America’s business leaders are largely absent from social media platforms. A study of the web 2.0 footprints of the CEOs from the Fortune 100 found that only two had Twitter accounts, 81 percent did not have a personal Facebook page, just 13 used LinkedIn and none had a blog.
It makes sense for CEOs to avoid using these platforms to engage company stakeholders. They have a pr and marketing department for that. As Rick pointed out on a BNET debate, for B2C communications, (1) data shows that Twitter is a ghost town and (2) businesses have no practical way to connect with large numbers of their customers through the service. And for all the hoopla surrounding Steve Jobs’ health and Apple’s stock, think of the investor relations nightmare if cryptic updates of 140 characters or less had been sent out from a hospital wing.
Business executives aren’t just skipping social media tools as a means to broadcast company copy to consumers or investors. They clearly aren’t using these virtual networks to find and connect (at least publically) with other business leaders, the supposedly biggest benefit of social media. Traditional networks based on education, social background or spiritual beliefs, for better or worse, considering their exclusivity, are the ones that still count.
Perhaps that’s because people with Rolodexes filled with influentials that they’ve actually met don’t feel the need to obsess over their connections. I’ll leave you with a passage from a biting article, “Let Them Eat Tweets,” by Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times:
Only the poor — defined broadly as those without better options — are obsessed with their connections. Anyone with a strong soul or a fat wallet turns his ringer off for good and cultivates private gardens that keep the hectic Web far away…
The connections that feel like wealth to many of us — call us the impoverished, we who treasure our smartphones and tally our Facebook friends — are in fact meager, more meager even than inflated dollars. What’s worse, these connections are liabilities that we pretend are assets. We live on the Web in these hideous conditions of overcrowding only because — it suddenly seems so obvious — we can’t afford privacy. And then, lest we confront our horror, we call this cramped ghetto our happy home!
