Since the inception of Google+, very little has been said about the global popularity of Google’s new social media project by the search engine giant itself, with no official statistics being provided that widely publicise it’s initial success, following the sites launch in June of last year.

In December the “unofficial Google+ statistician” Paul Allen, ran a query associated to surnames that had been used to sign up to the service, in order to identify the number of users logging in to the social networking site, and settled on 62 million following his research; with predictions that the number would climb to 85 million by the beginning of February this year.

Digital business analytics service ComScore also reported that Google+ was home to 65 million users in November; the difference between their study and that of Hitwise being that ComScore, and also Allen, refer to the number of visitors, while Experian Hitwise measured the number of visits to the Google+ site, a more vague indicator of the number do users actually signing up to and using the site on a regular basis.

The speculation from various quarters across the industry indicates that interest in Google’s social media platform is steadily growing; as does the overall impact of digital media marketing on the IT industry.  Although Google+ seems to be enjoying increasing popularity, it is still a long way off proving a serious threat to the likes of Facebook, which boasts over 800 million active users, half a billion of which access the site on a daily basis, and Twitter with a reported 300 million plus users.

According to industry observers cnet, Google has been making a number of changes to a variety of platforms, in order to integrate their social site fully across their existing portfolio, and establish the site as a key component part it’s web offering and digital media marketing platform:

“Google has been integrating Google+ with other technology such as Android, Picasa, Web Albums, Gmail, search, and Reader, using the service to unify Google technology and to cross-promote its products.”

Recent studies conducted by ComScore indicate that social networking is as popular as ever, with an estimated 82% of web users aged fifteen years or over using the net to access social media sites, and almost a fifth of time spent surfing the web is on social networking platforms; making it the most favoured past time globally, and a lucrative market for digital media marketing.

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The announcement came via the Twitter advertising blog, which provided an insight into the changes, and how they would affect marketers already using Twitter as a platform to communicate with existing clients, as well as circulating their brand amongst web audiences, utilising digital media marketing in order to extend their reach online:  “we are introducing enhanced profile pages that help marketers create an even more compelling destination on Twitter for their brands” they said.

Enhanced profile pages have been rolled out amongst a limited number of advertising partners and charities, including American Express, Bing and Intel, with the new format being made available to wider audiences over the coming months.

The update retains Twitter’s communication centric focus through succinct and concise messages, with the emphasis being on what people are saying about their business, and how they are saying it.  While businesses are limited to just 140 characters per tweet, the new twitter ‘advertising’ pages provide a number other devices to maximise the exposure of a brand online through digital media marketing, such as larger header images for a brand or business to display their logo:

“Communicating with users isn’t just about what you say. It’s also about how you say it. Now, your profile page does more to help you make an impression with a large header image for displaying your logo, tagline, and any other visuals.”

In addition, Twitter have included more sophisticated devices in order to compete with the likes of Facebook and Google+ (which according to recent reports saw an increase in traffic of 55% in December), providing users with more flexibility to target visitors with specific messages.

“You can also control the message visitors see when they first come to your profile page by promoting a Tweet to the top of your page’s timeline. This Tweet helps you highlight your most engaging and important content and better connect with your target audience [...] this page and the Promoted Tweet are both free of charge and publicly accessible for the whole world to see.”

As digital media marketing continues to proliferate amongst brands and businesses, the race for dominance between the three big hitters will no doubt continue to heat up throughout the year, with 2012 promising to be an interesting year for change amongst the three key social media contenders, as the main Twitter blog post explained: “what we’re announcing today is just the beginning. We now have a framework in place that we will quickly build and iterate upon to help users connect with whatever is meaningful to them.”

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In both 2011 and 2010 Facebook held four of the top ten search queries posted, with the search term ‘facebook’ recorded by Experian Hitwise as the number one most searched term for both years.  The total query volume for all the Facebook terms featured on the top ten list, grew by 33 percent in comparison to last year.

