A couple weeks ago,  I attended the Online Community Business Forum in Santa Fe, NM, a fabulous invitation only event that yielded many insights for me.  Among those was the evolution of ‘monologue to dialogue’.   This continues to be a tough concept for many old world marketing and support execs but my belief is that the net result for companies, employees, customers, and prospects is ‘all good’.  Further, and more importantly, we simply are not going to go back in time.  It may have started, ‘just because we can’ but the entire social media movement is moving at Warp 9.  Although I still have internal ‘discussions’ with folks about the value and the cost, it is undeniable that the world has not only moved on, but is continuing to iterate amazingly fast. 

Big companies simply must have folks that live and breathe social media.  If not, they will fall behind their competitors oh so quickly. 

Take for example the use of ‘Twitter”.   Remember, I am an old world person, working in a new world assignment – for which I am very thankful.  Much of the outer edge of the movement is difficult for me to ‘get’.  Twitter was just like that.  Was talked into signing up but after watching the first few posts I thought quite simply – “I don’t have time for this – there’s not enough pith for me.  Today there’s ‘mud in my eye’.  Not only did the Online Community Business Forum have a person, Shara Karasic Twitter the conference.  Shara is in the eye of the Social Media storm.  Check out her super list of all things social media  and her great article ‘Guide for Twitter for Business’ .

And then today, my 23 year old aisle mate, who also struggled with Twitter and its value said to me as I walked in that he sent me this fabulous article on Twitter.  The title of Chris Winfield’s article -- ‘Twitter Wrote this Column for Me’  .  Read it and if you don't 'get it' yet, you probably will after you read the article.  

So what’s ahead for me?  Sharpen my ability to say something meaningful in 140 characters or less.  Any thoughts out there on this new dialogue form?  Do you Twitter?  Might you Twitter?