It had not yet been named Silicon Valley, but you had the defense industry, you had Hewlett-Packard. But you also had the counter-culture, the Bay Area. That entire brew came together in Steve Jobs.

Language is always evolving. It's difficult to read Shakespeare now because language has shifted. Similarly, kids these days can get to the point really quick in about 140 characters or less because of these new tools.

25 percent of search results for the world's top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. 34 percent of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.

Successful companies in social media function more like entertainment companies, publishers, or party planners than as traditional advertisers.

Social media has made the web all about me, me, me.

The easier things are to buy, the more we consume.

Pushing a company agenda on social media is like throwing water balloons at a porcupine.

Why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel anyway? Social media touches every facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics.

Privacy is dead. Reputations are dying.

Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

The power of social media is it forces necessary change.

To effectively leverage the social graph, every company needs to understand that they need to make their information easily transferable.

At a minimum the majority of search dollars will flow to a social media model because people care most about what their peers think and the technology is there for that information to be quickly shared on products and services.

As social media is less about technology and more about relationship building, we are starting to see more women have a heavy influence if not dominant role in the social media space. It's no wonder that Facebook is being run in part by chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.

With the growing reliance on social media, we no longer search for news, or the products and services we wish to buy. Instead they are being pushed to us by friends, acquaintances and business colleagues.