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60 The PCB Magazine • September 2016 This September will mark the 10th anniver- sary of "the Zuck" (aka Mark Zuckerberg) and his band of college buddies unleashing Face- book membership from the scholarly confines of Harvard to anyone 13 years and older with a valid email address. For those of you with teen- agers a decade ago, you've witnessed—and of- ten agonized—what most would acknowledge as the advent of social media. Currently engaged by over 1.7 billion active users, Facebook opened the floodgates to ac- ceptance of a plethora of other social channels, including LinkedIn, which celebrated its 13th anniversary this year with its more than 100 million active users [1] . LinkedIn is no longer deemed a Rolodex (tell your teenager to Google it); it has be- come the essential social community for busi- ness. The significance and profitability of the channel is unquestionable and witnessed by Microsoft's pending $26.2 billion acquisition of the company to be completed later this year. Yet with all this acceptance, documented analytics and testimonials demonstrating how social media has become an integral part of today's B2B communications, large chunks of the industrial sector remain hesitant in consis- tently integrating it as part of their marketing programs. Some B2B leaders claim that there is marginal to no value in investing in social media, and most alarmingly do not see the benefits of deploying it as a strategic tool to el- evate their brand and establish thought leader- ship to the industries and markets they serve. All too often, such consideration ranges from by Barry Lee Cohen LAUNCH COMMUNICATIONS Take Social Media Seriously LAUNCH LETTERS