Fantastic stuff here.

In this report, the 2010 Social Media trends are foretasted by:

@petecashmore PETE CASHMORE Founder, CEO Mashable
@armano DAVID ARMANO Senior Partner, Dachis Group Author, Logic and Emotion
@chrisbrogan CHRIS BROGAN President, New Marketing Labs
@peterkim PETER KIM Managing Director, N.America Dachis Group
@seth SETH GODIN, Bestselling Author, Entrepreneur & Agent of change
@litmanlive MICHAEL LITMAN Social Media Strategist Consolidated PR
@tamar TAMAR WEINBERG, Community & Marketing Manager, Mashable
@johnbattelle JOHN BATTELLE Founder & Chairman Federated Media
@mariansalzman MARIAN SALZMAN President, N.America Euro PR, Trend Spotter & Author
@mzkagan MARTA KAGAN Managing Director, US Espresso- Brand Infiltration
@danzarrella DAN ZARRELLA Social & Viral Marketing Scientist HubSpot
@emarketer eMARKETER Digital Intelligence
@drewmclellan DREW McLELLAN Founder and Author The Marketing Minute
@idc CAROLINE DANGSON Digital Marketplace Research Analyst IDC
@jasonfalls JASON FALLS Social Media Strategist Social Media Explorer
@charleneli CHARLENE LI Founder Altimeter Group
@gauravonomics GAURAV MISHRA CEO 2020 Social Online
@marc_meyer MARC MEYER Principal Digital Marketing Response Group
@emarketer JEFFREY GARU Senior Analyst eMarketer 2010
@jimmy_wales JIMMY WALES Founder Wikipedia
@alecjross ALEC ROSS Sr Advisor -Innovation State Department
@CraigNewmark CRAIG NEWMARK Fonder of Craiglist
@scobleizer ROBERT SCOBLE Technical Evangelist Rackspace
@dmscott DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT Marketing Strategist & Author World Wide Rave
@roncallari RON CALLARI Social Media
@ravit_ustrategy RAVIT LICHTENBERG Founder & Chief Strategist Ustrategy.com
@equalman ERIK QUALMAN Author Socialnomics
@pgillin PAUL GILLIN Writer, Author & Social Media Consultant Principal
@adambroitman ADAM BROITMAN Partner & Ringleader Circ.us
@cbensen CONNIE BENSEN Director of Social Media & Community Strategy Alterian
@mikearauz MIKE ARAUZ Strategist Undercurrent
@nenshad Nenshad Badoliwalla Co-author Driven to Performance
@adamcohen ADAM COHEN Partner Rosetta
@danielwaisberg DANIEL WAISBERG Head of Web Analytics Easynet
@commnunitygirl ANGELA CONNOR Journalist & Community Strategist
@trendsspotting TALY WEISS CEO and Head of Research TrendsSpotting.com

Findings: Major trends in 2010 Social Media

Across many of these predictions, we have identified the following trends suggested to influence 2010 Social Media: Mobile, Location, Transparency, Measurement, ROI, Privacy.

Duracell has hatched an interesting campaign in New York’s Times Square which offers a chance to participate in some crowd-sourced power generation.

The battery manufacturer unveiled their Smart Power lab last week, where visitors can come to charge gadgets for free, play Xbox games, and expend some energy to help power the 2010 numerals for the New Years Eve ball drop. The “Power Rover”, a stationary bike-like device will capture and convert users pedaling into electricity.

[via GoodCleanTech]

While the business digital divide – at least in the marketing and media industries – feels to be closing, there’s another rift less discussed:  a divide between those with digital influence/share of voice and those without.  And it’s a rift that grows wider daily.

Many businesses and individuals who embraced content marketing years ago are seeing strong returns and are far ahead of those starting today.  I started pondering why this is and jotted down the following list:

1.  The web rewards a long term commitment. We’re weary of companies and people not only new to us, but new to a network.  For example, even if a company you know creates a digital channel, they’re still in many ways starting from scratch for creating a digital reputation and interacting through social technologies.  I’ve seen this to be true across channels and networks.  While in the future we will see no difference between a company’s digital and physical presence, (they will merge) today this is not yet so.  Since we’ve not realized this yet, many experience growing pains and may or may not push through them to see real rewards.

2.  More content = more potential entry points, more links. It kills me to see companies again and again misunderstand the web, and miss the benefits of creating archives of digital content by removing or deleting material.  Yet, those companies who comprehend the value of building out their content over time just continue to accumulate more digital influence and steadily gain greater share of voice.  More content = more hooks in the water for search, more potential pages for users to share and helps establish a brand as referential.  It’s not about quantity or quality alone – you need both.

3.  Those who have been at it awhile have refined their digital processes.  This takes time, especially if you/your company are unstructured for it or are technically unsavvy.  Although I would argue at this point you don’t need someone such as a social media expert, you just need a good marketer (all marketers should understand the web by now).  As an aside, how any company can hire marketers/PR pros who are not fluent in digital media is beyond me.

4.  Sophisticated people and companies have already built a tribe. Those with comprehension of what a digital society enables have been building an organic, opt-in subscribers base for years.  Many are reaching tipping points where those subscribers are producing strong ROI for that company or person.  In many ways, a subscriber base/community provides the ultimate marketing advantage over competitors.

5.  Key relationships with other influencers have been formed organically over time by showing a long term commitment.  In addition to a subscriber base which allows for influence at scale; intimate, personal relationships (the non-scalable kind) with others on the leading edge of the digital divide creates mutual growth.

6.  More iterations of campaigns leads to better marketing.  Those who have been engaged in digital marketing for nearly a decade or more have an innate understanding of leveraging the web for end business objectives.  There is no replacement for experience.

