Max Planck is best known as a German theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize for discovering energy quanta in 1918.

He also formulated Planck’s Principle, a theorem that states that scientific progress depends on the “old guard” dying before the next generation can move on.

I thought of Planck’s principle this week when my colleague Mark Dimont pointed out a tweet from PepsiCo.

Pepsi used a tweet storm to post earnings, breaking down results by geography and segment. A key quote from management was also included.

Pepsi even included the boilerplate warning usually reserved for press releases that “tweets contain fwd-looking statements.”

It was an awesome use of Twitter to inform the public. It’s something PepsiCo has been doing for awhile.

But most companies don’t do it.

And it was almost nine years ago that the SEC said companies could use social media to disclose sensitive information.

The SEC approved social media for disclosure on April 3, 2013. The following day The New York Times published a story about Bloomberg’s integration of Twitter on the terminal.

I was quoted saying the world was close to a “tipping point where more companies are using Twitter and other social media to put out announcements.”

It is taking much longer than anticipated, but we are finally seeing more companies leverage the potential of social media to connect directly with investors.