The interesting thing about “social media” is how quickly people, companies, and organizations have hopped into the space.  Some like Comcast and Best Buy are using it less for “campaigns” and more as a fundamental underpinning of their business.  As they blaze a path for how to make social media work hard for the business other companies are going to sit up, take notice, and follow the blueprint.  Social media is going to evolve from the squishy unsophisticated mess that it currently is, into a stable, predictive, formulaic strategy for business success.

I’m a little concerned though that as companies drink the social media fruit punch and start seeing the return on investment opportunities, social media will become less useful to the people, customers, and consumers who made it something to pay attention to.  Look back through history and you can see that as a technology or an “opportunity” matures it becomes less useful for providing value.

Think I’m crazy?  Look at call centers.  They’re horrible to use.  The whole purpose of them today is to avoid letting you talk to a human being.  It’s all about “automation.”  But, it wasn’t always that way.  When phones and call centers were still an evolving medium you could always get a real person to help you out.  The phone is just one example and there are many others.

In short, what’s going to happen to the value we derive from social media when companies figure this “thing” out?  Are we going to get screwed?  Will you be able to talk directly to Frank at Comcast?  Will Zappos really be able to retain their wide open culture?  I don’t think so.

It’s not a question of if, but a question of when.