The social media sites preeminence comes as little surprise with the growing popularity of digital media marketing across industries; the world’s most popular social networking site now has over 800 million active users with over 50% logging in to Facebook on a daily basis, it’s not hard to see why marketers have jumped on the proverbial digital media marketing bandwagon.  According to the Hitwise blog post their statistics also revealed exponential growth in the number of people searching for the social networking site in 2011:

“Analysis of the search terms revealed that social networking-related terms dominated the results, accounting for 4.18 percent of the top 50 searches. This is an increase of 12 percent compared with 2010. When combined, common search terms for Facebook – e.g., facebook and facebook.com – accounted for 3.48 percent of all searches in the United States among the top 50 terms, which represents a 33 percent increase compared with 2010.”

While the latest statistics from Experian Hitwise demonstrate the increasing popularity of social platforms such as Facebook and YouTube (Google’s broadcasting site found itself in second position on the Hitwise poll), which may have firmly established themselves in the consciousness of worldwide users and businesses alike, MySpace’s epic fall from grace was notable by the site’s absence from the top ten search queries of last year; dropping from number 5 in 2010, and the only website that had appeared in the 2010 but not the 2011 listings, apparently displaced by ‘yahoo.com’ making an entry and joining ‘Yahoo’ at number six.

The findings will no doubt add fuel to the Google and Facebook digital media marketing fire, with the search engine giant seeing an increase in the number of searches last year, however according to the Hitwise poll, Google is still lagging behind Zuckerberg’s social site and it’s dominant position:

“YouTube terms accounted for 1.36 percent, representing a 21 percent increase compared with 2010. Google terms (including YouTube) accounted for 1.59 percent – an increase of 27 percent compared with 2010.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Facebook does not appear on the “top lists” published by search engines Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask or AOL, due to the criteria used when collating their lists; when it comes to Google’s at least, their top 10 search queries are based on “rising” search terms, rather than those that prove the most popular overall.

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“For the first time ever, it’s possible to directly connect your social media marketing to real business results. Fans and mentions are great, but what really matters is how these impact your bottom line [...] start seeing the quantifiable value of social media.”

Businesses can filter the data generated by the SocialAnalytics tool in order to measure “the value of the Facebook like” as Chad Warren, the senior manager for product marketing at Adobe, explained at the SocialAnalytics launch in London last week.  According to news site V3 the new Adobe software gathers information from a number of social networking platforms, drawn from across the web, and integrates the results, providing detailed reporting on just how many conversions take place, and how many times a brand or product is mentioned, in realtime:

“Adobe SocialAnalytics allows companies to capture all publicly available data from Facebook and Twitter, as well as comments from blogs, forums, message boards and other popular sites such as Dailymotion, Hulu and YouTube.”

CMO.COM reported this week that social media marketing is now established as the key advertising strategy for businesses online, and a rapidly expanding empire, drawing the analogy that if Facebook were a country populated by its 750 million users, then it would in fact be the third largest in the world, and going on to state: “Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day; and one in four of adults over 65 now participates in a social-networking site”, there is no question, that this is a remarkably long reach for businesses to extend amongst the online community.

Businesses using the SocialAnalytics platform are also able to conduct searches that are more complex, eliminating and including data to obtain granular detail about products or brands on the web.  This is done by utilising a ‘natural language process algorithm’ enabling the SocialAnalytics software to identify whether the mention of a product or brand online is positive or negative, to within 80% to 90% accuracy, as V3‘s Khidr Suleman explains:

“The results are then displayed in graphical format showing mentions, page views, unique visitors and potential audience. Other parameters can also be displayed to generate correlations [...] the software can also analyse the sentiment of comments to show whether a brand is receiving positive or negative feedback.”

During the product launch, Morris went on to use the example of popstar Beyoncé announcing her pregnancy during the MTV Awards, which lead to a record 8,800 tweets being published per second; Adobe then used their SocialAnalytics software to track the effect on the MTV sites web traffic:

“SocialAnalytics enabled MTV to link spikes in Twitter mentions with activity on their web site, which is where they are selling ads.  MTV experienced a 40 per cent increase in hourly unique visitors and 55 per cent in hourly page views due to this announcement.”

Longer term plans for the software are to include the ability to monitor mentions made on Google+ and LinkedIn, a functionality that is currently under development.

