But others aren't nearly as welcoming. And if you're working for such an organization, you've probably felt a little like a space alien when you try to advance even the most modest of social media projects: "See, if we had a Twitter feed, then we could monitor customer service issues and resp-" "Twitter?! Why, it's full of viruses, spam, pornography and Ashton Kutcher! Speak to me no more of this apostasy!" Which means you, my friend, are what I've come to call a stranded evangelist: a stranger in a strange land.

There are ways of changing your stranded status: building trust and alliances within your organization, going for the smallest of small wins and expanding from there, gaining insight into your organization's strategic goals so you can find both pain points and sweet spots where social media can help. But while you're waiting for those efforts to take off, you can at least take some comfort in the knowledge that you have company.

So the next time you're proposing a Facebook Page or a blogger outreach initiative, and getting the kind of reaction usually reserved for stories of alien abduction (or, worse, getting the same kind of probing often featured prominently in those stories), then just smile, nod, and remember:

We are not alone.

More Noise to Signal.

If you have discussed social media with small-business owners, you almost always get two questions:

1. How do I manage all these social networks without going nuts?
2. Are any tools out there that can help me be more productive and save time?

I polled a few folks who know a thing or two about social media, especially for small businesses, and collected a list of 10 tools, technologies and platforms that can help your small business succeed in social media and Internet marketing. These experts in the field include John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, Becky McCray of Small Biz Survival, Mack Coller of The Viral Garden, Drew McLellan of Drew's Marketing Minute and Kyle Lacy, author of the upcoming book "Twitter Marketing for Dummies."

Based on their favorites (and some of my own), here are 10 killer tools for small-business success.

1. Jott
Have you ever called yourself and left a voice mail so that you wouldn't forget something? Jott takes that idea a step further, transcribing the voice mail and sending it to your inbox. Instead of sending a quick memo to yourself to remember to email your vendor, you can dictate the email and save time. Upgrade to Jott Assistant and you can dictate to-do lists, automatic Web postings to your social networks, calendar items and more. Jott is a subscription-based service, and it starts at only $3.95 per month for a small Assistant account. For small-business owners on the go, it can be a life-saver.

2. Grasshopper
Grasshopper not only gives your business its very own toll-free 800 number, but it allows your customers to reach you even when you're on the go. Voice mails are delivered to your inbox, as are faxes (in PDF), so you can stay connected everywhere. You can have multiple extensions and extend the service to your employees as well. The service starts at $9.95 per month (plus a $25 activation fee) for 100 minutes. Other plans are $49 and $199 per month.

3. Monitter
If your small business is on Twitter, keeping an eye on the conversations related to your product or service there makes sense. But if you're geographically focused like most small businesses, you probably hate having to weed through similarly named companies and mentions of your industry from folks 1,000 miles away. Monitter lets you search Twitter for keywords, but filters them by specified distances from a zip code. You get tweets about your category, industry and company from within your home territory, where it matters. Monitter is free to use.

4. HootSuite
For anyone who runs a Twitter account for business, a tool like HootSuite can be a productivity boon. Not only can you manage multiple people contributing to the same Twitter account (so that one person isn't solely responsible for tweeting), but you can manage multiple accounts with ease. The software has a bookmarklet for quick link-sharing and offers some cursory stats on your Twitter account as well. It's free to use.

5. Survey Monkey
Perhaps the one luxury that many small businesses can't afford is market research. Survey Monkey enables you to conduct your own online surveys to gain insight into your customer base for free. The tool is easy to use, looks professional and produces a bevy of charts and graphs to help you understand your results. If you have trouble with online tools, Survey Monkey has several video tutorials that make it a snap to tap into customer insights.

