I'm referring to the reluctance of most brick and mortar businesses to jump online 5-10 years ago. These same people are slow to adopt social media for the very same reasons they were slow to create an online presence. The problem this time around, is they will sink a lot faster, and unless they act quickly they won't have enough time to bail the water.

I'm still amazed at home many businesses are still not online, let a lone those who refuse to embrace social media.

Cheers … Scott (we miss you here in Boise)

Companies are made up of people who have been doing their job the same way for a long time. Some are adapting, some are not. The higher up you get, the more conservative the thinking (This is just a fact of life, as higher-up people are more accountable upward than downward). What you're talking about isn't just setting up a twitter account. It's a fundamental shift in every aspect of the value chain for a company, a cancelling out of what they've been using as success metrics for years, and the momentum of tactics that have only become less effective (advertising, mass media) in the last 3-4 years, which is an eternity in internet time but a mere blip in the history of business marketing.

To think that this conversation is over just because statistics show that most people use a social network (whether they use it to find out about products or not is another story, with the number of people fanning/friending a business closer to 50%) is idealistic and not very realistic given the economic and business climate overall.

It's a nice thought, though.

We're losing expert, in-depth reporters; travel agents; and before long, realtors. Anyone whose job existed because they were able to know more than someone else is going to have to fight The Vine for sunlight, space, and water. Over the next decade, many colleges, libraries, book stores, and book publishers will be heavily threatened.

Not that there's any going back.