The future of social media? – US Digital Dinner

Last night we hosted an intimate group for dinner and drinks in San Francisco at TWO. The goal of the dinner was to discuss the future of social media and what to expect as it continues to evolve.

Both B2B and B2C companies have already embraced the impact of social networks and blogs, but how is this going to evolve? How will the balance between traditional media and social media shift and how will this affect marketing plans? Now that we’re moving beyond the experimentation phase with social media, what tried and tested techniques deliver real value? How can companies stand out, given that almost every organization is now blogging and Tweeting?

Sebastian Rupley, editor in chief at GigaOM, Michael Copeland, senior writer at Fortune and Chris O’Brien, business columnist from The San Jose Mercury News were on hand to help lead the discussion. PR professionals and marketing executives from B2B and B2C companies shared their perspectives as well.

So, other than eating amazing food and consuming bottomless glasses of wine, what did we actually learn? A few key takeaways:

• Social media is still in the infancy stage, it will continue to evolve, but the jury is still out on how that will happen

• Content really is king and the current social media tools are just another way to share that content

• Some find social media very ‘noisy’ and struggle to find the best use case

• In reality social media is just the expansion of word of mouth marketing

• Interesting to hear how print media outlets are adapting to social media – many of them still opt to focus on traditional print as the primary business and for good reason: eyeballs are still there and ads continue to drive the majority of revenue

• And, of course, many people are having trouble seeing how Twitter will make any money!

We certainly had some great ideas come from this dinner, so stay tuned for future events in our Southwest and East Coast regions. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the future of social media.