Twitter's wide web

Are you still looking for those companies on Twitter who tweet about your industry? Are you looking for your competitors? ReadWriteWeb recently did a great wrap-up of what they consider the top 7 Twitter search engines. Check them out:

monitter
Twitterfall
twistori
Tweet Scan
TweetChannel
Twitscoop
Tweetizen

Twitter commercial accounts on the way

eWeek reported today that Twitter has announced that they will soon offer commercial accounts for an extra fee. This is just one step in what Gartner predicts that 80% of social software platforms will include enterprise blogging features by 2011. For the full story, read the article here.

Twitter now fastest growing social network

According to a new article at Read Write Web, Twitter had 7 million unique visitors in February of 2009, as opposed to 475,000 in 2008, which is a growth rate of 1382% over the year. Surprisingly, the largest age group using Twitter is between the ages of 35-49. The article also states that 62% of the users access the application from work. Read the full article here.

Small Business Owners and Social Media

This afternoon I came across this post on ZDNet which discusses the findings of a recent survey conducted by online payroll service SurePayroll. According to this survey, 55 percent of 120 small businesses surveyed believe that online social networking like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are extremely beneficial to their business. One of out 5 businesses surveyed even mentioned that they have gained at least one new customer because of social media. Interesting stats…

Even smaller companies are beginning to discover that social media is not just only for personal use; it is a must for business success. The survey provides information on small businesses reaching a customer base through online communities, but where are the stats for benefits for small businesses on using social media internally? Does anyone have any input on the usage of enterprise 2.0 in small companies?

ESME: Twitter for the Enterprise

Here is a video preview of a new tool for enterprise 2.0. Called ESME (Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment) it is similar to twitter but for SAP’s ‘Netweaver’ SOA. As this article explains it:

“is essentially a behind the firewall version of Twitter, designed to run on top of Netweaver. In some ways ESME is more advanced than Twitter since it features user groups and tag clouds, enabling project based contextual messaging.”

In a review from ZDNet they say:

“In the meantime the community around ESME should be congratulated for pushing the envelope. This is a valuable differentiator for the enterprise focused, which is helpful in cutting out some of the Twitter inanity and focusing on powerful business case uses of social networking.”

Below is a demo video of ESME: