I understood Jonathan Schwartz’s enthusiasm when he suggested, during a talk a couple years ago, that a Sun Microsystems intranet really wasn’t necessary with so many employees blogging. It still didn’t make any sense to me, though. Would it really be easier to find benefits information on employee blogs than on an intranet benefits page? And how, exactly, would an employee enroll for benefits on a blog?

The same kinds of thoughts cross my mind as I hear all the claims that static web sites are dead. The rise of social media and the real-time web has certainly shifted the focus of the online community. There is no question: The era of the destination website is ending, if it’s not already over.

But we’re talking about the end of an era, not the death of a tool. The era of the destination webiste has been one in which organizations pumped most of their online efforts into their dot-com sites; their strategies were focused on driving traffic to those sites. With the time people spend online shifting to real-time and social content, companies do need to rethink how (as a post on digitalbuzz put it) they deliver digital experiences to their customers and other stakeholders.

This is one of the reasons lifestreaming could become important to business. A company can publish many forms of content to one place, which in turn distributes it to appropriate channels: photos to Flickr, videos to YouTube, commentaries to Twitter, and so on. Microsoft is the first business I’ve seen to launch a Posterous lifestream for its new retail stores. The site owners easily send photos from their phones to the site, where they can in turn be added to a Facebook fan page or just about anywhere else.

This doesn’t mean Microsoft has no need for a destination website, however.

The use of a tool is based on the use to which it’s being put. Yes, a lot of content that has been cloistered on company dot-com sites will—and should—shift to distributed venues where people are spending their online time. But there’s still a need for static content that’s housed in one place. I can’t imagine a time when that need will vanish.

When seeking certain types of information, people will continue to go directly to a company website rather than hoping they can find it somewhere in the social web:

• Contact information
• Investor resources
• Product/service listings
• Company history
• Jobs

In fact, the static company website has a new purpose. More and more organizations are using their website as the home for a directory of links to their Facebook pages and groups, Twitter accounts, blogs, Flickr streams, and YouTube channels. Why hope people will stumble on your content when you can direct them to it?

The idea that the social and real-time web will completely kill off static sites is hardly strategic. Far too many organizations are still focused on driving traffic to their dot-com sites, which will become an increasingly frustrating and unrealistic goal. But having those sites available when they prove to the best resource for the kinds of information to which they lend themselves will remain a pillar of a company’s online presence.