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The dashboard is designed to give owners of websites more information on the web traffic generated by their presence on Twitter, as well as reporting on how the Twitterati are sharing the information that they post on the social media site.  According to Christopher Golda, original founder of BackType: ”Twitter is a powerful platform for web sites to share content and drive traffic and engagement”.  In his announcement about the Twitter’s newest offering, Golda goes on to explain:

“However, people have struggled to accurately measure the amount of traffic Twitter is sending to their sites, in part because web analytics software hasn’t evolved as quickly as online sharing and social signals.  Today we’re announcing Twitter Web Analytics, a tool that helps web site owners understand how much traffic they receive from Twitter and the effectiveness of Twitter integrations on their sites.”

A select number of partners will be asked to test the new analytics platform over the coming weeks, according to the statement released by Golda.  The pilot will be rolled out in order for those participating in the trial to test it’s three core social media marketing features: enabling web owners to track their content being shared across the network of Twitter users, to view the traffic generated from links published on Twitter, and to monitor how effective ‘Tweet Button” integrations are for websites.  According to reports, there are also plans for a Twitter Web Analytics API to be built, for developers looking to embed data generated from the social media site, into their business offerings.

The site has demonstrated continued growth, and increasing popularity over recent months, confirming this month that they had recorded over 100 million active users logging in and conversing with the network of Twitterers worldwide.

The social networking service is seen by many as a far less invasive tool than other sites such as Facebook; Twitter does not request information about relationship status, age, or many other personal references that are collated by other social sites, and Facebook has come under fire because of it’s lack of privacy features, and inherently intrusive approach, as well as the fact that personal information is reported to be stored on their database, even after an account has been deactivated.

The continued success of Twitter, and the launch of it’s new web analytics tool, will no dobt come under close scrutiny from Google, as they launch their Google+ social media project in BETA, and hope to see it recognised as a success, after failing to capture the attention of so many existing Google users with other failed social media projects in the past.

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“Nielsen estimates that the whole population spent a total of 53.5 billion minutes on the social network. That’s also about the equivalent of 100,000 years, or 36.8 million days.”

The figures provided by Nielsen are based on the user activity of one hundred and fifty million people logging on to Facebook in the U.S. which equates to each person spending 350 minutes a month, or roughly ten minutes per day, on the social networking site.

Facebook teamed with measurement company Nielsen BrandLift in 2009 in a move to, according to Sheryl Sandberg who made the announcement: “provide marketers with richer ad effectiveness data” allowing brands to more effectively monitor their advertisements.  The partnership was the precursor to the aggressive push towards social media marketing as the next big step for advertisers; and it seems to have worked.

Last month it was reported that Facebook reached a phenomenal one trillion hits per month; and according to web traffic reports for August, the social networking site attracted eight hundred and seventy million unique visits, providing Facebook with an impressive 46.9% reach among users surfing the web.  These are very appealing statistics for businesses using social media marketing as a platform to raise awareness of their company, product or brand online, and according to TIME’s report:

“Those 870 million visitors are around 120 million greater than Facebook’s reported total number of registered users. The discrepancy may be down to non-Facebook members visiting the site from other social media links or through search engine traffic.”

Comforting for social media marketers to know that Facebook’s reach extends beyond it’s registered followers, with over 10% of non Facebook users accounting for the website’s traffic.

Nielsen’s study also revealed that next in line after Facebook came Yahoo with over seventeen billion minutes spent on their site in May, and Google in third position with twelve and a half billion minutes.

Google can console themselves with the knowledge that after Facebook, You Tube came in with only a tenth of the social networking sites page views, but almost the same number of unique visitors, giving Google’s video sharing site a 42.6% reach amongst users online.

Facebook’s triumph comes just a week after Twitter announced via it’s blog that they had topped one hundred million users worldwide:

“Five years ago, Twitter came to life when @jack sent the first Tweet to his seven followers. Now, 100 million active users around the globe turn to Twitter to share their thoughts and find out what’s happening in the world right now [...] more than half of them log in to Twitter each day.”

The statistics recorded by Facebook and Twitter are testament to the impact that social media marketing is having on advertising strategies; and with the eagerly anticipated launch of Google+ the social revolution is set to continue.

