Last night I attended an invitation-only gathering for business and Marketing executives to here about social media and marketing-sales alignment bests practices. I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about whether the content would “really” be useful. I was extremely impressed. The event was hosted by MTS, Inc., and the business and marketing executives on the panels where truly first class.

Panel participants came from top tier B2B technology companies, as well as insightful marketing vendors and consumer-focused organization including: Oracle, Polycom, Spark Media Solutions, Mountain Travel, Nortel, Knight Vision Marketing, Sybase, Heidrick & Struggles, Tiny Prints, Logical Marketing, and moderated by Stanford Professor and business owner Sheryl Root.

MTS plans to make these meetings a quarterly tradition, and I hope to be invited to the the next one!

Below is a social media minute with one of the attendees.

Facebook’s redesign has stimulated a bit more interest in users (not all good), but one good feature is the ability to track and B2B obviously lags in Facebook popularity according to Inside Facebook’s new network called PageData.

Just look at the results. If the “Leaderboards” for Thursday, March 19, 2009 are accurate, there are no B2Bs listed in the Top 30.

However, Microsoft is noted in the dubious position of being in the one Top 15 Losers of the day. Bummer. Okay, Microsoft is a B2C business too, but that just suggests the IBMs, Oracles, and Juniper’s of the world need to get moving!

But there is hope. B2B can at least now gauge the success of Facebook activity by awareness and not just counting the members in groups or networks.

Curious to hear your views.