Today I came across an article about a new masters degree being offered by the University of Salford in social media. As silly as it sounds - that you could actually get a masters degree in Facebook and Twitter - it does speak to growing importance in virtual proximity. Not that I would like to see either of my college age children changing their academic careers to acquire this degree – it is lileky to have a pretty short shelf life.

In fairness to my academic colleagues at Slaford, they have recognized is that the it is not about Facebook or Twitter per say. It is about the concept of socially connecting over electronic media. What I would like to suggest is that it is highly unlikely that social media as we know it will survive. If we look at how people have interacted over the last couple decades the process has gone through a series of fads and maturation processes. Paradigms have moved through a series of life cycle phases including BBS, chat rooms, instant messaging, Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter – and more and different paradigms are likely in the offing.

What is important here is that we have to learn how to social interact virtually, how to develop a virtual presence, or better yet how to develop our personal virtual brands and virtual proximity to our resources and prospective opportunities.

Business is an evolutionary process and we need to constantly evaluate how well we are positioned to survive the next and coming evolutionary change.