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I spent the weekend with a group of my friends at the beach. In sunday morning’s paper there was an article about the new iPhone App Store. The picture accompanying the article included the Twitterific blue bird. I made some comment about how the MSM was picking up on Twitter (before I actually read the article) which launched an assault of ridicule missiles aimed at me…

• “have you seen twitter? it is pointless”
• “boy just what I need to know, when someone is picking their nose”
• “Huh?”
• “kids are sharing too much, they don’t understand boundaries”

My first reaction was to be defensive, thinking, “they just don’t get it”. But since then, I have been trying to reach beyond the ridicule and figure out where the sharp reaction was coming from.

• Is it just the newness and the usual resistance to change?
• Is it because we are facing a generational interaction where for the first time, the younger generation has the advantage and that makes the older generation nervous?
• Is it just the normal and appropriate role of those with more experience and wisdom to check the unbridled growth of “the new” to ensure that big mistakes are avoided?

Whatever it is, I need to pay attention to it because that mindset is also the traditional corporate mindset, and for the connected enterprise to become a reality, traditional corporate minds need to be persuaded.

Today I read Andy McAfee’s post Freedom is Overated, and he was hitting a lot of the points I had been wondering about. His conclusions are that a lot of the friviolous activity you see on Facebook and Twitter, the very things my friends were deriding, would be managed out of the process when these tools go Enterprise. If you read the comments to his post, you will see some debate regarding this “frivolity” saying that maybe it ain’t so bad, but part of the social glue that makes social networks work.

It is going to be fun to see how this all plays out as this journey progresses. I am puting my money the continued progression of moderated change. In 5 years Twitter and Facebook may be antiquated terms, but I feel certain that their progeny will be as ubiquitous among my peers as the cell phone is today.