There's a vendor for that

Like all big old industries, the media industry is still fighting the obvious, which is the Net and the Web. And they're doing it the way all big old clueless industries do, which is with vendors. "There's a vendor for that," say their brains to themselves. Rather than "How can we work in this new environment that nobody owns, everybody can use and anybody can improve? — and where the opportunities for real innovation are boundless" — they do like the Romney campaign, which (in the words of Ars Technica) "turned to Microsoft and an unnamed application consulting firm." That was a fail, and so will Mark's Mavs move (original tweet) if it's to Tumbler or Myspace (he can't be serious) as the team's "primary site."
BigCos always want BigVends to solve their BigProbs. They also think they're being innovative when they hire a SmallVend or a HotVend. Rather than going native.
They have my sympathies, because the norms here have huge flywheels, hooked to media engines new and old that are geared primarily for spinning vendor sports stories. That's how the Mark (Cuban) vs. Marc (Zuckerberg) story is playing out, and why Kevin Smith in BusinessInsider, Anna Peel at Valuewalk and Dan Lyons in ReadWrite don't suggest the obvious either. It's not a vendor.
Bonus links: Marc Canter, and ReadWrite on Marc's post.
[Later...] Not sayiing vendors are bad, or a wrong choice. Everybody with a business is a vendor of some kind. What I'm talking about is the tendency to outsource a core function, competency or responsibility in a time (now) and a place (the networked world) where the opportunity to expand your company's Net-native competencies are boundless if you don't want to be locked into some vendor's "solution" to a problem that exceeds their scope and won't be the same tomorrow anyway.