All marketing executives should leave this blog right now and set up a Facebook account. I understand your hesitation: for a long time Facebook was open to only college students, so to get a Facebook account essentially meant you were a creep. That's no longer the case. Facebook is open to everyone, and it is the very best place right now to experience first hand the myriad changes happening in consumer behaviors, online culture, and advertising. Find a community or two and join them, and in one hour, you will experience the power of social networking and online communities; you will undoubtedly experience the distributed power of widgets and ad gadgets; and, most importantly, you will now experience how an entire generation of people enhance their lives -- not clutter it -- through their vast networks of friends and influencers.

And after you've spent that hour on Facebook, go back and look at your 2008 marketing plans and rectify why some form of social marketing (and most likely not Facebook) isn't in the mix.