Vendors and job applicants pitch B2B Communications each week. So far in 2009, about 1 in 4 indicate familiarity with social media. About 1 in 100 have engaged with us first through social media. Here's an effort to think constructively about this issue (instead of going bananas that folks are ignoring the "secret handshake" of social media marketing).

Almost anyone in marketing will tell you it's critical to make use of Facebook and Twitter—and maybe LinkedIn and MySpace, too. There are 200 million Facebook users and 20 million on Twitter—so the numbers are just too big to ignore.

Marketers and PR people are all over Twitter, FaceBook, etc. They love “social media” because they can get past the “gate keepers” in traditional media.

Celebrity Twitters are a double-edged social-networking sword: we savor the chance to peak into the lives of our favorite Hollywood stars, and yet we must contend with the likes of Spencer Pratt spewing forth such post-reality show nonsense as, “God Bless you!!! We’re praying to Jesus that NBC forgives us for being quitters! Quitters never win and a winner never quits!”