Paul,
1- You don't care about my product, but many of the people I'm connected to via social networks do. Personally if someone asked my opinion on a product idea I'd love to give it. Not everyone is this way but a good number of us are.
2- people have lots of “spare cycle” as Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail calls them. The fallacy that many CEO's like yourself have that social networks are just a waste of time or that the people on them don't matter is a grossly outdated notion. It's really just closed minded and absurd.
3-Desperation breeds all kinds of innovation. It's often the case that when their survival depends on it and nothing else is working anymore that companies are the most innovative. When things are fine companies have very little motivation to do anything different.

Mathieu,
Great point, attention is just as, if not more so, important as time. to answer your questions:
-It depends on the type of work a person is doing. I don't want my accountants and secretaries taking their attention off task oriented work. I do want my engineers and marketers spending time “scanning the horizon”.
-No. Some will be better than others. Like any other skill I think employees should stick to what they're good at.
-I think everyone should be plugged in to some degree, even if it's only into internal social networks. The best analogy I've heard for managing the amount of information came from Stowe Boyd. He said it's like juggling. You don't start off juggling 5 balls or chainsaws. you start off with three handkerchiefs, then work up to three balls then 4, then etc. Managing the information is the same.

My Take
Paul you are missing the very basic steps in Marketing; targeting and segmentation. You may not give a “damn” about the product I am selling. This tells me you are not my customer and I would not want to waste time or effort on you. If you are interested in my product, why shouldn’t I be where you are or going to be.

Social Media is about sharing information and co-creating value to those you are connecting with. As a business, the pay out is getting information from users/customers/prospects so you can improve your products or service and MAKE $. As a users/customer/prospect your pay out is getting a product that fits your needs/desires. If you are not in the market for the product, then filter out the noise.

#1 the difference between PR and bloggers? I don’t have the time to fully answer that but at a basic level PR firms typically publish their own content via their own channel like bloggers do and bloggers typically don’t “pitch” (which is different than being paid to write about something). Many bloggers are also PR professionals so the lines begin to blur here. But I agree that using bloggers to promote your product is an excellent marketing tactic which can be just as effective as traditional media.

#2 I find your response here curious since you obviously see the value in using online social networks. But yes the online world is filled with the same mix as offline. Some have more value to different people at different times than others.

#3 I do understand the middle manager dilemma. It was middle management at Hewlett-Packard that hired me 1 1/2 yrs ago to do just what I’m talking about. And I can tell you that the well established HP is not waiting around to see what others do.

#4 I agree with you here depending on the audience. Some managers want safe and familiar packaging but many others want radical change, you have to know your audience.

I think you and I agree on far more than we disagree but to be honest I think you are proving my point. The product I am developing is a book. That’s what this post is for. I am writing my book in it’s first rough draft form here so that I can solicit feedback to make my product better and you are helping in that process. Thank you.

That being said – I have a product coming to market next year. I fully intend to hire (as in pay real $s) one or two respected bloggers to promote awareness of my product. This is no different than pre-internet days when I hired a PR firm and sent press releases. That just isn’t as effective as it was in 1990.

So what changes between a PR firm and a blogger? What is this great new idea of Web 2.0? I asked the same of the new economy. The new economy was a myth as well.

#2 You continue to protest… Social networks and blogs are often filled with people who’s ideas are limited by their vision. Additionally most have the literacy skills of an 8th grader. Thus the challenge of finding gems of value in verbose and poorly written postings is MOST often akin to self abuse.

#3 I don’t think you appreciate that mid management believes the risk carried by adopting radical change. Smaller companies and enlightened individuals will always seek a better way, but most established companies will wait and let someone else brave new trails. (the herd mentality)

#4 Packaging your proposal for adoption must do two things. A) show the client a clear benefit and ROI, not platitudes and warm fuzzes. And B) package it not as a radical idea (I.e. Adopting a new Web 2.0 strategy) but rather shifting their smaller PR from print and ad agencies, to a more effective communication channel on the web. Make it look like something they are familiar with.

All this seems to me to prove my point, that I have time to screw around over the holiday and respond but the nuclear idea you are writing about is to get businesses to shift budgets from print to internet. That’s a lot of words to say that. Isn’t this an example of taking the long road and disguising it as Web 2.0?

Paul,
1- You don’t care about my product, but many of the people I’m connected to via social networks do. Personally if someone asked my opinion on a product idea I’d love to give it. Not everyone is this way but a good number of us are.
2- people have lots of “spare cycle” as Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail calls them. The fallacy that many CEO’s like yourself have that social networks are just a waste of time or that the people on them don’t matter is a grossly outdated notion. It’s really just closed minded and absurd.
3-Desperation breeds all kinds of innovation. It’s often the case that when their survival depends on it and nothing else is working anymore that companies are the most innovative. When things are fine companies have very little motivation to do anything different.

Mathieu,
Great point, attention is just as, if not more so, important as time. to answer your questions:
-It depends on the type of work a person is doing. I don’t want my accountants and secretaries taking their attention off task oriented work. I do want my engineers and marketers spending time “scanning the horizon”.
-No. Some will be better than others. Like any other skill I think employees should stick to what they’re good at.
-I think everyone should be plugged in to some degree, even if it’s only into internal social networks. The best analogy I’ve heard for managing the amount of information came from Stowe Boyd. He said it’s like juggling. You don’t start off juggling 5 balls or chainsaws. you start off with three handkerchiefs, then work up to three balls then 4, then etc. Managing the information is the same.

Let me ask you a few questions on this:
- Can we divert the attention of our employees away from non-primary work? How will that impact their effectiveness in their core job?
- Do you think every single employee in your organisation can master the amount of information coming at him form social media sources? The stream can be overwhelming to the limited supply of attention we all have…
- Should we all be plugged in to the stream with its constant demands for multitasking or should we look into daily time slots where our attention should be focused on social media?

Do you think the real cost in Time&Attention can be mitigated by how you implement social media i the Enterprise?

Let me ask you a few questions on this:
- Can we divert the attention of our employees away from non-primary work? How will that impact their effectiveness in their core job?
- Do you think every single employee in your organisation can master the amount of information coming at him form social media sources? The stream can be overwhelming to the limited supply of attention we all have…
- Should we all be plugged in to the stream with its constant demands for multitasking or should we look into daily time slots where our attention should be focused on social media?

Do you think the real cost in Time&Attention can be mitigated by how you implement social media i the Enterprise?

1 What is in it for me? Why do I give a damn about your product? I have my own life to worry about. Where is my pay out?

2. If anyone has free time to monitor and join your web 2.0 social network they have too much free time. That being said their time is not being used effectively and one could assume that their opinion is not valuable because if it were valuable they would bee too busy to have time for your social network. So how do you get missionaries who will be followed by others? Unless of course you are promoting non productive entertainment – like games?

3. Right now corporations are not doing what is in their best interest. They are doing the wholesale turtle. Their mantra is “do more with less. find better ways to do things but don’t change anything”

They are looking for ways to do better without doing ANYTHING!

Employees are afraid to recommend any change because failure of a recommendation could cause their boss to look at their performance and accelerate termination. So how do you promote counter intuitive behavior in a survival mentality?