No doubt the folks at IBM have done some great things with Lotus Sametime. Their heads are in the right place. And no doubt companies will want to use a lot of the widgets and gadgets IBM is flaking, like enterprise social networking, bookmarking, and collaboration tools.

Indeed, I hope no one was shocked to see Gartner recommend that enterprises adopt Web 2.0 applications rather than block their use by employees.

Josh Bernoff at Forrester is quick to agree that companies have to participate in social computing, even if they can't control the outcomes. Makes sense--you have to be in the game, even if you take your lumps along the way.

But here's the rub: IBM, in its typical over the top, -- we see it and we're going to throw so much money at it that you're going to have to let us into the party -- way that it has, just announced a $1 billion unholy alliance of funding into Unified Communications and Lotus collaboration tools.

Why not throw SOA into the mix while they're at it? How about social computing in the virtual world? What about mash-ups? How about a mash-up of mash-ups?

But if I'm agreeing--and I am--that social tools are critical to enterprise success, why am I suggesting that IBM get out of the game? Because what IBM doesn't get is that it's too big and too rich and too late.

People want to adopt tools that reflect the agile, light-weight nature of the connections and value that they're creating. Having IBM as your Facebook for the enterprise is kind of like watching Hillary Clinton try to raise money online when Barack Obama so clearly gets it better.

And what is IBM going to do--build off its ridiculously tiny market share of Lotus customers?

Get smart, IBM, and sell Lotus while it's still worth something.