6. Simple Online Accounting Solutions
McCray told me about a number of good online tools for bookkeeping and accounting, two really stand out for her. She recommends Outright.com for single-person businesses and WorkingPoint.com for more complex companies. The reason? Simplicity. Speaking as a business owner who is math-averse myself, I'll just say, "Amen!" The simpler, the better. Both of these are outstanding in that category. Outright is free to use. WorkingPoint is free for one user, $10 per month for two and only $80 per month for 10 users.

7. ReQall
Never before has a smart phone app been so incredibly useful! ReQall is a memory aide that enables you to record voice memos via a smartphone or regular phone, have those messages transcribed and then sent to you via email (a la Jott). But wait! There's more. The software uses natural-language processing and some additional analysis to determine whether you're dictating a calendar item or to-do list entry. It then adds those items to your calendar or to-do list. If you say, "Pick up milk at Circle K on Belmont Avenue by 4 pm," you'll get a calendar entry, probably with a Google map link, and a reminder beforehand. For the small-business owner on the go, this app is a must-have.

8. Milog (iPhone App)
While I hate to recommend an application that is limited to iPhone users, this one is worth mentioning. Milog, from SymplySoft, allows you to track your mileage simply, then email yourself neatly organized reports to print or send to your accountant for tax papers. When my CPA told me, "No one tracks their mileage well," I decided to prove her wrong. Milog helps me do that in literally a few seconds per day. The app stores locations for easy trip entry and allows you to add fields for parking, tolls and more. The full version is just $2.99 at the iPhone app store.

9. Minggl
This tool is new (the beta was released two weeks ago) but is very promising. A browser sidebar plugin, Minggl allows you to post status updates across six major social networks (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Digg and Delicious) but, unlike other broadcast services, also allows you to check your inboxes, notifications and public updates from friends on those networks. Add a Google Sidewiki-style annotation service and you've got a pretty useful tool that you won't have to change your habits much to use.

10. Backupify
Whether you're dabbling in social media for your business, conducting full-scale sales calls via Twitter or Facebook or running everything you do through project management software like Google Docs, Zoho or Basecamp, you'd probably get mighty frustrated if one of those services went down and lost your data. Backupify.com serves as a daily or weekly (you decide) backup service for a variety of social media and Web 2.0 services that many small businesses depend on. The service is available at a low cost (accounts start at $4.95 per month) and backs up your important company data (Gmail, Google Docs, Basecamp, Zoho), plus your entire database for services like Flickr, Twitter and even WordPress. (Disclosure: Backupify is a ReadWriteWeb sponsor and a client of mine.)

These applications, programs and platforms only skim the surface. I'm sure you have favorites of your own. Please share them in the comments for your fellow readers and help make this post a one-stop shop for killer small-business tools.

Jason Falls is a social-media consultant based in Louisville, Kentucky. He blogs regularly at SocialMediaExplorer.com. He is also chief evangelist for Backupify.com, a ReadWriteWeb sponsor.

Over the course of the year, there have been countless reports - some more substantial than others - but all with the same message: Generation Y is just not interested in Twitter. The reports generally cited members of this demographic as saying Twitter was "pointless" and "narcissistic."

Apparently, that's beginning to change. Well, maybe not their perception of Twitter, but certainly their use of it. Today, Twitter is now the second-youngest of the top four social networking sites. Its median age is 31. MySpace's is 26, LinkedIn is 39, and, as noted above, Facebook is 33.

When looking at specific younger demographic segments, and not just Gen Y, you can see strong Twitter uptake over the past year. For example, 37% of those 18-24 now use Twitter when only 19% did back in December 2008. And in the slightly older 25-34 bracket, a portion of which could still be considered Gen Y, 31% are now using the service compared to only 20% in December of last year. Combined, these two groups account for more than half of Twitter's network.

Why is Gen Y Now Flocking to Twitter?

So what gives? Why has Gen Y seemingly changed their minds about the social microblogging network that only months ago they avoided? A recent AP article offered up some ideas including the influx of celebrity tweeters, pressure from teachers or bosses, and it even hinted that Gen Y'ers entering the workplace have found value in the network for business-related purposes. That same sentiment was shared by Meredith Sires of Gen Y trend-watching site, YPulse. She theorizes that the rapid growth in the 18-24 demographic has to do more with the recent college graduates segment of that group finding ways to build entirely new online contact lists and create new identities more closely tied to information-sharing.

However, there have not been any in-depth studies that detail all the various reasons that Gen Y has chosen to adopt the microblogging network. To date, everything cited consists of just theories and speculations based on anecdotal evidence. But while all the ideas have merit, the theory that rings truest to our ears is the one put forth by Craig Watkins, a University of Texas professor and author of the book "The Young and the Digital." He says that what we're seeing is "...a kind of closing of that generational gap as it relates to technology." In other words, young and old alike are joining the same networks and socializing in the same spaces.

At this point, we would have to agree. After all, Gen Y (or Gen Z for that matter), hasn't all of a sudden flocked to some new social networking site where the majority of the online user base mostly consists of their peers. Although some niche sites like FML, Failblog, TextsFromLastNight, and Sporcle have apparently attracted this young crowd, their numbers are dwarfed by those of Facebook, Twitter, and the like. It seems as if Gen Y is simply content to join the older adults on the top social networks of today and not strike out on their own...and vice versa. The older social networking users, in turn, never really set up shop on networks designed just for them like the (now "hibernating") Boomj, a social network for baby boomers, or the online old folks home eons.com. They, too, have gravitated towards Facebook and Twitter.

Will this ever change? Will there ever be another network dominated by the digital youth? Of course no one can know for sure, but odds are that unless it's a closed-off network where entry is barred to those over a certain age, any new social network will have trouble keeping the grown-ups out these days. And even if some such network ever sprang into existence, it may struggle to attract the Gen Y members it desires - especially since they're so content to socialize on the sites they already use. And now that they've added Twitter to that list, the challenge to draw them away to yet another social networking site may prove even more difficult than before.

Note: statistics in this article are from Pew Internet's Recent Report on Twitter for Fall 2009

Internet Use and Social Media

That's not to say that there aren't some technology addicts that aren't social isolated - around 6% of the adult online population would fit in this category, having no one with whom they can talk about those important matters and who say they don't have anyone "especially significant" in their life. However, this figure (the 6%) has not grown as access to technology has grown over the years - it has remained virtually unchanged since 1985. This points to the fact that perhaps those who are socially isolated individuals would be so anyway, regardless of what sorts of tools are provided to them, be those mobile phones, PCs with internet access, etc.

For the majority of the online population, technology - and especially social media - has led to more diverse networks than we've ever had before. The report notes that those who participate in social networking services such as Facebook for example, are more likely to interact with people from different backgrounds, different races, different political parties, etc. Specifically, blogging and general internet use was tied to having more racially diverse networks while online photo sharing was tied to having more diverse political discussion partners.

Those who use the internet tend to have 15% more network ties who aren't family members and those who use instant messaging services have 19% more non-kin members in their core networks.

Mobile Phone Use

Along these same lines, the ubiquity of mobile phones hasn't led to decreased face time with family and friends, but just the opposite. On average, a person spends 195 days of the year having mobile phone contact with others, but face-to-face interactions occur on about 210 days per year. In addition, mobile users have around 15% more family members with whom they can discuss important matters and tend to have 25% more core network members who are not family members. Overall, those who use mobile phones have core networks that are 12% larger than those who don't.

Despite all this good news about how technology leads to having larger, more diverse networks, the researchers also found that our networks' size has actually shrunk over the years. Since 1985, there has been a decrease of about 1/3 in their size. The researchers don't suggest any specific reasons for this shrinkage, but they do point out that they can now rule out one possibility for sure: technology.

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.

In attempts to balance communication, transparency, and operational security, the military has encountered both practical obstacles and general criticism. In a recent podcast, Carey said, "Most social networking tools come with no rules of the road. As the Internet moves towards user-generated content, we thought there was a void we could fill... to mitigate some of the security risks associated with social media."

