I know that sometimes it’s hard to figure out how all of this social media stuff impacts business; particularly when you’re involved in a business-to-business enterprise. Do you remember when it was like that with the Internet? Then it just happened. I’m certainly not smart enough to know for sure how this is all going to play out, but I do believe it’s an unavoidable tsunami, and something you would ignore at your peril. Here are some stats:

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers
2. 96% of them have joined a social network
3. Facebook added 100m users in 9 months
4. According to US Dept. Of Ed. Online students outperformed those receiving face-to-face instruction
5. 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
6. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
7. Gen Y & Z consider email passe: In ’09 Boston College stopped distributing email address to incoming freshmen
8. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles
9. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations; Only 14% trust ads
10. 35% of book sales on Amazon are for Kindle

These are largely compiled from the video included at the end of this post, and whether you trust the source is up to you. The two key lessons to be learned though are:

1. Successful companies in social media act more like party plannners, aggregators, and content providers that traditional advertisers
2. In the social media world; Listen first, sell second (For more about this, see previous post Why Twitter is best for testing sales or marketing messages)