As it has now become obligatory to write up a post on Facebook on any blog with anything to do with Web 2.0, I will now end my holdout with a hopefully original take on the hype. With the growth of the “fb” population coming from mainly the 25 and older crowd, the groups and communities are beginning to reflect the aging populace. And while the hype among marketers has been focused on how to tap into the platform to reach user communities, something I haven’t seen covered is how the platform could change the game for b-to-b marketers. While this might seem crazy from a traditional media planning perspective, the tools being used by coeds to plan keggers can easily be adopted to hawk consulting services. The groups on Facebook range from niche to mainstream, but there is a much higher rate of participation, and there are a surprising (at least to me) number of media and industry influencers who regularly participate and engage members of the public groups. True, being a member of the Web 2.0 (and Redskins) groups will skew my opinion, but groups are being formed at a pace that it is easy to imagine a much wider range of industries and professions with similar representation in the near future. The normal playbook for targeting a specific industry is composed of a combination of email lists, trade media, SEO, and events, which all carry a heavy premium to micro-target. A B-to-B marketer can easily identify, join and participate in groups as an individual (though if you’re spammy, you’ll be kicked) and create a targeted widget for a fraction of the cost of any of the traditional strategies. Combine this with the higher response rates (versus email and banners), and a Social Network strategy suddenly seems less insane. Now, if only Linkedin would allow pictures….