Generally, military organizations have the options to reach out directly to large IT companies to configure customized security profiles and inherent OPSEC protection for personnel; traditionally, however, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have not been particularly receptive to working within that type of culture or framework. From the sharing-and-access social media pole to the security/military pole, both sides are resistant to different approaches to shared and social information. Still, Carey is an advocate for the usefulness of these tools, even behind a military firewall.

"We must remain a learning organization. As the Internet evolves, so must our workforce and its associated skills. To that end, we must be able to embrace change," Carey wrote in his blog post. "Many of our processes are rooted in the Industrial Age and will need to move toward the Information Age to remain relevant in the coming years."

With specific regard to social media and the American military, Carey stated, "Social media is an inherent part of the toolbox for members of the millennial workforce, while baby boomers are just adopting it. Social media tools should become the standard by which we can share and collaborate on information inside and outside the network boundaries."

He also highlighted green initiatives, mobile working, and the use of modern technological tools in recruitment efforts.

To see Carey's office's Policy and Guidelines for Secure Use of Social Media by Federal Departments and Agencies, click here for a full PDF.

While Carey's optimism is to be applauded, one wonders what our military-minded friends will have to say about OPSEC vis-a-vis social media. The battlefield isn't really Foursquare-compatible, and the military might actually have the last plausible use case for censorship. Every servicemember is probably aware of existing regulations for Internet and social media use; how do you think Carey's goals and statements will affect the state of affairs on the ground, and do you feel such a shift is needed or welcomed? Let us know your opinions in the comments.

While I'm willing to admit here that I went to yearbook camp and computer camp as a kid, this one might take the cake as far as camps that don't include S'mores and Kumbaya go.

The organizers hope this was the start of a series of "unconferences" for public media outlets around the country, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Public Media Camp is the latest in a slew of events and projects pushing the public media agenda forward on the Web.

Recently, NPR gathered its executives, including CEO Vivian Schiller, in San Francisco to meet with Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs and funders. The Columbia Journalism Review reported on the conference, called NPR Digital Think In. And the ongoing Engage project at PBS, funded by the Knight Foundation, is creating social media tools for PBS stations and producers, such as a chat series with PBS personalities and a map showcasing projects at stations around the country.

"In many communities, public broadcasters are among the few news outlets that are weathering the financial crisis intact. As more news outlets close due to economic pressures, our public service mission is going to be more important than ever, creating a powerful opportunity to provide accountability journalism at both the local and national level," Carvin says.

Having been a part of many of these projects, I'm excited to see the changes that have happened in the public media sphere online, from the This American Life/Planet Money collaboration taking on a life of its own, to CPB 2008's collection of election projects like Video Your Vote and Twitter VoteReport.

Some of the most exciting projects happening in public media include:

Local Aggregation Sites

The Economy Project at the University of Missouri and Public Media Texas are two new local public media sites that are aggregating stories using blogging software and encouraging public participation in the news conversation at the local level. WBUR's Commonhealth blog covers health care issues in Massachusetts by tapping doctors, lawmakers and citizens to help report. And WNYC's Brian Lehrer show is crowdsourcing "Uncommon Economic Indicators" - from the price of pizza to for-rent signs.

Economy Coverage

Covering the economy is a major focus of public media this year. Station and producer projects are drawing a line between local and national coverage in new ways. EconomyStory.org aims to collect these stories and feature exciting new projects from around the country, and EconomyBeat.org features user-generated content about the economy.

PBS NewsHour's Patchwork Nation map incorporates statistics and stories from 12 types of communities around the country and compares how they are coping with various economic issues.

Facing the Mortgage Crisis asks users to share their experiences in dealing with foreclosure and other recent real-estate woes, as well as provides community resources to help cope. A variety of public stations nationwide are involved in this project at a local level.

