You answered and we culled your responses from Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook, and used Storify to present it back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

Social media is just a tool. Tools aren't inherently good or bad - they're just used to aid someone's efforts. Social media can make your voice reach more people. Unfortunately, it can't improve upon your character.

What does it mean to be "famous" on social media?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and presented them back to you with Storify. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

From time to time you'll see us ask you how we are doing. That's because, despite great analytics, nothing beats just asking your audience how you're doing and what you could do better. And, almost as valuable, is knowing who to emulate. Which brands are impressing you? Which ones aren't? This quest to deliver you the best social experience is always foremost in a community manager's mind, and it inspired today's Big Question.

Which brand does the best job in social media?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and presented them back to you with Storify. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

So we'd like to know which social shopping products you used or liked the best in 2010. There are 12 options below. If one of your favorites is not listed, then select 'Other' and mention it in the comments. You may choose up to 3 options.

Introducing Social Media To Businesses

If this were a course, JustMeans would be the teacher of social media for businesses. JustMeans provides a way for businesses to use various tools associated with social media from blogging to podcasting with ease. To make businesses feel comfortable in early adopter territory, traditional medias such as press releases are also provided. With these tools, users, or "stakeholders", can easily engage with businesses on JustMeans via the company's profile.

Social Responsibility

JustMeans rides the economic "green wave" of corporate social responsibility. This is also one of the key focuses of the JustMeans site and the businesses that engage with it. Businesses can post about the "social responsibilities" that they are upholding to keep users and fans of a businesses network up-to-date on their goals and outreach programs. The site includes a forum for businesses and consumers to collectively brainstorm about ideas for change. This way, users are actually heard, while companies can receive better feedback about what they can do better.

Connecting For A Collective Change

JustMeans is a great platform for connecting businesses that are socially responsible with users that appreciate being informed not only about a company's ethics, but what a company is doing to insure that they are upholding the standards they've set and obligations they've committed to from a social standpoint. JustMeans is not only a network to help introduce businesses to social media, but a platform for collective social change.

What's abundantly clear though, is that many people did use social media during the Super Bowl, in record numbers. Were you one of those talking trash with friends or lamenting the directions of some ads?

Did you use social sites like Twitter, Facebook or Google+ during the Super Bowl?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and presented them back to you with Storify. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

Hitwise also noted that MySpace has seen an increase of 73% year-over-year in average time spent. So while they may be losing a small amount of total social networking traffic to Facebook, MySpace is better engaging the visitors it has retained. Interestingly, competing web metrics firm Compete paints a different picture, suggesting that year-over-year average stay has fallen 9.9%. Differences in how each stat is measured could explain the dissimilar results, however, though they are strikingly different.

- 83% watch video clips, up from 62% in the last study in June 2007
- 78% read blogs, up from 66%
- 57% of internet users are now members of a social network
- RSS consumption is growing rapidly up from 15% to 39%
- Podcasts are now mainstream digital content, listened to by 48%

Social networks have been "a key driver for the growth of social media":

- 22% of social network users have installed a widget or applications
- 55% have shared photos
- 22% have shared their videos
- 31% have started a blog
- The world’s biggest social network is MySpace with 32% weekly reach followed by Facebook on 23%

The report also states that social media is a global phenomenon:

- Top markets for blogging – China 70% of internet users write a blog, Philippines 66% and Mexico 60%
- Top markets for social networking – Philippines 83%, Hungary 76% and Poland 76%
- China is the world's largest blogging market with 42m bloggers versus 26m in the US

Those last stats will be an eye opener for many, because the US web tech market gets most of the attention of the blogosphere and mainstream media. But with China having 42m bloggers compared to the US's 26m, there is large scope for social media to flourish there - even despite China's political issues with social media.

I asked the staff and they agreed. I could find no staffer that admitted to chatting on a social network willingly, though one did say he occasionally feels he must.

Do you use the chat feature on social networks?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and presented them back to you with Storify. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

How or why do you use social media in your job?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and presented them back to you with Storify. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

I get that sometimes, which says a lot more about my own insecurities and the extent to which the social Web replicates the social dynamics of high school than it does about any real risk. My social network includes some very forgiving, open-minded people... and the online world is much, much bigger than anything I've tapped into so far.

