Tim - all of a sudden I'm feeling like more of a social media guru... damn! ;-)

Simon - point well made, clearly there is a continuum between the snake oil merchants and those who are more akin to communications consultants. My analysis would be that if ones business can continue without a simple "this is social media and these are the tools" approach, then one can consider oneself more than a simple soc med guru.

I guess I'm a supporter of a broad comms role but not a narrow socmed tools one....

my 2 cents

even the ones who create a perception that socmed is some kind of secret club that only the gen Y kids can belong to? Sure it's good to hold hands, but create an aura of secrecy and elitism isn't any good....

Mike - you say that the field is too organic for gurus to be created - dude, you read witter lately? some of the social media offers in your email inbox? There's a bunch of people calling themselves socmed gurus but coming across primarily as snake oil merchants...

Thanks greg - always nice to get positive feedback!

Dude - if there's an airmiles XP, I'm all over it - two glues and two defrags from the other side of the world....

Brad

1) Why did you bother deleting the email - you use Gmail now so should have just archived it no?
2) In my neck of the woods (to answer at least one of your pain points) credit cards don't need signing - rather a pan is enough to validate
3) The systems like echosign and docusign and stuff haven't taken hold primarily because they're taking an ancient approach and morphing it into a clunky ancient approach on a new medium - that's not really a solution

My two cents....

True... and I guess one could say that they'll see your tale of woe of bad decisions and acquisitions and raise you a historical perspective of a little Cupertino company that was in a much more dire position a decade or so ago but turned the boat around in spectacular fashion.

Don't get me wrong, I feel your pain, but I guess I've seen some amazing phoenix moments, and coming from a revenue base like Nokia does, stranger things shave happened....

Well maybe... but have you seen how many devices Nokia sells each year? Compared with Apple?

I'd love to own a company that generated that much suckiness....

Nice Josh, me and the rest of the stalkers are watching with interest for the next move... Bummed we didn't catch up more at Glue - see you in November...