NPR's Social Media Guidelines for Reporters

This list, released last week, includes concerns about expressing political views online and how reporters should present themselves on Twitter and Facebook. It's a great starting point for other organizations concerned about similar issues. Carvin says that while NPR reporters are using online tools more and more, it still can be a challenge.

"The one thing I never do is show up and insist that they use a particular tool simply because lots of other people are using it," he says. "People are often resistant to learning new tools simply because they don't seem relevant to them, so you need to figure out with them what may or may not be relevant."

Guest author: Laura Hertzfeld is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. She has worked in public media in several capacities, including her current role as managing editor of EconomyStory.org, a Public Radio Exchange (PRX.org) project aggregating public media coverage of the economy. She previously produced PBS.org's coverage of the 2008 presidential election.

Fastest Growing Brand: Gillette

Among the top 20 brands, Gillette managed to become the fastest-growing brand in social media over the last two months. We wondered if the fact that the New England Patriots play in Gillette Stadium is a factor here, but Sysomos told us that most of the mentions were generated by Gillette's campaign for its new Fusion razors. Strangely, though, 13 brands in Sysomos' top 20 saw their social media mentions drop in the last two months. Car manufacturers like BMW (-31%), Honda (-25%) and Toyota (-24%) saw the largest declines, though even Google registered a 13.4% drop.

Sentiment Analysis

The fact that a company was mentioned often on social media sites like Twitter, however, doesn't really tell us a lot about how exactly people interacted with this brand. To deal with this, Sysomos also did a sentiment analysis of all the mentions of these 20 companies. Here, we see some interesting changes to the list. Samsung, for example, comes out on top here, followed by Nokia, Intel, IBM and Cisco.

The social media mentions of McDonald's, Marlboro and Toyota, however, were generally negative. According to another survey by PR firm Wildfire on behalf of Tealeaf that was published yesterday, 74% of all British adults said that negative comments about a product or brand negatively influence the likelihood that they would want to do business with this company.

At a kickoff event tonight in Richmond, Virginia, I got to participate in a panel discussion and hear questions from an audience of college students and professors. One of the questions posed was how those in academia can best put the social web to work for themselves. Far beyond Facebook and LinkedIn, how can this community harness the Internet to be smarter, more efficient, and more productive? Read on for our top five ideas.

In almost any field of study, from sociology to physics to arts to media, educators and students can find a group of experts on Twitter, engaging in debate, posting relevant links, sharing their most recent work, and answering questions. With its asymmetrical follower model, this network allows you to keep up with leaders and organizations in your industry of choice without their having to follow you in return. There are lots of tools for finding topic-specific experts on Twitter. WeFollow and Mr. Tweet are two popular applications, and Twitter app store oneforty can provide even more resources for discovering an existing network and staying up to date.

2) Use feeds to stay informed about news, events, and conversations.

Once you've found your network, you may notice that a lot of these individuals and groups maintain blogs. Do a Google search, and focus on finding blogs that speak specifically to your field of interest. For every niche, no matter how obscure, someone out there is curating content. There are wind turbine blogs, turtle breeding blogs, biomedical engineering blogs, economics blogs - you get the gist. Staying updated in your field is as simple as spending 20 minutes a day online once you know how to use feeds.

For those users with a good grasp of RSS, feed readers such as Google Reader can bring clarity, organization, and efficiency to the formerly painful process of staying informed. But even if you don't know RSS from a hole in the ground, there are sites that will allow you to simply put together lists of websites to track, or even bring you news feeds just based on a particular topic. We recommend checking out Lazyfeed and Guzzle.it for getting news by keyword or topic, and for the visually oriented, we also suggest these two dead-simple visual feed readers.

3) Build your website.