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“As of July 19, comScore showed Google+ at just about 20 million visitors worldwide, an extraordinary number in just its first three weeks. That number represents an increase of 82% from the previous week and 561% vs. two weeks prior. The U.S. audience recently surpassed 5 million visitors, up 81% from the previous week and 723% from two weeks earlier.”

Speculation has already begun as to whether Google+ is the fastest growing website of all time.  It seems that the publicity surrounding Google’s social networking project has attracted the attention of a large number of users across a diverse range of countries, with the US, India, the UK, Canada and Germany filling the top 5 spots when it comes to ‘unique visitor’ statistics, posted by comScore earlier this week.

The benefits provided by the Google+ service in the social media marketing arena are primarily the opportunities it provides for gathering a wealth of information about Google+ users, through it’s interactive format that encourages people to share everything from their photos, videos, hobbies, to places of interest and interactions with family, friends and colleagues.  According to Mashable’s Ben Parr, the Google+ project: “turns all of Google into one giant social network, thanks to a core group of social products and a new navigation bar that integrates sharing into every single Google product”.

Google+ covers all the bases; and to that end, it provides a platform for people to be selective about what information they share with what groups, but also the opportunity to obtain a deeper and all encompassing view of a users identity; their likes, dislikes, favourite products, brands, past times and places, users can be selective about who they make the information available to, which means they could effectively have a range of identities that are relevant to the circles they mix in, and create online.  With the +Sparks feature, Google has added a crucial element to their social project, opening up the web to users and social media marketers, to engage with people on the subjects that interest them most:

“Thanks to Google’s web expertise, Sparks delivers a feed of highly contagious content from across the Internet. On any topic you want, in over 40 languages. Simply add your interests, and you’ll always have something to watch, read and share.”

The diversity of Google+ opens up a whole new approach and interpretation to social media marketing, the focus is on what really makes people tick, across multiple sections of a person’s personality from one day to the next; and that kind of information is invaluable for businesses to effectively market their products to global audiences online.

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Very much like the Facebook ‘like’ button, it’s a way of demonstrating to your friends and acquaintances that you recommend a website. Several ‘likes’ from people who have more influence on the internet (bloggers, writers) will more than likely be counted as a vote of confidence and a almost carry the same weight as a link when making algorithm changes to their search engine.

You will have to be signed in with a Google account for your +1 vote to be counted, and if you don’t have many friends connected to your Gmail or Google Plus account then there is little chance that the +1’s that you make will have a huge effect on any results. This is one of Google largest worries – that people don’t tend to use Google for their social interactions. This is not to say that people won’t begin to move over to Google so that their E-mail, search engine and social media platform are all conveniently located together. Facebook have tried having the same effect by creating Facebook Email addresses which prevent you receiving emails from people that they aren’t friends with. The advantages of this are quite plain to see, but unless people decide to entrust their entire life to Google by giving them all information stored in their emails, all interactions within their social network and all of their search history, Facebook looks like it will continue to prosper.

Will Google +1 have any impact on SEO?

One main effect will be that Google will be in the position to add another string to their bow in terms of fighting junk emails and spam, just like Facebook. In the same way as other factors of social media marketing, a lot of users showing their appreciation for something will demonstrate to Google that your site is of good quality, relevant and deserves to be ranked high up on the search engine results. It’s almost like link building in a different but less powerful way. At the same time, I still think that links will be the determining factor when it comes to affecting rankings for websites in the coming years.

Will Google +1 have an effect on PPC?

I think that PPC adverts will end up standing out more from the others without +1 votes, thus producing a much higher CTR (click-through-rate) on average. At the same time it may also create a lesser quality of clicks on those adverts because people will be automatically drawn to the +1. Either way, I think that users will ultimately be keeping an eye out for sites with Google +1 to sway their decision.

I think that this may be a genuine and adequate attempt to go up against Facebook and achieve a social connection with search engine optimisation.

