The past few posts I've been focusing my research and attention on the phenomenon of social media. I have to admit it fascinates me, but the goal of course is to make it work, from a business stand point. How can online social networking help your business? And how do you choose from the hundreds of sites that make this available?

I'm going to deal with a number of well-known sites, each one I have reviewed in the last few weeks. Now I'm going to list out each service's pros and cons so they can all be compared.

Pros:

• Networking Intensive
• Open and chatty community
• real time answers.

Cons:

• Time intensive
• Navigation not intuitive
• Leans towards the internet savvy

Pros:

• Great way to "poll"
• Close to Real Time but simple to use
• Ability to automatically feed blog posts

Cons:

• Too much down time
• Often Tweeple are more interested in getting follower than networking
• Superfluous information

Pros:

• Community Opportunity
• Clean Profile look - user friendly
• Ability to create applications, events and blog posts

Cons:

• Audience not "marketing" friendly
• Networking more social
• Ability to be tagged in notes and images that may not be work appropriate

Pros:

• Massive Audience
• Forum opportunity
• Widely-Accepting to advertising

Cons:

• Spammy
• "Bathroom wall of the internet" - reputation isn't great
• Friend Collectors instead of clients

Pros:

• Simple, Clean, Business-friendly
• Opportunity to get business feedback
• Chance to get reviewed by clients

Cons:

• People may "reject" your link because they don't remember you
• Many users don't check-up on their profile regularly
• Not all people network with others they actually know

Pros:

• Viral effect for blogs
• Simple way to get noticed
• Easy to use

Cons:

• Many people "digg" things because their friends do, not because they like it
• Hitting the front page of Digg has been known to crash websites from too much traffic
• Millions of submission to compete with

Pros:

• Easy for any website
• Allows for site indexing
• Allows for reviews and keywords

Cons:

• Takes a little more time
• Can be bad for niche sites with advertising
• Allows the opportunity for people to rate you negatively

Pros:

• One of the longest standing Social Bookmarking sites
• Allows you to import bookmarks
• Ability to share of keep private based on user needs

Cons:

• Usefulness is merely just an extra link without good user connections
• A hassle without a toolbar extension
• Format is not instinctive

Are there any other social media sites you'd like to see reviewed and added to this list? Let me know what business tools you use.

Not only is StumbleUpon a great way to use up your free time, its also another essential tool for anyone with a website. In my last post I talked about Digg and how every blogger should use it, StumbleUpon is a great one for any level of website.

StumbleUpon falls in the social bookmarking category and again is a great widget to install on your blog. You can add an website to your Stumbleupon porfile and even write reviews for your own and others' website. You can also stumble every page on your site, so for example I can stumble my homepage, profile and every blog post. Again, the goal is to create a viral effect, more stumbles mean you are more likely to show up on the stumble website or show up for a "random" stumble. That's right, users can click the stumble button (if it is installed in their browser, or go to the StumbleUpon site) and automatically be taken to a website that matches their interests. What StumbleUpon sends you to is based on interests you've listed and other websites you've ranked.

Problogger talks about paid advertising through StumbleUpon. I personally don't promote paying for online marketing, (why? when there are so many ways to do it for free!) however, if you are interested, check out his some of his posts. Also remember to find other people you network with who stumble, this always increases your ranking and traffic.

Stumble through the web with us.