Meeting people or carrying out transactions today are no longer constrained to having a personal computer or laptop. The important thing is to get online, access the web and check out social groups that seem to be growing in numbers as the years pass.

Thanks to gadgets that have been brought to us by technology, no longer has it been constrained to computers as a requirement. With the advanced features that most mobile phones have been equipped with today, all that is left is to access the web via GPRS or Wifi connections, normally available anywhere you go these days.

Why would I want to get online with my phone? Well for one, there are a lot of things to discover and information is perhaps the key element in determining why people need the social networking community. Some do it for fun while others do it for profession. Any which way you look at it, it all boils down to what you need and how you can get it.

There are a lot of ways to get information and the most common things we hear of are RSS feeds or subscriptions. The only matter left to figure out is where to find it. But with the right sources to look in, you may be surprised that they are abundant in numbers and with all the choices available, you may find it hard to decide on which sites to follow and which are frequently updated.

Business is perhaps one of the ideal topics you can see as far as group category is concerned. But while that is perhaps like looking for a needle in a haystack, you will notice that you have to further dissect the area and type of business you will have to cater to.

So social networking goes way beyond social bookmarking and promoting certain sites you feel will carve out your niche on the Internet. Proper planning similar to common businesses we see daily is something that would be needed as well.

Also, the time factor comes into play. Businesses investing on the web have to count the months and depending on the median that they use to establish their sites for optimization is something that will certainly make them vary from one another.

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Buzz was launched just last February 9 but the Buzz section of my gmail has been BUzzing like crazy since then (excuse for the corny pun but it truly is buzzing!). For those who don’t use Gmail then you are definitely missing out on a great social tool that in essence collates everything from your social network and allows you to view them trhough your Gmail. Why Gmail? Because Buzz is built into Gmail!

Some of the things you can view via buzz are status messages, photos, videos, and links posted in Buzz. You can also import updates from your Google Reader, Twitter, Flickr, and PicasaWebs. You can also access Buzz by phone by pointing your phone’s browser to buzz.google.com.

According to Todd Jackson, Product Manager of Gmail and Google Buzz, “Our belief is that organizing the social information on the web — finding relevance in the noise — has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google’s experience in organizing information can help solve.” Google Buzz is obviously, in their opinion, one of the solutions.

For businesses worldwide it’s time to start coming up with an action plan on how to take advantage of Buzz. Knowing how big Google is, it’s only a matter of time for Buzz to be one of the major social platforms that you just can not disregard.

According to the Nielsen Company recent studies show that the time spent by people from U.S., U.K., Australia, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy in social media sites have gone up by 82% compared to last year: up from an average of 3 hours per person to 5.5 hours per person. In addition to this the number of people (unique visits) logging in to social media sites has also gone up 242,039,00 to 307,428,000.

Australia leads in the average amount of time spent per person at almost 7 hours (6:52:28) while United States lead in the number of unique users at 142,052.

The trend is of course good news to social media marketers from all over but despite this good news it is good to remember to be strategic in your social media efforts so as not to waste your resources. Your strategy should not only include the choice of social media platforms to use but also the form of your marketing (good old ads, tweets, etc.) and the actual content of your ads. Make sure you continue to supplement your social media efforts with other marketing methods that work for you. Remember success in social media circles isn’t your end goal, your efforts in this area should mesh with the rest of your business strategy so as to get the best results possible.

Facebook is in the lead among the social media platforms with 79% of the business users citing Facebook to be at least one of the platforms where they have an online presence.

One of the reasons for the enthusiasm of businesses to go online to market their products and services is the comparatively low cost of online marketing. Small to medium-sized businesses that can’t compete with big firms in more traditional advertising channels such as the television and full-blown media campaigns find that they are able to reach a lot of their target market via social media.

However, despite the rising numbers of businesses in Asia that have presence in social media platforms the actual conversion rate is remains problematic with only 12% of the surveyed firms getting more than 50% of the sales inquiries online.

This fact does not dampen the enthusiasm of the businesses though with 80% of the surveyed businesses signifying intention to increase their budgets for social media marketing in the near future.

One thing’s for sure though as Asia and the rest of the world gets even more wired we will see even more businesses jumping on the bandwagon.

TheArtistFinder.com, as the name implies, is a site where you can browse at the work of artists worldwide, click on the artist whose work catches your eye, and get information (links to sites) on where you can buy that artist’s work or contact that artist.

