A few years ago, several co-workers and I were tasked with putting together some quotes for a replacement backup hardware for one of our secondary networks.  Initially, we contacted reps from a few of the major vendors (HP, Dell, IBM) directly to put together the proposals, and things seemed to move along fairly well.  Shortly after we started the process however, Contracting caught wind of our efforts, and immediately jumped in to request the process be routed through them as an intermediary.  This generated a lot of extra work for us, since we had to rewrite our requirements so that Contracting could understand them, so that they could then write them into requests to send to their own vendor contacts.

Inevitably, our requirements were either misunderstood or misrepresented to the vendors, as several email chains made their way back to us requesting clarification.  This all had to be eventually cleared up with a telecom involving engineers from the various vendors speaking with us directly.

While I’m not sure traditional social media would have made things easier (short of knowing Facebook/Twitter IDs of Dell and HP employees), it seems to me the ease of communication and information exchange of social media would lend itself well to a more direct line of communication with customers.