A blog has many benefits for any business, and by clicking the “blogging”category link in the nav bar on the right you can read all about them. But there’s one blog benefit that applies to anyone… It’s empowering.

Blogs and Social Media (YouTube, Twitter, etc) have given the “Daniels” of the world something potent to use against  business “Goliaths” who BB (before blogs) could get away with some pretty irresponsible stuff. And, by “Goliath” I don’t just mean a huge corporate giant. It could also be a badly behaved doctor… like Dr. Joan Gerwitz, a Stamford, CT  ophthalmologist who I saw this week. Without going into unnecessary detail my experience with Dr. Joan Gerwitz was not a good one and I’d hate for anyone seeking a Stamford, CT  ophthalmologist to experience what I did.

Whether, or not, this post about Dr. Joan Gerwitz will make a difference is questionable. But, just knowing that it could makes me feel a helluva lot better.

That is the question. Is it a useful tool, or not? What’s your take?

Question of the Week:

How many people do you think really follow those whom they claim to be following? Or, are they “following” primarily as an ego-fueled attempt to try to get more followers for perception value?

from eMarketer.com / May ‘09:

Call it the Oprah Effect. Or maybe it was all the publicity generated by the Ashton Kutcher/Ted Turner race to reach a million followers. Whatever the cause, there is a growing fear that the mammoth microblogging site may be overexposed, overhyped and underused.

It is true that Twitter’s growth is skyrocketing. No one argues that. eMarketer estimates there will be over 12 million Twitter users in the US in 2009, slightly more than twice last year’s number.

But figures released by Nielsen Online suggest that Twitter’s retention rate is only 40%. In other words, as David Martin wrote on the Nielsen blog, “Currently, more than 60% of US Twitter users fail to return the following month.” Not so good.

(more…)

Well, at least according to Josh at SuperNews!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/technology/personaltech/12pogue.html?_r=1&em

If YouTube and Facebook were the hot social media sites of ‘08, my cutting-edge online friends suggest that Twitter may be the one for ‘09. It certainly is getting lots of buzz. So, to satisfy my curiosity I just did a little research to find out exactly who these Twitter people are.

The most significant, and recent, thing I found was this Aug. ‘08 article from TIME magazine which states that “the site’s largest age demographic is 35-to-44-year-olds, who make up 25.9% of its users.” That may be true, but it’s also a bit misleading if about 60% of Twitter users are under 35 … with a majority of those under 30. Which is the case. This graph shows the breakdown as of April ‘08.

But, if you’d like, feel free to weigh in on this demographic question.

Use Twitter? If so, how often? How old are you? And, do you find it useful?