In the early part of the new millennia, there was a thriving underground movement on the internet that was centered on dating and social networking websites. Early risers to the top included Friendster and Facebook. In recent years, the king of social sites, MySpace, went corporate, Facebook opened up to users who weren't students, LinkedIn went after professionals, and a little company called Twitter burst onto the scene. One thing in common with all of these sites is that they are all social tools designed to connect their users in new and interesting ways.

In an article in BusinessWeek, Karen E. Klein writes about how inspiring these social networking sites have become, not only in how they do what they do, but in how they have leapt to the forefront of our social conscious and begun to affect our economy. In her article she answers the question: How useful would these sites actually be for a business?

A profile of your business on MySpace can create some publicity, though you would have to make most of the first gestures to your target market. However, you could link it to your business's profile on Facebook and capitalize on the extensive group and network capability there. You and all of your leadership – including whichever employee wanted to help out – could network your profiles on LinkedIn and tie them to the company profiles on MySpace and Facebook.

That all builds up alternative web presence; now it's time to do some communicating. This is where Twitter comes in. Twitter is a website that allows a profile – in this case your business -- to message all of its "friends" at once through texts, emails, and instant messaging. In addition to that, fans can elect to "follow" your company and receive those same messages. Get enough of a following, and there could be some real movement the next time your company twitters, "Check my myspace page, new product out today!"