Small business owners got on board the social media train in big numbers a year ago--nearly 3/4 of all Twitter users signed up in the first half of 2009.  But Martin Warner, entrepreneur and co-founder of Talkbiznow, a business social networking site, is banking on 2010 being the year that small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners start to see the benefits of social media to their bottom line.  He points out that social media levels the playing field for SMEs, in areas like the cost of infrastructure and "obtaining access to the most talented workers."  Warner, from a piece in Reuters, notes:

Linkedin, reported that it had 50 million registered users in a blog on the website in October 2009.  Half of Linkedin’s users are in the US while it has signed up 11 million professionals in Europe and 3 million in India, now the network’s fastest growing market.

Linkedin’s biggest rival in Europe, Hamburg-based Xing, has more than 8 million professionals and its careers and jobs section is one of the main services that it offers to its users.

Everyone from university alumni to employees with specialist skills such as high frequency, computer-based traders in the City of London can join a host of groups on Linkedin which advertise jobs as well as displaying links to news stories, discussion forums and occasionally blogs by industry professionals.

Social networks can also be used by small businesses as refined advertising tools. Advertising executives are increasingly recognising the great value of the information on members housed in these websites, which usually has much more detail and focus than the data on display in consumer networks such as Facebook.

However, while social networks present great opportunities for professionals and SMEs, small businesses looking at opportunities latent within social networking websites should proceed with caution.

Read Small business--the next frontier for social networks  here.