For some great insight on what social media means to marketers, listen to this podcast of a speech by Larry Weber to last December’s Syndicate conference.

Larry is a marketing genius, the founder of one of the world’s largest PR agencies and a guy who is always on the leading edge of the media business. A few gems from this talk:

*He draws a wonderful analogy between the blogosphere and the newspaper business in the use in the late 18th century. At one point, Pittsburgh had 24 newspapers and nearly everything they published was opinion. A distant mirror?

*”The mainstream media is going through the greatest transformation in its history…The primary function of mainstream media in the future will be aggregating consumer generated content.”

*“I think in five years we will be meeting here and talking about the Wall Street Journal’s and USAToday’s circulations dipping below 1 million. “

*The number of blogs will actually decrease, much as the number of newspapers decreased after the initial surge in the late 18th century. This isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a sign of maturity.

*The job of marketers will increasingly be to listen to the conversations going on in the community of customers. The days of “delivering a message” are over.

*$90 billion a year is spent on advertising in the US. Two-thirds of that is spent on TV advertising. That is going to change in a big way.