Fresh from the Society of New Communications Research symposium Todd Van Hoosear asks the question "Who Owns Social Media?" and makes a compelling case that everyone owns social media; therefore the CEO should take a healthy interest in the topic.

Todd was thinking about this question because the matter came up at the SNCR Fellows board meeting (I attended). We were attempting to predict the coming year by foretelling the future.

I was thinking that instead of asking who owns social media in 2010 the question will be how do we manage the adoption of social media across the enterprise?

Weird ten years after the cluetrain manifesto we should be reaching the same conclusions, social media works best when all employees use the web in some way to communicate. It reminds me of one of my first jobs in California. One of my colleagues believed clients would only want to hire us for services once they had experienced the pain and "miracle" of going through that pain themselves.

Even though there have been many promoters for social media adoption over the last ten years, I don't think we should forget that people have to learn by doing before they can understand the benefits and trials of using and not using social media in the enterprise.
Link to original post