If there's one thing students in particular need to worry about, it's Google. Social accounts are fine and dandy to have, but prospective employers are searching for candidates by name when making interviewing and hiring decisions, as was made abundantly clear by a professional recruiter on tonight's panel. Right now, Facebook might have a search engine monopoly on your name; unless that account is the best representation of you, a FirstNameLastName.com website might be a good idea. Here's our list of four what-you-see-is-what-you-get website builders that don't require much or any coding knowledge. You can also use some of the blogging resources mentioned in the next section. Once your site is up, link back to it from all your social profiles to help boost your site's place in search results.

4) Create content.

Now that you know your network and its key players, you're staying informed in your field, and you've got a decent start in representing yourself online, it's time to start giving back. Whether you've got expertise to share or simply more questions to ask, you should be creating content. Tweeting is a great and engaging place to start; many professional and mentoring relationships have begun with a simple @reply. But you also need to blog, create videos, and/or post images or audio to your website.

Not only is this good for SEO, which will help when the aforementioned recruiters start Googling you; it's also essential for deeper participation in the conversation happening all around you online. If visual arts are your thing, for example, a Flickr account is a must, and it's probably a good idea to post any images you create on a separate blog, as well. Ideally, your content should tie in with your FirstNameLastName.com website. Depending on the type of content you choose to create, you might want to look at WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, or Posterous. Post content regularly, and check out this Slate post with tips from some of the most famous bloggers online.

5) Be an early adopter and refine your digital toolkit.

Finally, once you're comfortably participating in the conversation and you're part of a very real community of experts, educators, and students in your field of interest, realize that your journey toward technological proficiency has just begun. The Internet is in a constant state of flux, and learning how to leverage the social web for academic benefit is an ongoing exercise. There are many resources for finding new weapons to add to your digital arsenal; we're sure lots of helpful pointers will come from others in your community. But also, keep an eye on the techies, who are always testing and recommending new products and apps.

Check sites such as ReadWriteStart, AppUseful, and oneforty every now and then to see if there's a better mousetrap than the ones you might currently be using. Stay open-minded and flexible; be willing to try anything three times.

The social web means so much more to academia than finding out which students were really sick on exam day and which just went to a kegger the night before. It also means a lot more than a static resume and a stagnant list of useless "connections." Social web apps, when used intelligently, can make us all as brilliant and resourceful as the brightest stars in our networks, fostering real-world value and reinforcing learning.

I've fallen prey to this temptation myself, so I say all of this with a certain amount of chagrin. But I hope I'm on the road to reform: embracing my uncertainty, and vacillating with confidence.

(By the way, the title of Chris Brogan's smashing blog post inspired the Neanderthal's line in this cartoon.)

More Noise to Signal.

("One Web. For All." also has the virtue of being a shorter, catchier slogan than the one being pushed by the telecommunications industry: "Two Webs. One a Really Fast Super-Premium Web, and the Other One for You.")

More Noise to Signal.

Up until now, Dazzboard supported this to-and-fro between PC and mobile while also allowing you to upload to media sharing sites like Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. Today, the company adds one more option: MySites, a web-based service offering an unlimited amount of cloud storage.

The first step to using Dazzboard is installing the software, which currently works only as a browser plugin (IE/Firefox) on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 PCs. The company has a Mac version in the works and will support Google Chrome once extensions come to that browser. A Facebook app and iGoogle gadget are also available.

From the web-based Dazzboard interface, you can easily move your files to and from the supported platforms and online services. You can browse, play, and organize your files which are organized into three categories: photos, music, and mobile.

For now, Dazzboard's focus is on the consumer market so for end users, the service is free. However, companies and brands wanting to use Dazzboard's API can do so if they're interested in sharing their content with website visitors or Facebook fans. Dazzboard simplifies the process of having that content pushed from web to mobile and handles the content's global mobile distribution for the brand. This service will be available for a fee and will help keep the consumer-level offering free.

...Now With Unlimited Cloud Storage!

