This morning I was reading an article posted on a fairly well known web hosting blog. That set things in motion with regard to this post. Why? Well the article was about Jeremiah Owyang’s discussion on the future of social media and business. A piece of that was how important it is for businesses to listen to the conversation, instead of pushing their sell message. Jeremiah has a list of 8 objectives I don’t want to detract from, but there is a bigger picture here.

Jeremiah is a well known analyst. I’ve had a couple of interactions with him, all online and he always struck me as incredibly bright and thoughtful. Just lately I’ve noticed a couple of things, not just about Jeremiah, about the bigger names in this social media world, and it occurred to me they reach a point where they no longer listen to regular people, no longer engage in typical conversation, no longer participate in collaboration with anyone in the ranks. Occasional evenings with a glass of wine may inspire a bit of open conversation but that seems to dissipate as they reach the peak of what I