Your company's marketing function might seem more like a faraway land of clueless, complaining users who don't get (or particularly like) IT. So mostly ignoring them has so far been a reasonable strategy.

Then along comes social media. And like it or not, the game has changed. "IT knows the technology; marketing knows the customer," says CIO Robert Urwiler of Vail Resorts. "It is a huge opportunity missed if IT and marketing are at odds."

Vail Resorts is one of the compelling examples featured in our cover story (" ."), which delves into the new business demands and technology issues that are arising as companies venture into social media.

For starters, there is considerable confusion around how to use whatever data you derive from the social media stream. Beyond those half a billion people friending each other on Facebook, there are 80 million LinkedIn members and 106 million Twitter users, who shoot forth 55 million tweets a day. "The amount of data a CIO could glean from social media chatter could smother the typical corporate network," Senior Editor Kim S. Nash writes.

Separating useful data from the deafening noise of millions of social users is clearly the business goal, says Todd Michaud, vice president of IT at Focus Brands. "The vision I have is, when you drill down on a record, it will show the person's LinkedIn profile, Twitter stream, Facebook page-whatever I can get that's public," he says.