Robert Young has what I think is a very important post over at GigaOm about the disconnect between what social media is vs. what some business people want it to be.

At the risk of getting it wrong (because he doesn’t really have a nut graph that does this), I’m going to summarize what I think his point is: There are people constructing business models based on the idea that social networking/media can make them rich (or save their businesses), but that isn’t what social media is good at. The point of social media is to empower the user, not to drive the business success. If we focus on the user, we’ll evolve a very different business than what we might expect.

Even if that isn’t a correct summation, I think it’s a good point; and, his entire post is interesting reading and thought provoking, so read it.

[tags]social media, social networking[/tags]