In a comment on my post about the tyranny of dead ideas, Shannon Turlington left me a link to a great post she did exploring some of the dead ideas that surround the use of wikis. She sees three (but go read her post to get the full explanation):

• The need for permission

• Someone "owns" the content

• Everything must be "perfect"

This got me wondering what are other dead ideas that people can't seem to let go of in terms of using social media. A few I can think of:

• It's about quantity of connections rather than their quality--social networking as a race to to see how many people you can claim as "friends." 

• If we don't have "rules" then people will go nuts. My earlier post on social media guidelines notwithstanding, my experiences by and large have been that people tend to behave themselves online, particularly in an online professional setting.

• Social media is a waste of time. Well, only if you also believe that phone calls, emails, and other forms of communication at work are also a waste. If anything, I think social media is more of a timesaver for people. I'd much rather use a wiki to work on a group project than endless rounds of email and if you don't see the benefits of LinkedIn for business, especially in this economy, then maybe you have some other issues to address. 

So those are a few of mine off the top of my head. Your thoughts on other social media dead ideas?