reviewing Mike Gamson

I spoke yesterday at eTail on leveraging Social Media. My panel went well, and judging from the questions afterwards, there are a lot of companies at different points along the adoption curve. Questions ranged from how to start a blog to monitoring social chatter to ROI models.

The panel before mine was titled "Unleashing the Power of Web 2.0". Mike Gamson, of LinkedIn, was presenting. During his talk, he mentioned that he frequently talks at colleges to students about how they present themselves online. This felt like a very similar presentation. There was a long history of the companies that were 1.0, and who's now leading the 2.0 revolution. There was mention of Reid Hoffman founding the company. There were, however, very few lessons on how to apply any of the growth LinkedIn got to growing your own business. Which seemed odd to me. LinkedIn's a huge success story - surely there were lots of choices that could have helped or hindered its viral growth. There was a mention of Dell's success as a participant in social media, ignoring the Jeff Jarvis debacle. And, after 95% of the room had raised their hands to say that they use LinkedIn, there were 4 or 5 slides showing the LinkedIn product, including the demographics of the site.

So, since it was on Social Networking Day, I'll ask a social question - if you were attending the panel, what was your take? (I know what Dan Neely thought.) And, Mike, if you're reading this, what was the goal of the presentation?