I recommend this very well done Social Media for Business presentation. There are some fascinating statistics provided in the material. These numbers give you an appreciation for just how massive this social wave has become. For instance:

• By the end of 2009, Dell generated $6.5 million in sales from Twitter alone
• Comcast has helped over 150,000 customers through their Twitter account
• Starbucks generated over 50,000 product ideas
• There are over 500 million FaceBook users
• More than 45 Billion Pieces of FaceBook content are shared each month
• There are over 1.5 million businesses with FaceBook pages creating more than 5.3 Billion fans
• Coca Cola’s FaceBook page has 14 million fans
• Twitter has 156 million registered users with 5.4 Billion updates per month
• 31% of Twitter users follow a brand, with 7.8 million brand recommendations per month
• In September of 2010, YouTube had 144 million users

With the growing reach of social media and its ability to spread messages across many social media channels, how can businesses stay on the sidelines? Need more statistics?

• 47% of internet users ages 50-64 are now using social networking sites
• 26% of internet users ages 60+ are now using social networking sites
• The average age of social networking site’s users is: 37 Years Old

                      LinkedIn:            44 years old
                      MySpace:            31 years old
                      FaceBook:          38 years old (61% are 35 or over)
                      Twitter:               39 years old (64% are 35 or over)

This last set of statistics was compiled by Thomas Disanto.

We are not talking about teenagers and college kids anymore. Think about the overwhelming amount of user generated content yet to come.  How do you combine all of this content with data available in other more traditional channels? How do you mine all of this combined data and content and extract actionable insight? The answers lie at the intersection of social technologies and advanced analytics. Many well known software and technology providers have made considerable strides towards enabling this intersection. I’d be amazed if this enabling technology is not touching most business processes within the next five years. Embracing these technologies will drive business outcomes that fuel revenue generation, customer service, cost reduction and innovation for years to come.