In the world of social media, there has been a dramatic shift in how business ideas and implementations get done. David Armano touches on it today where he suggests that knowing the influencers will get you much farther in your effort.

In that case, it’s up to all of us to find them. Perhaps take a look at something like the Power 150 and start the list backwards (or maybe get out of the marketing echo chamber all together).  If you yourself have become the new breed of “gatekeeper”””ask yourself “is it who I know, or what they know?”. Ideally, its both””but up to us individually to strike the right balance.

Armano and I proceeded to have a lively discussion on Twitter over this idea. I agreed with his assessment  that the current landscape of the social web does cater to the idea of knowing people being more important than having a good idea. I disagreed on his conclusion that people should seek to extend their influence by knowing more of the top people on the web.

On principle, the “top people on the web” is a bit elitist and self serving. Both Armano and I enjoy being “top people on the web”, yet, I know my ability to scale is small compared to the ideas and conversations being pushed around. The web is bigger than me. It’s bigger than Armano. We both enjoy large networks of people that we know, and I don’t mean six degree of separation type stuff. We both can show you 10,000 or more collected business cards from over the years. At least I can. I presume it is the same for him.

I can brag about knowing over half of the Technorati Top 100 bloggers personally. I can point to the multitude of networking events that I attend (at least one major one every month) where I have a difficult time talking to everyone who wants to share their ideas and thoughts with me.

The problem is scale. The web is bigger than we are. You can put a gallon or five gallons or ten gallons of water in a sink, but if the drain is only an inch thick, you won’t be able to process more water out of that bin. You need a bigger drain to do that. In fact, it will take longer to drain that bin with increasingly more water. It’s physics.

Unlike Armano’s assessment that communicators, entrepreneurs, and brands should exploit the current landscape that values the personal connection over the business process (that is, good ideas can thrive on their own if they have merit), I see it as a hybrid. You must have a one-to-one network and you must have a one-to-many network, but your many-to-many network (the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th degree of separation) becomes fairly useless fairly quick. Good ideas cannot thrive in a vacuum.  However, simply knowing influencers aren’t going to make it fly either.

I can’t tell you the number of people who are friends, not just business network contacts, who have talked to me with great gusto and passion about an idea and I simply look at them blankly. They know me personally, but realistically, they have a sucky idea. It’s not going to fly and no amount of knowing the right people is going to make it fly.

On the flip side, having a great idea and knowing the right people can make all the difference in the world. This is a reflection of the truth that many of the worlds greatest idea people don’t have the communication prowess to “sell” that idea and make it work. Likewise some of the greatest communicators in the world have great bullhorns, but suck at innovating themselves. So we end up in a world where we all need each other for something.

This blend of traditional (networking) and innovation is really where we need to be. We’re getting there, but we ain’t there yet. Reinforcing an unscalable paradigm of who you know as the primary enforcer of innovation is a dangerous trend that really does need to be changed. Sometime. Hopefully soon.

Update: Armano chimes in in comments and corrects the record. He is recommending a balance, as am I. Different slants on the same issue.