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Google’s eagerly anticipated response to Facebook follows a number of failed attempts by Google to corner the social media market.  The key to the success of the Google+ project is likely to be the control that is given back to the user when it comes to sharing personal information:

“From close family to foodies, we found that people already use real-life circles to express themselves, and to share with precisely the right folks. So we did the only thing that made sense: we brought Circles to software. Just make a circle, add your people, and share what’s new.”

The Google+ platform promises a new era of social media marketing on a global scale; with Google circles communicating specific information about a person or group, their interests, dislikes, favourite places and past-times.

With more and more online users concerned about the inflexibility of networking sites, and the implications of posting photos, personal details and anecdotes with an expansive number of people; and limited options available to curb the exposure of personal information that is made available to a wider reaching audience, the Google+ project has initiated an attack on established social media platforms and their functions; with a number of user friendly features that will redefine this market space in the future.

The new aspects are centered around Google’s understanding of the way we use the web as a communication tool, covering everything from personal interests; reaching out to like minded people, sharing photos with friends, to arranging group activities and social events; Google+ uses a sleek, user-friendly interface to pull together every aspect of the social media sphere in one tool.

One area that Google has focused on in particular is sharing information and conversing on topics with people we perhaps don’t even know.  By putting people’s interests alongside their interactions with friends in a social space online, Google+ provides an invaluable network for users to share their practical knowledge, experience and discoveries; further establishing the web, and Google specifically, as an invaluable resource when it comes to global communications.

Encouraging these interactions across a wider network provides the opportunity for the development of social media marketing strategies that truly understand user behaviour, based on the way people engage with a product or brand, its popularity, and what people are talking about generally; defining the zeitgeist and giving invaluable insights into what is capturing the imagination of the people across the globe:

“Healthy obsessions inspire sharing, and we’ve all got one (or two, or three…). Maybe it’s muscle cars, or comic books, or fashion, but the attraction is always the same: it comes up in conversation, we immediately jump in, and we share back and forth with other fans. Often for hours.”

Encouraging these interactions among friends, family, local communities and global audiences will be the most important factor in establishing the Google+ platform as the next generation of social media tool, taking us beyond the realms to communicating with friends; encouraging broader discussions across a global network of online users.

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Evaluating a brands online reputation, specifically through communications on social media sites, PostRank uses the data gathered by their monitoring software to provide insights for businesses that want to maintain their brand integrity among the online community, and develop their presence within this lucrative market.

The announcement was made via PostRank’s official blog; outlining the key elements of their service offering, no doubt areas of particular interest to Google, in their continued exploration of Social Media Marketing and monitoring:

“We know that making sense of social engagement data is important for online businesses, which is why we have worked hard to monitor where and when content generates meaningful interactions across the web. Indeed, conversations online are an important signal for advertisers, publishers, developers and consumers—but today’s tools only skim the surface of what we think is possible.”

The partnership with Google will provide PostRank with the opportunity to invest in the development of sophisticated tools in the Social Media Market, a platform that has demonstrated rapid growth over recent years, and an industry that Google has struggled to make its mark on to date.  The acquisition of the social engagement aggregator not only demonstrates Google’s commitment to develop their presence within the social media sphere, but also their continued engagement in the provision of innovative reporting products available to Google’s customers.

Although Google has remained relatively tight lipped about the acquisition, a spokesperson for the company did provide feedback on their motivation when it came to making the purchase:

“We’re always looking for new ways to measure and analyze data, and as social analytics become increasingly important for online businesses, we’re excited to work with the PostRank team to make this data more actionable and accountable. They have developed an innovative approach to measuring web engagement, and we think they can help us improve our products for our users and advertisers.”

The services provided by PostRank will enhance the existing functions provided by the Google AdWords portfolio; opening up the Social Media Marketing sphere for many businesses, with activity streams providing realtime reports on social media interactions relating to a brand or business; scanning for updates posted on Facebook, as well as tweets, blog posts and information published across other networking platforms.  With web analytics providing marketers with the ability to uncover the people who are influencing opinions, as well as measuring online presence and how the competition are performing within the same social media communities, PostRank’s existing services will perfectly complement Google’s web monitoring tools:

“Our platform tracks where and how users engage, and what they pay attention to — in real-time. PostRank social engagement data measures actual user activity, the most accurate indicator of the relevance and influence of a site, story, or author.”

