I was inspired to continue the conversation that Chris Brogan started on his blog a couple of days ago. Chris' post begins:

"Pepsi doesn’t want to talk with a few hundred people at a time, do they? It’s just that all these businesses have built huge platforms, huge sales funnels, huge marketplaces, and I think what social software is setting us up for are cafe-shaped conversations."

Which is funny, because apparently Pepsi does want to talk to a few hundred people, including Chris Brogan. Why? Because Pepsi knows that cafe conversations are what is driving the social web. And they know that the conversations that Chris Brogan have are with larger groups of people, and that they tend to get repeated in other cafe's around the social web.

This is a guest post I wrote for Mashable - I've republished it here.

I am pretty heavily involved in the expanding startup community here in LA, and make my way up to the Bay area on a regular basis. I meet a lot of entrepreneurs and see new startups every day. Many of these companies, and the entrepreneurs who found them are deeply ensnared in the echo chamber, they’re all drinking each other's Kool-aid. We’re talking about people who are not just at the top of the technographic ladder, they’ve gotten to the roof and are looking down on everyone else like they are a bunch of ants.

There is a lot of buzz these days about social media. Everyone's trying to figure it out. There are some who understand it, and some who might be missing the mark. The "web" is quickly, and deservedly, becoming a science unto itself. The web is still perceived by the majrity as a platform. A medium. An "it". When, as I observe it to be, the web is much more, it's "where," "when," "how," and "why." And most importantly "who." My friend Stowe Boyd refers to practitioners of social media as "the people formerly known as the audience" - a term I am quite fond of. In general, this is a concept that the world of marketing communications has yet to catch on to.

Let's face it: banner ads have been tanking for a long time. The term "banner ad blindness" was first coined in 1998 by Jan Panero Benway and David M. Lane.

In July of '07,Dave Morgan blogged about a study that he conducted with AOL on ad clicking behavior.

Ninety-nine percent of Web users do not click on ads on a monthly basis. Of the 1% that do, most only click once a month. Less than two tenths of one percent click more often. That tiny percentage makes up the vast majority of banner ad clicks.