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Lisa Arthur is concerned that corporations are slacking off when it comes to using social media tools for reaching out to customers. At Forbes , Arthur--Chief Marketing Officer for Aprimo --shares some findings from a recent UMASS-Dartmouth survey of businesses that show very little increase in the use of Twitter, Facebook, and blogs by Fortune 500 companies. For starters, keep in mind that UMass-Dartmouth has conducted longitudinal studies on four major sectors of the US economy –the Fortune 500, Inc. 500, charities, and higher education –for the past four years. In every one of those years, the F500 has lagged behind the others in adoption of social media. (For example, last year, 71 percent of the Inc. 500 was on Facebook, as was a whopping 98 percent of the higher ed institutions and 97 percent of the charities studied. Compare that to the 56 percent of F500 companies that had Facebook pages in 2010.) Perhaps corporate silos are getting in the way? “Ownership” of social media can get sticky, and teams bogged down by border wars and artificial boundaries may find it difficult to innovate. Retrenchment could also be a factor, I suppose. And, I know that integrating social media and proving ROI remain significant challenges for many–although marketing automation technology continues to mature towards sophisticated and elegant solutions. While I recognize these obstacles, I still must admit that I’m disappointed in these survey results. Why? Because now is not the time for complacency. It’s not the time for companies to lose focus. Empowered consumers are here, and they’re here to stay. We’re just beginning to tap into the potential of strategies like intelligent 1:1 marketing, and that means marketers must continue to find ways to engage with their customers and prospects online in more personalized ways. To be clear, the survey does not show use of social media going down. Rather, firms of all sizes adopted these tools more and more over the last few years. The real question is whether those companies that have not adopted social media have actively chosen not to because they have concluded their use does not provide the right return on investment. Read Are Corporations Giving Up on Social Media? here .

In what we might simply term the power of G, Google's Larry Page says the Google+ social networking site has reached 10 million users in 2 weeks. And those users are sharing 1 billion items per day. That didn't take long. While it is of course too early to say what the impact of activity is for brands, but marketers are now trying to figure out how to best operate in Google+. We expect they will apply lessons learned from other online spaces, Facebook and Twitter in particular. AdAge 's Irina Slutsky writes about the potential opportunities that Google+ may provide. And the big advantage comes with the data Google already has on consumer behavior. Slutsky writes: Building out brands on Facebook has turned into big business -- costing up to tens of thousands of dollars a month -- and if Google has its way, companies such as Buddy Media, Vitrue, Blinq MEdia, WildFire, 22squared and many others could be adding Google+ optimization to their offerings. "We're seeing Google+ as a strong competitor in social media from an advertising opportunity," said David Williams, CEO of Blinq Media. "The brand pages need to roll out, an ad model needs to develop, and we want to take advantage of all Google+ has to offer." Mr. Williams, who works with brands including Baskin Robbins and Mentos, says that because Google has expertise in search, what has always been true for Google and Facebook remains: While Facebook knows who you are, Google knows what you want. That difference could be a major advantage when it comes to advertising. "Facebook has interest data, but not intent data," Mr. Williams said. "Google will have a tremendous amount of intent data that could allow them to create a better ad model for social than Facebook -- a very, very powerful ad model." Read Marketers Intrigued by Google+ but Questions Abound here .

Chris Brogan . Gary Vaynerchuck . Liz Strauss . They may not be names you see on the front page of the New York Times (or in US Weekly), but by at least one measure these are three of the most popular people in the country. For small business owners who have tapped into social media, Twitter is now an a virtual meeting space with some top business minds. And according to a new study by Dun & Bradstreet , Brogan, Vaynerchuck, and Strauss are among the top ten influential small business voices on Twitter. The Wall Street Journal 's Sarah Needleman discusses the new ranking in this digits interview: Read Needleman's article on the Dun & Bradstreet ranking here .

The Social Media Examiner 's 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report is now available. This is the third such report, and it shows that more and more marketers are using social media as a pillar of their work. The report breaks down how much time they are spending using social media--the longer they have been using social media, the more hours each week they spend with it--and what tools they would like to learn more about--namely, Facebook, blogs. Michael Stelzner , the Social Media Examiner himself, introduces the report and shares key findings in this video: Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2011 from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo . Read the report here .

