As companies continue to ban Facebook and other social networking software as a 'waste of time' for staff and 'not useful as a business tool' I will remind them of a well known quote in the IT industry...

At the time DEC, as it was known, was the number 2 IT company in the world and dominated the non-mainframe world with their mini-computers. They had the technical skills to develop their terminals into intelligent standalone PCs but choose not to.

Many businesses cannot see the value in using social networking and Word of Mouth communication techniques. I wonder if they will go the same way as DEC by missing out on an emerging technology?

For more fun predictions see here