Voices on the network

Sister Vicki Ix, Benedictine Sisters of Virginia
"If St. Paul were alive today, his letters would be going out on the Internet. It can be used for good things, really good things."

Jonah Holland, blogger, consultant and public relations and marketing coordinator, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden
"In the past, we've been limited by our local circumstances in building our communities. Now we're not limited by that. This allows me to talk to anybody in the world who's talking about that topic."

John R. Hopkins, senior new media designer at CRT/Tanaka
"Social media is all about conversation. If you're just broadcasting your message and not participating in the conversation. . . . It's like walking into a cocktail party, handing out business cards and talking, talking, talking."

Mark Avnet, professor and head of the creative technology track at VCU's Brandcenter
"Social media in general is . . . a place where people can be social. Depending on what people want to do in that space it can be very useful for them -- or a waste of time."

John Petersik, senior account executive, Siddall Inc.
"It's a new shiny thing [companies] know they should be in, but there's trepidation . . . because you have to step into social media as an equal in the conversation."

Joe Sokohl, user experience consultant, writer, designer and information architect
"All of this goes back to the very first person to use Twitter, who was Alexander Graham Bell, who said, 'Mr. Watson, come here!' That was the first [Twitter] direct message."

Kate Hall, founder, www. Richmondmom.com
"I had an event and put it on my Facebook site and invited people and boom! I immediately had about 20 women confirmed. It's almost like you reach out and grab people personally."

Todd Feldman, principal, TF Digital
"We're no longer talking about eyeballs. We now have to talk about influence. A marketer with the right tools and an understanding on how to turn the data into action, can efficiently target messages or content for the greatest opportunity for them to go viral. That's the power of social media."

Jeff Caldwell, chief of communications, Virginia Department of Transportation
"Our world is changing faster than we can write the rules and certainly faster . . . than a lot of people are comfortable with. We're dabbling with several of these tools to see what reaches the audience we're trying to get to. The government is not usually on the cutting edge, but we don't have a lot of choice."

Jeff Kraus, assistant vice chancellor of public relations, Virginia Community College System
"When people kind of raise their eyebrows because I'm tweeting on Twitter or sending a Facebook message, I say this is the same stuff we've been doing over backyard fences with our neighbors. It's just happening through a computer now."

Sonali Shetty, partner, Spinnaker Edge Consulting
"Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating focus groups . . . to hear direct feedback. Social media is free, and lots of companies are taking advantage of it."

Jon Newman, co-founder, The Hodges Partnership, and blogger on social media
"Everybody sort of thinks of Facebook as this thing for high school or college students, but it's a platform that transcends. One minute I can be posting my son's birthday party pictures [on Facebook] and the next I can instant-message a business client I've been trying to reach."