A lot of us are trying to figure out how much attention we should be paying to Twitter--the company, our own feeds, the feeds of those we follow. The big questions have to do with Twitter's impact. Is it reaching people in a meaningful way? Is it an effective marketing tool? And just how many people can you reach with it? When Pear Analytics came out with its study of Twitter users , we felt that this chart explained a lot about what we were seeing in our own Twitter experience: But the ease of use, the speed with which we could learn about events, and the access to more thinkers, writers, even companies keeps us thinking that Twitter has great utility. So we're on the lookout for the best analysis of how many users Twitter has compiled. According to the company, there are 175 million Twitter accounts. But that is accounts, not users. Nicholas Carlson of Business Insider recently tried to get an estimate on the number of active users. After recruiting a friend who understands Twitter's API, Carlson made some interesting findings: At Facebook, a company source tells us, they believe that a user is not going to end up sticking around unless they make friends with 10 people. So let's say an "active" Twitter user is someone who follows at least 10 other accounts. How many such "active" Twitter users are there? Our source's API data shows that there are 56 million accounts on Twitter following 8 or more accounts. There are only 38 million following 16, and just 12 million following 64. Your author, by the way, follows 700 people. There are only 1.5 million accounts on Twitter following 512 or more accounts. Read How Many Users Does Twitter REALLY Have? here .

The digerati are all in Texas for an extended weekend of partying, gaming, and strutting their stuff. It's the South By Southwest Interactive festival, and don't let the good time vibe fool you: this is serious business. As Mike Swift of the San Jose Mercury News writes: The 17-year-old fast-growing South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference was the place where Twitter first came to prominence in 2007. It was the place in 2009 where the concept of smartphone location check-in services was first popularized by the New York startup Foursquare. SXSW remains one of the most fashionable places to seek out the emerging trends in personal technology, particularly on the mobile and social web. Still, even some young entrepreneurs worry that the mushrooming event is losing its soul, as corporations and what Rosenberg called "the beautiful people" are drawn by the money and cultural interest behind the boom in online social media. Read At South By Southwest Festival, entrepreneurs are the rock stars here . So who are the entrepreneur rock stars at this year's festival? Maureen Farrell , who writes about entrepreneurs for Forbes , has her eye on Hashable : Hashable just launched to the general public a week ago, after five months of invite-only beta testing. Spend some time on Twitter, and you’ll inevitably find that those you’re following have #justmet or #raninto someone. (@Mikeyavo does all the time). The hashtag #justmet allows Hashable users to exchange business card information over Twitter. Using Hashable’s hashtag verbiage, users can introduce connections to one another or explain who they’ve reconnected with on Twitter. On the site, users can privately track meetings and connections. Over time, users could build out a comprehensive map of their personal and professional worlds. The billion dollar question is THE question for consumer web startups these days. It’s a question you’re more likely to entertain if your startup is backed by venture capital investor Fred Wilson of Union Square Venture, an early investor in Foursquare, Zynga and Tumblr. Union Square Ventures led Hashable’s $4 million financing round in November 2010 and has been an investor since 2008 when Yavonditte founded Tracked, a competitor to Yahoo! Finance and Hashable’s predecessor. “Union Square and Fred Wilson are clearly the best venture firm in New York City by a mile,” he says. “I honestly don’t see another firm here. I can’t name another one. If they exist, they don’t have any cache with me.” Beyond an investment by Wilson, Yavonditte has a proven track record as a CEO. He sold his firm, Quigo Technologies, a search engine marketing firm, to AOL for $340 million in 2007. His work at Quigo, he says, taught him that serious companies take time to build. “We’re five months into the development of Hashable. My last company took 5.5 years.” Read Hashable: South by Southwest’s 2011 Breakout Company? here .

We have spent a lot of virtual ink on examining the utility of Twitter as a business tool--especially for small business and marketers. But it is impossible not to lose sight of the adoption of Twitter as an overall tool for communication, especially with events across North Africa and the Middle East, where several key social media sites have been vital to pro-democracy protesters' ability to organize mass demonstrations. In an interview with Terry Gross of WHYY and NPR 's Fresh Air , Twitter co-founder Biz Stone shares his amazement at how important and widespread the microblogging service has become. He addresses events in Egypt, as well as rumors of Twitter's multi-billion-dollar evaluation and possible purchasers: