I’m going to divert from a previous stance and disagree with Mark on this one, we don’t need a CSMO just like we didn’t need CBOs (Chief Blogging Officer) back in 2005-6. Hey, I was a CBO (CBO for Qumana Software) and looking back on it, I think it was a foolish way to draw attention to the importance of the medium as a communications tool.

Creating a new “Chief Whatever Officer” is a hard sell within companies. How long did it take for the CIO to be accepted? Five, Ten years? Yes, we think now that a CIO is key. Who else is going to manage our IT departments? IT is so key to our business…yeah we all know it wasn’t always that way. If memory serves IT grew out of R&D, Finance, and Engineering departments, folks who started to really crank on computers early on.

Is a CSMO any different? Won’t it become a business critical function? Yes, but I think it will become a business critical core competency not a job function. SocMed in a few years will become like using a computer, or email, or being web savvy. Isn’t it expected that you can ask pretty much anyone at a meeting or in an office to Google something, email an attachment or book a meeting online?

Wouldn’t you raise an eyebrow if a new employee said “What’s a Google?” or “Wow, I’ve never used email before…”? Heck I might find the person that hired them and smack them upside the head (“What are we going to do with a person who isn’t computer savvy in this office!?!”).

I think Twitter/microblogging, blogging, RSS, even basic social media monitoring will just be something everyone will need to know how to do. When? If you’re in a tech company, umm, a year ago? For everyone else? I think within three years, but if you want to have an edge over other potential hires, I’d say right, freakin’ now.

Social Media seems to be thriving in this economic downturn so if you can walk into an interview and show your employer how you quickly learned about the company, it’s competitors, and what people think about their brands, I’m betting you have a good shot at the job.

That doesn’t make you a CSMO, it makes you employable.

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I know I’m not blogging as much as I used to. Myself, those quick, passing thoughts that pop into my head are pushed out in 140 character bites instead of 200 word blog post, but what about everyone else?

By my read, “blogging” is on a downslide, and this is a good thing, but writing and reporting online using a blog engine as the platform is stronger than ever.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but what I’m seeing is a steady evolution and maturation of the online publishing community. Twitter fills a great gap between having mass email lists that clog your inbox (can you imagine an email list with 2,000 recipients and people constantly hit reply to all to chat with other members?) and IM (again, massive lists, lots of chatter, easier to ignore though). You can easily turn it off, direct messages come into email to get your attention, and if you want to just catch up on tweets directed to you a quick search will do the trick.

Online publishing, especially combined with the rapid dispersal possible with Twitter, is a powerfully strong way to speak your mind, show off your creativity, or even make a company like Amazon squirm. I’m still writing, and even writing a book on blogging (where I also note that I don’t care if it’s called “blurging” because it’s still writing), and intend on writing more and more (it’s only time that prevents me from doing this).

Face it, we all love fads and trends. Twitter is hot just like blogging was hot in 2005-7. Something else will be hot soon, so let’s just not forget that it’s what the tool does within the greater scheme of communications, media, publishing that matters in the end.

In the meantime, did you read that tweet about…

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