Just a thought:

75% of the world trade goes through trade channels (WTO).

84% of purchase decisions are influenced by reading blogs, participating in online discussions, online communities, social networking...

If producers of goods and services don't empower their trade partners to participate in the online discussions and networking not only partners will lose more business, customer loyalty... but also the respective vendors.

In other words: Much of the producers' social media initiatives are rather ineffective if the customer facing partners don't become an integrated part of it. Mike Dubrall from Gilwell Group is running a discussion next week on this topic.

Now lets assume a producer like Cisco who is selling 96% or so, of their revenue through partners does all the cool "social media stuff" and John Chambers himself would tweet and blog through the social web, but his 55,000 resellers would just keep sitting behind their dusty and static websites (last update January 2004)...

See the bottle neck?