Resistance is futile...

Recently, on a message board I frequent, the topic of Social Media came up. I was somewhat shocked by the comments of some of my peers, who seemed indifferent at best about it.

"I don't find (Twitter) particularly novel or useful technology, and predict it will have a very short lifespan," said one poster.

"I'm not very optimistic about the $$ to be made in Social Media Marketing, to be honest," said another.

While the advancement of technology is definitely something a lot of people are unsure of, it came as a surprise to me that people in their 40s, who work as lawyers and scientists and other fields that require a reasonable amount of time spent in academia, seem resistant to an emerging new way of doing things.

After all, these are also people who have probably had computers most of their adult lives, are obviously capable of using them and spending time online posting on message boards, playing fantasy baseball, and probably even doing research.

Yet the simple notion of instantly being able to reach out and organize a mass number of people (as we have seen in the remarkable uprising in Iran as a result of what many feel are bogus elections, or using these tools in a way that can be both far-reaching and targeted at the same time, is an notion that seems lost on many.

Currently, Social Media Marketing is a cottage industry, but it is starting to boom. It's in the news nearly every day, and people are finding a way to make money using it. It reminds me of the early days of the internet.

What if you had been one of those people who got on board early? What if you had been someone like Mark Cuban, who started Audionet in 1995, altered it a bit in 1998 as it became Broadcast.com, and then turned around and sold it a year later for 5.9 BILLION DOLLARS. Yes, billion with a "B".

Now, obviously, Social Media is a slightly different situation, unless you're the folks who actually started Facebook, Twitter, et al.

But the premise is still the same. Those who get on board early - and despite the influx lately of Social Media all over the place, it is still early - will be the ones with the advantage.

I also think of the music industry. A decade ago, Napster emerged. It was the first big-time and easy way to download large amounts of music, for free.


Yes, it is now illegal. Yes, it was akin to stealing. Yes, it can currently cost you a lot of money to illegally download music.

But the point there is that instead of embracing this new technology, the music business tried to stop it. Partially as a result of this, sales began to decline, and ultimately, plummet. Now, digital sales and legal downloads are booming, while traditional CDs may actually got the way of LPs, cassettes, and 8-tracks, in our life time, when only 20 years ago they changed the music business and became the reason why cassettes and LPs became essentially extinct.

If the music business had the foresight to embrace this emerging technology, maybe they, instead of iTunes, would be making the money, and maybe they won't be in the financial free fall they can't seem to emerge from.,

So why fear something new? Why run from it, cower from it, and disparage from it. You can only benefit yourself - and your business - by attempting to learn how to harness its power for you, and your company.