Search Camp Philly 2008 – Social Networks for Business 101

Social Networks: They connect people at a low cost; this can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact base. They often act as a customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services. Social Networks play a big part in where customers can talk about you, both in a positive and negative way.

Recommended forum software – http://www.vbulletin.com

Microblogs – Gives a business the means to send out quick communications about products and services via text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 and via the web.
Recommended Microblogs:

• Twitter – http://www.twitter.com
• Plurk – http://www.plurk.com
• Jaiku – http://www.jaiku.com
• Pownce – http://pownce.com
• Friendfeed – http://www.friendfeed.com
  

Social Brand Index – http://www.socialbrandindex.com/twitter - Which companies are using Twitter.

Twitter Search - http://search.twitter.com/ - find out who is talking about what. Conduct a search on your personal name or your company name.

Yahoo Social Media Firehose - http://pipes.yahoo.com/update_maker/social_media_fire_hose - This is a big, fat, wide-reaching net of social media searches to alert you every time your brand or product is mentioned by anybody on a slew of social media sites, including flickr, twitter, friendfeed, digg etc.