This recent acquisition, and Google’s continued investment in Social Media Marketing is set to further establish them as one of the worlds leading providers of web monitoring services.

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Social Media Marketing is one of the main industries that has seen rapid changes develop, in response to the way that consumers utilise the technologies available to them; with smart phones and tablets being used more than ever to connect with other users online, using social media sites to interact with global communities.

Mobile Social media is one of the most common platforms that people use their tablet to access, followed by banking and navigation.  The beauty of Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter is that the profile page for each user provides a marketer with a goldmine of information that is rarely made freely available via any other platform, including personal information like age, home town, marital status, occupation and even education institutions attended.  Social Media Marketing allows organisations to maximise on the opportunities when it comes to using this information, in order to directly target a demographic based on their age, gender, or location.

Social Media Marketing has demonstrated rapid and continued growth, in response to the increase of people that are now moving away from their PC’s, and predominantly using mobile technology.  According to news site Marketing Vox, since purchasing their tablet PC, 35% of users reported that they use their laptop or PC ‘significantly less’, or in some cases ceased to use them at all, while also opting to purchase a tablet PC rather than replacing, or upgrading, their laptop or desktop.

A study conducted by Unica, a US based marketing software solutions provider, identified the changing landscape of direct marketing campaigns, and the key role now played by Social Media in the development of marketing strategies:

“Topping marketers’ list for adoption during the next year is social media monitoring tools at 26%. A series of technologies to help marketers optimize interactions with customers follows, including cross-channel interaction management, contact optimization, and web targeting.”

The results posted by Unica highlight the need for companies to adopt direct marketing strategies aimed at audiences online, as well as mobile campaigns.  Adopting or developing existing Social Media Marketing activities demonstrates a key area that can help increase the potential growth of a business, maximising the exposure of a product, brand or company within a given target client base; as trends indicate that the number of people using tablets is set to increase rapidly, and networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are likely to see an increase in the amount of time users spend on their sites as a result.

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Motivated by the eagerness of investors to back the next generation of internet sites from China’s rapidly increasing internet market, Renren is the latest of China’s internet based exports to make it’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange.  According to Reuters reports, following the floatation of Youku, China’s answer to You Tube (that also claims to be the country’s fastest growing internet site) share prices rose to $37 each, and when the online retailer Dangdang Inc launched on the American Stock Market in December last year, shares peaked at $30.

According to Thomson Reuters, China’s recently developed internet based corporations are hot property for investors: “Chinese companies making their debut in the United States are posting returns of about 30 percent.  That contrasts with an average return of about 23 percent for all U.S. IPOs this year”.

With about 5 million people logging on to the site per month, Renren is currently operating at a loss; but following their recent floatation on the stock market, they will no doubt be reporting a significant increase in their profits for this year.  In an interview following the successful launch of Renren on the New York Stock Exchange, chief executive Joseph Chen explained the motivation for going public:

“I believe this will enhance our brand and further validate our position as the leading real-name social networking internet platform in China. This listing brings us an important step closer to realising our vision to define social networking experience and to revolutionise the way that people in China connect, communicate, entertain and shop.”

Paul Bard of IPO research and investment house Renaissance Capital told Reuters that: “Investors like to get in early in companies that could end up dominating their markets,” with investors looking for “high quality, high growth” opportunities in their target markets.

Although Investor demand for Renren’s shares proved high, concerns have been raised in recent months regarding the social networking company’s prospectus, it’s financial structure, and most importantly, the significant influence of the Chinese government over the operations of the internet market in China.

The floatation of Renren’s shares on the New York Stock Exchange is anticipated to be the precursor for other social networking sites that are likely to follow suit; Renren is one of the first to go public, following LinkedIn’s announcement earlier this year, of their plans to float shares on the US Stock Market.  It is also anticipated that Facebook, the most popular social networking site in the world, valued in the region of $70bn, will go public next year, with other internet companies such as Groupon said to be in talks to secure a public offering, and social media sites Twitter and Zynga speculated to be joining the recent wave of stock market debuts.

