I’ve been picking away at Guns Germs & Steel since the holidays. Last night I happened to be reading it again after some time. The author was discussing how successful inventions often have nothing to do with the gifts of a single inventor but are rather the accumulation of prior inventiveness which is improved upon and finally ‘tips’at a point when the culture is ready to accept the innovation. To quote:

“My two main conclusions are that technology develops cumulatively, rather than in isolated heroic acts, and that it finds most of its users after it has been invented, rather than being invented to meet a forseen need.”

This is particularly interesting in light Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the other darlings of the social media revolution.

It seems clear that none of them was invented with the intention of becoming global platforms. After all, none of them had a revenue model baked in. In that sense, they were invented first and found their audience after (and in my opinion quite by accident).

In Jared Diamond’s book he details how the dominant use of many technologies isn’t what the inventor intended. This seems as relevant to Facebook or YouTube as in this historical example,

“A good example is the history of Thomas Edison’s phonograph, the most original invention of the great inventor of modern times. When Edison built his first photograph in 1877, he published an article proposing ten uses to which his invention might be put. They included preserving the last words of dying people, recording books for blind people to hear, announcing clock time and teaching spelling.”

Edison never saw Elvis coming. In fact, resent was his initial reaction to the phonograph being used for liesure enjoyment of music,

“A few years later Edison told his assistant that his invention had no commercial value. Within a few years he changed his mind and did enter business to sell phonographs – but for use as office dictating machines. When other entrepreneurs created jukeboxes by arranging for a phonograph to play popular music at the drop of a coin, Edison objected to this debasement, which apparently detracted from serious office use of his invention.”

In the same way, a website for garagebands to post music (MySpace) or college kids to see who else was at their school (Facebook) quickly morphed from its original intention into something else. And, as is well documented, the first colonists on those sites moved on once the masses arrived. Twitter’s original users are beginning to grumble now as well.

More interesting, though, is the idea that social networks, micro blogging and media sharing may not have yet found their true calling. Right now  most of the big name sites are purely recreational plays. And because revenue was not a part of the pact in at the beginning, it’s proving very hard to get users to start paying now. (Heck, the entire Internet has that problem on a macro level. Advertisers try to force their way in, but the only real advertising success story – unless you consider fractions of one percent click through success – is paid search which looks and feels less like advertising and more like ballot stuffing.)

What if the utility of social media is also (or better) suited for something else besides ‘social’use? No one seems to be talking about that. What if all these technologies find their greatest utility in R&D? Operations? Human Resources? Governance? Compliance?

What if these inventions are not businesses unto themselves but enablers of business? TechCrunch and Mashable are full of small companies spending a lot of venture money trying to make widgets that are all conceptually banking on ‘social’being the business need (and of course that people will suddenly decide to pay for it!). It might be. But what if it isn’t? What if the social applications of this technology are just the table stakes? What if, like email, instant messaging and web browsing, everyone will have it, but no one will pay for it? It sure seems to be trending that way.

Email and instant messaging technology don’t make money for many people. But they enable a lot of people to do interesting things within their existing businesses. Microblogging might be the same – destined not to make much money per se, but rather to enable businesses to make money (Zappos’recent acclaim for masterful Twittering being an example).

In terms of finding a blue ocean in this crowded market, one place to focus might be a step or two back from the bleeding edge. It’s not as popular and you might not find yourself being invited to speak alongside the Biz Stones, Mark Zuckerbergs and Chad Hurleys of the world, but it’s an under-served market right now.

It took Edison twenty years to concede that his phonograph was well suited for listening to music. Today our cultural A.D.D. has us all moving on to the next thing within months, if not days. What opportunities are being missed?

My bet is, there’s plenty of money to be made finding out how to use technologies that exist today to solve problems now.

Now not new.

You heard it here first.