Is Business in the Social Web an Illusion

It seems to me there’s not one Internet, but three. Two of them are real!

There’s the Business Internet - point to point connectivity between those publishing and others reading. With the exception of blogging it hasn’t changed very much over the last ten years. User privileges are tightly controlled, there’s minimal interaction between users and content is the preserve of Marketing and PR.

The second is the Social Web – user controlled content, freely available “private” information and lots of sharing. There’s even a great deal of interaction now between the various services. For example Posterous can automatically update other services, and even has it’s own Tab for Facebook Pages.

Between the two is the Frontier – just like the Wild West it’s populated by Pilgrims looking for riches, and Thieves, Rogues and Vagabonds trying to separate them from what little they have.

There are lots of people promoting the benefits of merging the B2B Internet and the Social Web into a new iteration of the Information Age. They suggest opportunities for businesses to engage customers in conversations will change the ways companies will market products and services, reducing costs and increasing sales in the process.

Some are attracting large numbers of pilgrims as disciples (followers in today’s language) and persuading them to part with cash, buying access to the program which will make them millionaires. This is just the latest version of the old fashioned pyramid selling scheme, but cloaked in the new Social Media mumbo jumbo. – see Are People Really This Stupid
Others are using the new language to attract followers to their pages, justifying fees they charge sponsors for page views and mentions of their products. e.g This morning one guru wrote on a list of applications he uses, mentioning three different CRM applications.

And then there’s the book promoters. There’s always been a market for books revealing the secrets of a superstar’s sucess, but they never created more superstars. Nor will the current crop, mostly because they’re only about self promotion. Even in the Social Web the only people interested in the self promoters are wannabe self promoters.

For the vast majority of users the Social Web is about being social. They use the B2B Internet for business and are rightly suspicious of those who, just like the life assurance salesguy at the cocktail party, are obviously only in Social sphere there for business.

There obviously is a new paradigm to come out the fusion between the two real Internets.

What do you think it will look like.