It’s an age old question – which came first? The chicken or the egg?

This could very well be the same sort of question future historians could be asking when they look back to the period when social media and the tools to use it became an integral part of our society. Was it the people who dragged the corporations into a more social world or was it the corporations who brought the people into a more social world?

As a basic – very basic – primer for those who might be confused about what social media is it is the concept of creating a level playing field for everyone within our world by utilizing the Internet as the method by which people can talk with others regardless of economic, gender or geographical differences and achieve change within our society. Lately though this has also moved to include more and more the companies that are also a part of our society.

While traditionally one would consider the companies most interested in this would be those that require the Web in order to have an economic base, but more and more we are seeing non-Web, or as some one say – the brick and mortar establishments, companies stepping into the social media world.

The commonly held belief is that it is the people – the crowd – that is the driving force behind the growth of this idea called social media. While much of this crowd might currently be the folks called early adopters the fact is that social media tools like Twitter and Plurk are making that crossover into the mainstream of Web users.

At this point much of the traffic is being driven by the early adopters who have been using services like Twitter since it started but slowly more and more regular Web users are discovering it – and others. As well, corporations are dipping their toes into this new social media sea; therein lies the one thing that could really push social media beyond just being a niche sector.

While corporations are thought more of being entities that accept change or new things slower than molasses, they are made up of some very intelligent people. People who know very well the power of networking. After all most of them probably owe their jobs to the pre-Web business networking that has gone on for a very long time. For them this idea of not just networking with their associates but also their current and potential customer base in near real time is an incredibly powerful idea.

It won’t be an easy road forward for these corporate early adopters but they are deft at playing those corporate games that are needed to be played in order to get new ideas tried out. It is almost inevitable that as more people within these environments become engaged with using social media tools like GetSatisfaction and Twitter on behalf of corporations the more acceptable will be the idea of their wide spread use become.

One of the companies that I reached out to find out some how’s and why’s of their Twitter use was Laplink and even though they are new to this, Krystle Sivorot, their Marketing Communications Associate answered a few questions for me. From her email reply I found that the decision for Laplink to step into the social media sector using Twitter was one that came from one of their managers and on of their employees. The upper management of the company is very excited about the project and the potential for it to bring new things to the company.

I believe this is the common feeling among the corporations that are beginning to include social media as a part of their everyday operations with both other corporations, employees and their customers. While the advocates might like to believe that this is because these corporations have seen the light of social media, I think that there is also a much more down to earth reasoning as well that should be taken into consideration.

It’s called economics. When it really comes down to it corporations will do something if it make a difference to their bottom line and shareholder returns.

One has to consider the amounts of money that corporations must be paying out in a year to public relation firms and maintain in some cases their own in-house PR departments. For them if a smaller team of people can do as good as job; or better, than what their current methods are and for less money then it makes sense to use these new tools. After all who does a company want representing it to their customers? Some faceless cold spin doctoring PR firm or people who are passionate about the company they are working for and the products they are selling.

So once the economics and a better rapport with their customers is shown to be better using these social media tools it is a very short step to it becoming a common practice for corporations to setup these small but highly effective teams of company social mediaists. Once this happens and people start hearing about this new way to interact with the companies whose products they buy they will go looking for these social media tools like Twitter. They will ask their friends – they will tell their friends. At this point the snowball is definitely started the roll downhill.

It might be easy to believe that it is the people that are driving the momentum of social media but really those of us in the field of watching these things can have a narrow perspective – even though we might not like to think so. In the real world of the everyday computer user it is their friends who influence them the most and if their friends are the ones telling them about this cool way to deal with companies that is who they will be listening to – not us. As such it is those companies who do listen and learn from the early adopters that will be the one’s really spreading the word by their example of doing.

In this case what really would be the answer to the question? Is the the companies pulling us forward or is it us doing the pulling?