Monetizing Social Media

Discussions of how to make social media succeed tend to split into two threads: (a) the Internet, and (b) the enterprise.

Enterprises, among other things, (a) can't generate the sheer volume of data (e.g., social graphs) that the Internet can, and (b) are focused on specific Exploitation & Exploration goals (the Internet's telos, to the degree it exists, is emergent). Both of these factors imply that an enterprise will probably not be able to catalyze the use of social media internally in the same way it is catalyzed on the Internet.

However, enterprises have a significant vested interest in a more diverse & robust monetization ecosystem for social media on the Internet. To the degree that social media ROI increases (and its sources also become more diverse), tools/memes/etc. will become available that enterprises can adapt to improve Execution and catalyze Exploitation.

This post from ReadWriteWeb is a nice discussion of monetizing social media on the Internet.