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Wheelock’s tweets were part of NASA’s new approach to communicating with the public and avid space enthusiasts.  NASA’s ‘tweetups’ are used as a means of connecting global followers with the United States government’s aerospace research programs, as well as providing them with the opportunity to communicate directly with astronauts and scientists.

Via their website, NASA provide further details of future ‘tweetups’ and their ‘buzzroom’ page explains their objective when it comes to using twitter as a platform for connecting with their followers:

“A Tweetup is an informal meeting of people who use the social messaging medium Twitter. NASA Tweetups provide @NASA followers with the opportunity to go behind-the-scenes at NASA facilities and events and speak with scientists, engineers, astronauts and managers.”

As well as posting updates on the astronauts training schedules and preparation for space travel, NASA has also been using Twitter as a forum for opening up their facilities to people that follow them on the social networking site, providing users with the opportunity to register for the chance to visit one of NASA’s locations, as well as meeting the people involved in their space exploration programs:

“NASA Tweetups range from two hours to two days in length and include a “meet and greet” session to allow participants to mingle with fellow Tweeps and the people behind NASA’s Twitter feeds.”

One of the first people to tweet from space was Mike Massimino back in 2009, Massimino told followers about his experiences, while he journeyed to the Hubble Space Telescope, and enjoyed: “the magnificent views”.

In addition to using twitter as a means of connecting with space enthusiasts, other social networkers from space include Paolo Nespoli, a flight engineer on the ISS Expedition, who has uploaded images on Flickr, the social photography site, as well as posting updates on twitter.

There are currently over 100 Twitter accounts managed by NASA, with 20 belonging to astronauts, who are currently online and publishing details about their daily experiences, while they prepare for their time in outer space.

The utilisation of twitter and other social media sites by the American governments space administration program demonstrates the universal impact that social media is having on the way we communicate globally; with the introduction of networking sites such as twitter, and their adoption within organisations such as NASA, people now have the opportunity to connect with astronauts, scientists and engineers, through their personal live status updates, in their own words, as they make history.

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Roughly half of the audiences included in the poll demonstrated that they utilise social media in order to increase sales activities, and maximise the exposure of their brand or product through online advertising.

According to HP’s blog, where the results of their survey were published: “Over the past six months UK small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have grown on average by six per cent despite the broader UK economy struggling according to the latest SMB Index from HP”.

The organisations who particpated in HP’s poll (conducted in January this year, across 1,000 SMB’s with a maximum of 50 employees) all provided positive feedback about the future growth and development of their business.  It is in response to the increasing financial pressures faced by many small enterprises, that the utilisation of social media comes into play.  By advertising products or services, and offering advice to the online community, SMB’s can successfully maximise their profile on a broader scale, across a range of platforms:

“By investing time in customers and prospective customers, whether by responding to requests for advice in business forums or making recommendations, SMEs can immediately build credibility and trust to their brand, and gain advocates.”

While 34% of participants indicated that they use forums and networking sites in order to share their experiences, or draw on the practical knowledge of others through online discussions, the findings of HP’s recent study also demonstrates that some smaller businesses are missing out on the potential of utilising social media, specifically for the purposes of generating new business opportunities:

“Nearly half of UK SMBs (48 per cent) are turning to social media to help grow their business and reach new audiences, with 56 per cent of sole traders recognising its value the most. Although SMBs are finding social media beneficial for networking purposes (83 per cent), and as a mechanism for advertising (57 per cent), many SMBs are underestimating its true potential for business growth and lead generation [...] it is surprising that very few SMBs recognise the importance of adding value to their own customers or prospective customers via online communities which could positively impact lead generation and growth.”

The possibilities provided by networking platforms are diverse; more and more organisations are establishing themselves through social media, either as a credible source for relevant information across online communities, or advertising their products and services online.  It is the process of attracting new clients, that must remain the key focus for many SME’s, as well as retaining existing customers, as professional branding expert Katie Ledger explains:

“By investing time in customers and prospective customers, whether by responding to requests for advice in business forums or making recommendations, SMBs can immediately build credibility and trust to their brand.”

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