Linkedin is fastest-growing social network, Blogger top blog service

AMONG TOP SOCIAL NETWORKS, LINKED-IN was the fastest-growing over the last year, according to October ratings released Wednesday by Nielsen Online.

The site geared toward professional users drew 4.9 million visitors last month, up from 1.7 million a year ago.

Other fast-growing social networks included kiddie site Club Penguin, up 157% to 3.8 million users, and Facebook, more than doubling its audience to 19.5 million in the last year. MySpace remained the top social network with 58.8 million users, up 19% from 2006.

Blogger was the top blog-hosting service in October with 34 million users, followed by WordPress.com (11.4 million) and Six Apart (10.6 million.

Source: Mediapost

Blog your way past (most) Fortune 500 companies

Word of mouse marketing and web 2.0 are a couple of buzz words that you can't avoid if you spend much time at all on the internet, or if you eves drop on any marketing meetings at big company marketing departments.

Yet, less than 10% of the Fortune 500 companies employ a blog or similar online new media tool.

Says John Janstch of Duct Tape Marketing Blog "...if you don’t tap the power of the Internet in smart, relevant, engaging and community building ways you will become last year’s phone book. See, my daughters - heading squarely into the prime marketing demographic - wouldn’t know what to do with a Yellow Pages directory if you handed one to them, don’t watch much TV (never watch network TV), and don’t really listen to radio - it’s more like they snack on it for about 25 seconds a song."

With the cusp of the prime marketing demographic being raised on new media focused around communities and word of mouth referral through social networking site and peer evaluation sites, businesses should spend as much energy - and possibly as much money on online focused marketing as they do on "traditional" marketing.