A study conducted by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on the Inc 500 (a list of fastest growing companies in US) reveals interesting trends on usage of Social Media. The 148 companies who responded were asked the same detailed questions concerning their usage and measurement of social media that were asked of the Inc. 500 approximately one year and two years earlier. Questions probed the familiarity of respondents with six prominent social media (blogging, podcasting, online video, social networking, message boards and wikis). In order to maintain the integrity of all comparisons, all those tools studied in the first two studies were included in this followup research. In 2009, several new tools were added including the popular microblogging service Twitter and other popular social networking sites like Linkedin, Facebook, and MySpace.
Here are some graphs pulled out from the report:
You could get the report (pdf) from the CMR website.
Three things that stand out for us:
1. Twitter has arrived with a bang in 2009.
2. Soon, there will be very few companies NOT using any of the social media. Does this automatically means barriers will reduce for use of social media for learning as well?
3. An amazingly high near 80% of respondents feel social media is useful for their business/marketing strategy.