7.  Understanding of how pull PR works. While some companies continue to engage in the cat-and-mouse game of media pitching, a few smart marketers and even media organizations are embracing a pull strategy.  You could do both, sure – but so few companies have the faintest idea how to pitch a blogger.  Smart push tactics do work, but they should still feed into a pull strategy.

8.  Attraction of web-literate team members.  Marketing/PR agencies and companies who cling to the past are not going to attract the same talent as those pushing boundaries.  Web-savvy communication professionals want to work with other web-savvy professionals.  It’s really frustrating not to, and with hiring paradoxically harder in a downtown yet no slowdown in demand for talented digital marketers, there is no reason they have to.

9.  Marketers who take a “head in the sand” approach to digital hold companies back. Social media is not new, and if you think it is you’re already devastatingly far behind in digital influence.  Ignore the social web at your own peril – companies who take a wait and see approach have already yielded a lot of ground to agile competitors.  Marketers who treat the web as an experiment thrive.

10.  Others have already grabbed SERPs/domains/social sites. Those on the wrong side of the digital influence rift are facing challenges such as reputation management issues on search engine pages, loss of brand name URLs/profiles and missing the chance at having a community.  Users may have already decided how certain brands should be perceived digitally before that company is able to carve out a reputation for themselves.  This also applies to professionals:  how many of you don’t own your name on key channels, or appear on page one of searches?  It’s a loss of incalculable value not to have these.

This is a (very) short list of items explaining the widening divide in digital influence.  If you’ve got more, add them in the comments, I’m curious to hear.

This is quite an interesting study due to the fact it looks at the 500 fastest growing companies in the USA and how they are using Social Media.

 The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recently conducted a new in-depth and statistically significant study on the usage of social media in fast-growing corporations. 

 The new study compares adoption of social media over three years (2007, 2008 and 2009) by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies compiled annually by Inc. Magazine. For details about the 2009 Inc. 500 and the complete directory of the included companies, please visit Inc. Magazine’s website at www.Inc.com.

In 2007, the Center’s first study of this group and their use of social media was released and revealed that the Inc. 500 was outpacing the more traditional and larger Fortune 500 companies in their use of social media. For example, at that time, some research showed

•  8% of the Fortune 500 companies were blogging compared to
• 19% of the Inc. 500.

This difference continued in 2008 with

• 16% of the Fortune 500 blogging vs.
• 39% of the Inc. 500.

And it appears the Inc. 500’s lead in blogging will continue in 2009 with the Inc. 500 now blogging at a rate of

• 45%. (The update on the Fortune 500 is expected soon.).

Note: There has been a 237% increase in blogging by the USA’s 500 fastest growing companies,it is also interesting to note that significant 41% of those who don’t have a blog are intending to implement one.

This research proves once again that social media has penetrated parts of the business world at a tremendous speed. It also indicates that corporate familiarity with and usage of social media within the Inc. 500 has continued to grow in the past 12 months. 

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.  

7  Highlights

1. Social networking continues to lead the way. The technology that continues to be the most familiar to the Inc. 500 is social networking with 75% of respondents in 2009 claiming to be “very familiar with it” (compared to 57% in 2008). Another noteworthy statistic around familiarity is Twitter’s amazing “share of mind” with sixty-two percent of executives reported being familiar with the new microblogging and social networking platform.
2. The adoption curves for different social media technologies are not all the same. Interestingly, while social networking and blogging have enjoyed growth in actual adoption, the use of message boards, online video, wikis and podcasting has leveled off or declined. The addition of Twitter (considered by respondents to be both a microblogging site and a social networking site) in the latest study shows that an amazing 52% of the Inc. 500 companies are already using this tool for their business.
3. Regardless of the particular technology, social media matters and is here to stay. Forty-three percent of the 2009 Inc. 500 reported social media was “very important” to their business/marketing strategy. And an incredible 91% of the Inc. 500 is using at least one social media tool in 2009 (up from 77% in 2008). In addition, as they ramp up their usage, the Inc. 500 companies are also seeking to protect themselves legally, with 36% having implemented a formal policy concerning blogging by their employees.
4. Social Media that has levelled off or declined are
   • Message Boards 28%
   • Online Video 36%
   • Wikis 25%
   • Podcasting 12%
5. Social Media that has increased
   • Social Networking 80%
   • Blogging 45%
   • Twitter 52%
6. Online Video though slightly declining in use in corporations, their intent to to adopt appears strong with 36% planning to  to use online video, just behind Blogging
7. For monitoring conversations online on social media about their brand, 68% of companies were doing this in 2009

So are you planning to use social media or blog?

Maybe it's an artifact of the native-adopter digital divide. Maybe it's merely a blind spot to our own complex behavior. Whatever the reason, what most of us think about how teens use the internet is wrong.

Myth #1: Teenagers are much heavier users of the internet than "we" are.

Fact: Even when you take out our work lives, adults 25 - 44 are the heaviest users of the internet. It's not our kids who are online all the time, it's us. Just at home, we're browsing ~34 hours a month, compared to 10 for the teen set. Even when it comes to relatively new behaviors, like watching video online, adults consume significantly more.

Check out these numbers from recent Nielsen research:

 

 

Myth #2: Teenagers are much savvier users of the internet than "we" are - connected around the globe, loose in social networks, generally leading the charge into a brave new world.

Fact: Just because technology has changed doesn't mean being a teenager has.

This is a sketch I shared at work recently about the profoundly different ways that "grownups" (us) and teens use social networks and media. Teens are much more likely to have a closer-in world view, to be cautious when putting themselves out there, to be worried about how they'll be perceived. While we're out boldly networking with everyone from our high school sweethearts to someone we met at a conference the other day, they're typing with the same people they sit across the lunch table with.