In just a few short years, Twitter has transformed from an odd little sort of public IM service where people posted what they just ate for lunch or what their cat was doing at the moment into one of the big four social networks and a significant channel for news, PR & marketing, politics and more. Twitter’s 200 million users collectively tap out a billion tweets per week. Nearly 3/4 of active Twitter users are bloggers. Twitter users are twice as likely to purchase from companies they follow than are Facebook users. Twitter Tips, Tactics and Techniques. MORE >>

I’ve used this tool on behalf of small clients for finding hundreds of key influencers on Twitter, blogs and various other social networking sites and forums. It may not catch everything, but it finds a lot (via blogs, Twitter, social news sites and Facebook public pages) and presents the information through useful charts and graphs. Until fairly recently, keeping track of your organization’s online presence was relatively easy. Other than your company’s website, most mentions were likely in well-known online news sites or trade industry publication sites. Vocus. MORE >>

The average midsize or large company (1000 employees or more) has 178 “social media assets” (Twitter handles, employee blogs, etc.)–yet Although Facebook is the most important social media lead generation tool for b2c marketers (with 77% saying they had had acquired a customer through Facebook, compared to 60% for a company blog), among B2B companies, LinkedIn was the most effective, with 65% having acquired a customer through the professional network, followed by company blogs (60%), Facebook (43%), and Twitter (40%). Twitter is second at 3.6%. Twitter. MORE >>

Expand Your Social Media Mix: Twitter Alone is Not Enough by Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang. ** 5 STARS. Deftly weaving in a dinner analogy to social media, Jeremiah Owyang compares Twitter to shish-kabob (bite-sized morsels of information) that are tasty but need to be supplemented by “steak&# –infographics, Slideshare presentations, blog posts–and topped off with online video for dessert. Social media marketing has gone well beyond the hype stage and is now mainstream business practice. Which social media monitoring tools should I use? What to do? But 44.24 MORE >>

Don’t want to follow Twitterers who aren’t following you? free tool for finding the relative influence of any Twitter user. Create your own online newspaper from Twitter and Facebook updates based on any topic or group of contributors. free service for setting up, promoting and hosting Twitter chats. realtime social search engine that pulls current and recent results for any term from Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, Digg and Delicious. Actionly also includes Twitter account management and analytics tools. Create video emails? Flowtown. MORE >>