Just an example: when I look through the list of the top 100 Vancouver Twitterers by number of followers, I don't recognize the vast majority of names. That tells me that a big conversation is going on (or a lot of small conversations) that I'm not a part of.

Which is cool. It's a big ol' blogosphere, and I can't possibly hope to keep tabs on any more than my small corner of it.

It's also a handy reminder to avoid the temptation of generalizing about the social Web from our own experience if it. For any of us who wants to understand how the Web and the way we use it are evolving and make some intelligent guesses about the future of social media, breaking out of our comfortable little circles and exploring a little is critical.

More Noise to Signal.

Title: Please ignore any Quechup.com Invites - It's a spam engine

Message: I am writing this with profound embarrassment.

I was recently tricked by a spam engine posing as a new social network. I got an invite from someone I knew and trusted, signed up to see what was about. Two days later, Quechup sent out SPAM to my entire address book.

Please ignore or delete all emails claiming to be from me that mention a site called Quechup.com.

Please also accept my apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

I won't mention the name of the person who sent this message, because it isn't their fault. Clearly Quechup has broken the golden rule of social networks and abused the trust of their users. Quechup's tagline is "the social networking platform sweeping the globe" - however it seems to be doing that via an email spam campaign.

Our recommendation: stay away from Quechup. You may also adopt my own current rule and not sign up to new social networks unless there's a clear - and new, unique - benefit to you. After all, how many social networks do you need?

Social media is the one job sector in which recent college grads are having luck, reports Newsweek, and universities are adding social media classes in response.

Universities have started adding social media classes such as the Internet marketing class, "Social Media" at Columbia or the second-year elective course at Harvard, "Competing with Social Networks." Birmingham City University even offers a one year master's degree in social media.

In recent history, companies were so desperate for help understanding the social Web that they seemed ready to hire anyone who could string buzzwords together. The term "social media guru" - a euphemism for person who knows how to tweet - became somewhat of a joke.

But at least the field has gotten more defined. "Gurus" have stratified into analysts, community managers, editors, product developers, marketers and even social media executives (although there are still plenty of companies hiring for gurus).

Social media jobs don't pay as well as similar positions in public relations, according to SocialMediaInfluence.com. But it's nice to hear that those recent graduates have some options when it comes to a job. A liberal arts major who graduated in 2010 may not have many prospects in business, government, education, and so on - but she definitely knows how to use Facebook.

Tools like VarsityMonitor could be used as ways to spot viral content related to a player - but they could also become rather invasive. And besides, not all students are trying to become Internet celebrities. It's possible to make oneself nearly unfindable on Facebook, and Twitter users can protect their tweets if they don't want anyone discovering them.

In a sense, however, athletes are their own type of brand on social media. As such, they are representative of the larger brand. Instead of using social media monitoring sites like VarsityMonitor, why doesn't the NCAA just revise its social media guidelines?

Image via DukeHoopBlog.

As Michael Chin points out on the KickApps blog, social media first changed how we interacted with friends, family, and customers. Now, as consumers are getting more familiar with these tools, they also expect them to be a way to interact with companies - and based on this data from Cone, they want this to be a two-way conversation.

Here are some other interesting data points from the study:

• 60% of Americans regularly interact with companies on a social media site
• 43% of consumers say that companies should use social networks to solve the consumers' problems
• 41% believe that companies should use social media tools to solicit feedback on products and services
• Men are more likely to use social media tools to interact with a company than women (33% vs. 17%)
• 33% of younger consumers (18-34) and those with household incomes over $75,000 believe that companies should try to market to them through social networks

It would be nice to see Cone break these numbers down a bit more. What types of social media sites, for example, do users prefer? Are there any specific categories of companies and brands that they want to see on these sites? How exactly do they want to be marketed to? What do they think about implications for their privacy?

What is clear, however, is that social media is quickly becoming an important means for companies to reach consumers - and that consumer are also quickly changing their expectations about how, when, and where they want to be marketed to. As more users are embracing social media (and often to the detriment of traditional media), companies have no choice but to follow them.