While social media in the big bad world is moving at the speed of Twitter – that’s about 600 Tweets per second, according to Kevin Weil, Analytics Lead at Twitter  – the CIO world is chugging along with too many of its denizens asking their staff things like “Can you help me set up one of those Facebook accounts?”

I’m reminded of the hilarious and brilliant series of Jet Blue ads, “The CEO’s Guide to Jetting.” In it, a hapless CEO is led through the mundane aspects of travel by his assistants. So unfamiliar is he with how the hoi polloi travel, the boarding pass kiosk is a source of amazement.

Not Clueless
Now, I’m not saying CIOs are as clueless as Carl, the CEO in the Jet Blue ads, or clueless at all. In fact, As Bill Chamberlin points out in this week’s Expert Opinion, the list of CIOs who are engaged in social media is growing. Here’s a list of CIOs using Twitter, for example.

Uprooted
I think it’s just that Social Media has its roots outside the world in which most of today’s CIOs grew up. According to CIO magazine’s “State of the CIO” annual survey, in 2009 the average ago of the CIOs studied was 46. Born in 1963 or 1964, graduated high school in ’81 or ’82, undergrad in 1985 or 1986.  For you, there’s always been a Super Bowl, color television, Beatles, an IEEE, Moore’s law and hypertext.

Utility Gap
The promise and utility of ERP, Ethernet, e-mail, storage, BI, SaaS, SOA and the rest offered much more obvious bang for the buck as far as CIO time and expertise is concerned. The payoff for things like enterprise Facebook, Twitter, MySpace was not – and for many still is not – apparent nor imminent.

And there’s a distinction to be made as well. Are we talking about CIOs who use, or CIOs who are ready and able to enable their organizations to use social media? And do you have to be part of the former cohort to be part of the latter?