This past weekend, an event occured in our world’s history that has shaken up the way we look at news and the way we look at the world.  A little more than a week ago, elections were held in the nation of Iran, and the results were considered by many to be suspect.  People in the streets started protests, and the Iranian government cracked down.  People all over the world watched as they saw the images coming out of Iran, and heard the first-hand accounts of the events and the atrocities committed by the Iranian government from the protesters.  Only these images and these accounts were not coming from the typical media outlets, such as CNN and the Associated Press.  Rather, these images and stories came from tweets made by Iranian citizens, videos posted up on YouTube, and support groups started on Facebook.  The #1 trending topic on Twitter on Saturday and through today continues to be #IranElection.

What we are seeing here is a revolution of media and of communication that is as significant as the invention of the Printing Press in the 1400s, the advent of Television in the 1930s and 1940s, and the birth of the Internet in the 1990s.  The moment hit me when I was flipping between CNN and Fox News, and the conversation was focused on what was coming across on Twitter.  We have entered a new era of communications, where anyone can be a publisher instantly, where anyone can have a conversation with anyone else.  International barriers are meaningless, and the fitlers of media journalism are meaningless.  Stories and images are in the hands of those who create them, and the global community is not made up of hundreds of governments, but rather billions of people all conversing on this information exchange known as the Internet.

The implications of this are many and far-reaching.  While this post has little to do specifically with CRM, it does highlight the critical role that Social Media now plays in all aspects of our lives.  Any business or psrson who does not pay attention to it will get left behind, and any person or business who does not embrace social technology does so at their own peril.  This weekend, social media captivated the world, not for what it was, but for what it allowed ordinary people to do.  It is one of those watershed historical events, the importance of which will only be realized in from the lense of history.  In any event, remember this weekend.  It was the weekend in which Social Media first captivated the entire world.

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