When George W. Bush was inaugurated for his second term in January 2005, no one uploaded a video to YouTube.
When Italy beat France to win the 2006 FIFA World Cup final, fans didn’t Tweet. Not once. No one in Europe mentioned it on Facebook. No one captured Fabio Grosso scoring the winner on an iPhone. No one jumped on Gmail to commiserate with French friends. No one used BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) to celebrate with Italian friends.
Social media have progressed incredibly quickly and organizations have had to grapple with the challenges and identify and pursue the opportunities.
But things began to get serious during 2009 as it became increasingly apparent that social web and related technologies could transform the way organizations go about their business beyond the domains of marketing, public relations and customer service. It might even redefine what it means to be in business. And that’s when we founded the consultancy Influence Crowd.
By September 2011, when I had the opportunity to address the executive summit at Dreamforce (the annual Salesforce.com conference), this radical landscape had been labelled with a distinct call to action – socialize the enterprise.