According to BoundlessGallery.com/TheArtistFinder.com President Luke Terpstra the website is designed to “to support original artists online.” He also says that the “online marketplace [is] changing from the old guard of big one-stop shops like eBay and Amazon, to a new order where the actual site you buy from matters less than finding the perfect product. “ Since artists usually have their works displayed/scattered on different websites, consumers have to either hunt down each site to be able to view their favourite artists’ works before deciding on which artwork to buy or settle for the handful of choices available in the current site they are on. This is why TheArtistFinder is very useful because it gives consumers a convenient way of finding all the other available works of the artist they like. No more need to use search engines to hunt artists’ works down since they have a one-stop shop where they can find all the contact details they need.

As you can see social platforms are getting the nod from all kinds of industries, now including the art industry. With this development we can only wait and see how else social platforms will be used.

Here are just some of the findings:

* 38% of users of sites such as Facebook and Twitter have posted status updates detailing their holiday plans and a third, 33% of people have posted status updates saying that they are away for the weekend.
* Nearly half, 48% of respondents have no worries about the security or privacy of social networking sites.
* Of all social networking sites, Facebook creates the most concern with 46% of respondents feeling that there are some security and privacy risks.
* The younger you are, the more likely you are to give information away concerning your whereabouts, with nearly two-thirds, 64% of 16-24 year olds sharing their holiday plans – which could be a cause for concern for parents.
* 34% of respondents have seen somebody else’s phone number posted on their social networking profile.
* Nearly one in ten, 9% of respondents have included their own phone number and 5% have included their address in the personal information section of social networking sites visible to friends.
* Some people are sharing mobile numbers and addresses directly with strangers: 6% have written their phone number and 3% have written their address “wall-to-wall” or on pages open to those who are not accepted contacts.
* Men are more blasé about personal information – 13% have included their mobile number on their profile compared with just 7% of women and 9% of men have included their address compared with just 4% of women.
* 70% of users think that social media sites are a great place to share photos of their cool new purchases and presents.

All these info may seem innocent enough to you but remember that’s because you are innocent but for burglars they’re huge neon signs saying “I’m ripe for the picking!”

According to their report the difference in Facebook still dominated the social media market with 78% of the survey participants using the platform. MySpace takes the number two spot with 42% of participants saying they use the site. LinkedIn gets only 17%. Twitter, on the other hand, may may come in last with only 10% market share but is enjoying being known as the social media site that “encourages closer connections.” Twitterers are apparently mostly using the site to connect with friends with other reasons such as updating their status and finding news being secondary.

Despite the fact that social media sites users primarily use them for personal reasons note that it is stilla powerful marketing tool. Anita Watkins, Senior Vice President at TNS, said, “Social media has transformed the way individuals connect and communicate with one another. Smart marketers are utilizing this behavior to their advantage by setting up online communities in which consumers can freely interact, discuss and debate issues around products, services and brands in a natural way. Companies are listening in to these conversations and harnessing the power of influencers to co-create their marketing strategies.”

Despite the problems this attack created for Twitter employees Twitter users need not be concerned about the current security of their Twitter accounts. As Hacker Croll said to French blogger Manuel Borne (he was the first who received the hacked files), “J’espere que mon intervention leur fera prendre conscience que nul n’est a l’abri sur le net,” which according to Rory Cellan-Jones of BBC roughly translates to the hacker saying that “he hopes his “intervention” will make Twitter wake up to the fact that nothing is secure on the net.” In other words do not be concerned about your Twitter account ONLY but ALL your accounts on the internet. So make sure that even when using “secure” sites keep sensitive information out of the net if possible because even when using cloud-based emails, if your password gets in the hands of the wrong person, you will still get in trouble.

Alex Aciman and Emmett Rensin have signed a book deal with Penguin Books to rewrite 75 classic novels and plays as “Twitterature.” Twitterature, according to MediaLiteracy, “Twitterature is an amalgam of the words Twitter and Literature. Classic literature takes a great deal of time and concentration to read and digest. Twitter posts, called tweets, consist of 140 characters or less, making them short, concise, and fast reads.”

According to Emmet Rensin their work is “ like [CliffsNotes], but funnier — it reflects the narcissistic nature of Twitter.” Students should be really happy about this. In all honesty I was able to get by several times thanks to CliffNotes, now it’ll be even easier for non-readers to read. Of course, your prof can just make it a point to read the Twitterature version and ask anything that isn’t there. Whatever happens to students this the point is that this new development is just one more proof to the testament of how much social media is spurring things to change.