Facebook claims to have over 800 million active users and Twitter claims to have 500 million. The number of active users for social media is growing more and more every day. If you work in marketing, you have probably already asked yourself, “how important is social media for marketing?”  The importance of social media is fast growing, forever evolving and one of the most important portals to a successful brand.

A Microsoft social networking website

This last Tuesday, Microsoft entered the social networking world by releasing its beta-version of Socl (pronounced Social) to the general public. Originally launched last May, Socl has been in the beta testing stage and made available to college students and invited Microsoft employees.

At first glance, Socl reminds you of Pintrest, but it also has the feel and added features of Facebook, Twitter and even Google. What Socl does is provide you with an easy way to share photos, videos, web pages and animated GIF’s.

No longer will Facebook only be a place to connect with old and new friends through their ever-expanding apps and website. Now Facebook will be conjuring up new ways to gain personal access to more information about you, your friends, your parents’ second cousins and where they bought their shoes two weeks ago. As if accessing that information wasn’t easy enough already through users up to the second posts, what better way to dig even deeper into your personal life than through a smart phone built to make sharing every minute detail easier than ever?

Advertising and Marketing are likely the most costly aspects of owning and running a successful business especially if you want to market to a very large group of consumers at one time. For example the Super Bowl, commercials during half-time can range from 1-10 million dollars and up, but what if you could target roughly the same people for 1% of that price or even for Free? Everyday 2 billion people post “likes” to the social network, with the Facebook database totaling more than 901 million users. As a consumer you may have noticed that the more people like a post or a business the more positive your idea will be of the person or company, which is exactly what Facebook is traveling the country trying to sell to investors.

Within your daily scrounge about for info on Google, you’re almost sure to see videos on the first page relating to your keyphrases. If you’re a budding business, since most of you happen to be, you’ll hope for people to see your commercial every time they hit the enter button. What could possibly be a lot better than that? Getting the video on the first page

The CEO of Yahoo, Scott Thompson, took the very first steps today to turnaround his plagued company in hopes of becoming known inside the mobile computing market. This move marks the sixth lay-off in the past four years whilst moving through 3 different CEOs. The employees being released are going to be notified Wednesday and definately will shear off about 14% of the current workers Yahoo employs. By causing these cuts Thompson hopes the company can hire the much needed specialists in mobile technology and create the remainder of the company in a faster and much better equipped body ready for the coming consumer developments. To increase the mass lay-off, Yahoo has hinted at selling one of its services, Right Media, which often will permit them to shed even more workers.