Yes it is - here's why, and how we need to get involved.
But first, the apocryphal story.
The world's most successful life assurance salesman used to tell a story of how he made one major change in his "profile" and made millions of bucks.
Instead of introducing himself as one who "sells" life assurance he changed the word to "buy" and added the phrase "for people who want the highest returns from the safest funds".
This story is very relevant to the phenomena of marketing via social media.
Our hero above chose cocktail parties as his venue for meeting new people and finding prospects for his service.
Social media sites are today's version of those cocktail parties.
Places where people hang out, to meet others, be entertained and maybe find a deal somewhere.
The major advantages social media has over cocktail parties are reach - it's possible to connect with millions of people any time of the day- and relevance - social groups organize into common interest groups - we know they're interested.
Nobody in their right mind would stalk cocktail parties, insisting everybody they meet listen to the sales pitch.
Unfortunately there are people doing exactly that in social media, but their bad manners don't get tolerated for long.
Just like cocktail parties, social media sites give us an opportunity to present ourselves in an open, engaging way.
We can introduce ourselves as people with a social dimension, not adverts.
We can be interested in people we come across and offer a helping hand where appropriate, or even gossip about politics, sport or the neighbors.
The people we meet will respond in the same way.
If we have something to say, value to offer and a non threatening manner, we'll find people who want what we have for sale, or know somebody who does.
Participating in these networks is the new marketing, evolving because the old marketing doesn't work anymore.
Advertising, and particularly paid search advertising, has killed itself.
Everybody is swamped by media messages to the point where they ignore them.
Social media is an extension of the Internet itself, allowing the people to take control away from the big brands.
It's about being open, collaborative, sharing and interesting.
Social media sites offer us a chance to meet people, but also a lot more.
In our profile pages we can present ourselves as "people" as well as functionaries.
In our blog pages and forums we can demonstrate our ability to add value.
In Answers pages we demonstrate our willingness to share what we know, and also ask for help.
As a bonus the site providers kindly help us distribute our presence around the world, for free, by sending copies of what we say to the search engines.
This way we get to influence people we would never otherwise come across.