Last week one of the bigger web 2.0ish conferences was in Southern California: The Oreilly Graphing Social Patterns, held in San Diego. I had some passing involvement there and after digesting it a bit, one of the things that I came across thinking was that it never ceeses to amaze me how traditional companies are clueless to what the social web is all about.

So many companies are not sure that they "get" social, but are being told by people in the know that they "need" social. What this often means to them seems to be two extremes: either you must be a company knee deep in community by becoming some up and coming niche social networking site (enter pitch for online community of garbage men here) or that social should just be haphazardly bolted onto the top of your existing product (your chair company makes a vampire biting facebook app that eats chairs). But clearly neither extreme is a way to add value to your product/service. And maybe even more importantly, social on its own, doesn't necessarily monitize.

What does add value AND monetizes, is the notion that social is the new and obvious enabler, of existing markets. Most business are not likely to fundamentally change by being social, they just become better at the business of connecting with and between customers. Movie sites like Blockbuster or Netflix are great examples of this. The companies are still fundamentally about movies, but social takes the customer experience to a different level because you can show off the movies you're watching, connect with friends who have similar taste in movies, review what you've seen so you get better suggestions for new movies, etc. Regardless of whether you are on one of their facebook or opensocial apps, or you are in the community section of their own site, the social graph has become a core enabler of movie watching. These activities enhance the entire video business because you now are not just watching the movie, but you also are stay engaged before and after. In this way community doesn't change the business, but instead drastically creates more value to the lifecyle of the business.

In this way as we move forward, social to me becomes less about being the next cornerstone block of a company, and more about being a fundamental component entrenched in nearly all online activity.