.
The presentation was interesting, although I had seen most of it in a similar web seminar presented by Forrester and a competitor to Awareness. After the presentation, I asked my question via the online Q&A capabilities of WebEx and…
…Oliver’s connection was lost and the webinar was ended.
I followed up with an email to Eric & Oliver. Eric responded with the comment below. A little “marketingy”, but hey, I’m a marketing guy so I’ll live with it.
“The comment about the impact of social media is a more of a prediction of the future than a statement about the current state. If one looks at the current impact that social media has had and extrapolates where it goes from here, it’s pretty clear it will become part of the basic fabric of how we interact and communicate. It’s already become the most popular way for people 25 years and younger to communicate, and it’s now finding its way into the business world. Think of the impact that email, mobile devices, and the Internet have had on our lives – at one point they were novelties and many people discounted their value, but visionaries saw a time when they would all be a commonplace thing. That’s what we see happening with social media – it’s here to stay, and one day it will not be something special, it will just be the way things are.”
Still no word from Oliver. Stunned silence? Loss of all social networking tools to communicate to the outside world? Oliver? Can you hear me now?
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1 comment:
Hey Ken, thanks for attending the Webinar and for your question; apparently you weren't the only one interested in the answer. I left for vacation almost immediately after the Webinar but you should have received an email response on the 23rd. Please let me know if you did not receive it.
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