With Dazzboard's new "Cloud Storage" option introduced today, you can upload files to MySites, a personalized homepage designed for file sharing. The MySites web service provides you with a custom URL (yourname.mysites.com), privacy control features, an RSS feed, and a multi-file upload option for sharing several files at once. After uploading your media, your page will feature the files and links to download and you also have the option to share the files using embed codes, Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarking services (Delicious, Digg, Google and Reddit), and even mobile QR codes.

Unbelievably, MySites, a free service, has no upload limit, no file size limit, no resizing of the original file, no download limits, no speed limits, no nag screens, and no watermarking. You can play your content right from MySites as the service provides players for the different file types hosted there (video, music, etc.) The company also plans to offer a Dropbox-style desktop client and API in the near future.

Dazzboard does not have an iPhone application at this time and may or may not ever build one. Since iTunes essentially does the same thing for iPhones and iPods, it would almost be foolhardy for Dazzboard to try and compete with Apple or any of the other thousands of apps available in the crowded market that is the iTunes App Store. Instead, Dazzboard's focus is on the other mobile devices outside of Apple's ecosystem. That's not a bad plan. Although sometimes it seems like everyone owns an iPhone these days, the reality is that worldwide, their are still plenty of other mobile phones to choose from. Now those device owners can enjoy media on their mobiles, too.

And in the interest of transparency, I should disclose that I thought about slipping my Amazon affiliate code into those links, but decided not to.

I submit all of this in support of a theory of mine: that the future of corporate communications lies in boring audiences into submission through sheer information overload. Radical transparency and tactical transparency, you've met your match: tedious transparency.

Feel free to try it out in the comments below.

More Noise to Signal.

A far more interesting statistic is that 15% of all Internet users have left comments on websites about political or social issues, or posted images or written blog posts related to politics or social issues. What is even more interesting, though not surprising, is that young adults between 18 and 29 are far more likely to use social networks as a venue for political and civic engagement than older users. These younger users who engage in political activity online are also far more likely to participate in politics offline.

Social Media Might Level the Playing Field

Social media is mostly the domain of younger Internet users and while young adults (18-24) are, as a group, less interested in political activities online, they are far more likely than any other group to use blogs and social networking sites to engage in political discussions. About 34% of young adults make political use of social networking sites and 34% post political material on the Internet.

Users under 35 represent 72% of those users who make political use of social networks. In addition, the income and education gap for those who engage in political activities on social networks is far less pronounced when compared to those who use other forums.

Will These Trends Continue?

What will be interesting to watch, the Pew study points out, is how these younger users will use these existing networks as they get older. It will also be interesting to see if these developments will mean that socio-economic status will become less of an indicator of civic engagement, or if these new technologies will create new barriers of entry for those with a lower income and education level.

Given that the US just experienced a highly contested election cycle and is in the middle of a heated debate about health care right now, we have to wonder, though, if these numbers will continue to hold true over the next few years or if they were just a blip on the radar.

As the Burst Media survey notes, boomers actively look for different things online than younger users. Young adults look for entertainment news (49%), games (41%), local and national news (37%), and social media sites (36%). Boomers, on the other hand, are far more interested in local and national news (55%), shopping info (41%), and health info (40%).

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Boomers make up 34% of Internet users in the US, and as a recent report from Forrester Research pointed out, this group is quite comfortable with creating and consuming social media. Social networks, however, still haven't quite found the right angle to draw these users in.

Bonus: Would Your Life be Disrupted if You Couldn't Get Online? 83% Say So

83% of respondents to this survey say that their daily routines would be disrupted if they couldn't get online. 41% even say that their lives would be 'significantly disrupted.' Interestingly, slightly more women (43.9%) than men (39.3%) think that their lives would be significantly disrupted without access to the Internet.

These are pretty impressive numbers, though we have to keep the methodology of this survey in mind. All of the respondents were Internet users, and this was an online survey. If Burst Media had also surveyed offline users, these number would probably have been slightly different.