Because they’re typically steeped in subjectivity, product reviews tend to be more effective when grouped together. This is generally why you, the consumer, often want to consult with multiple sources and individual perspectives in order to make an informed decision before you proceed to checkout. So, just to make things a little easier for you, we’ve put together a brief list of places on the Web you might like to go to stock up on opinions about a myriad of products, from gadgets to vehicles to attire to the miscellaneous, before laying down your hard earned cash.

Perhaps the most abundant catalogue of product reviews on the Internet, Epinions, a Shopping.com property, is a megaplex of pretty much everything under the sun that pertains to human lifestyles of all sorts. Indeed, its supply of notes about electronics is vast, but it is also holds its fair share of opinions on travel, restaurants, and food and drink. Suffice it to say that its variety is as much a strength as is the sheer volume of information it manages today.

A bit more rough-cut, but supported by Web-based heavyweights (About.com, NYTCo), ConsumerSearch is touted as a reviewer of reviews. While not the prettiest player in the market, the quantity of information found on its servers is quite large. If you’re willing to forgive its bland interface, you might find it a resource worth visiting and revisiting once in a while.

This one’s an oldie for sure, but still relevant. Some might pass it off as a review source too focused on detailed research and less about connecting consumers with the broadest product list possible, but ConsumerReports has been trusted by a large number of readers for many years, and continues to play a very active role in the field. If nothing else, it’s one more place to go to achieve that well-rounded view you’re seeking.

Amazon is a retail giant, for sure, but its product reviews are a massive resource in and of themselves. Some items will show pages of feedback, while others will show less, or maybe none at all. But taken as a whole, Amazon is a destination as valuable for its convenient shopping mechanisms as for its consumer commentary.

If electronics are your focus, CNET carries some merit among review sites. The in-house review staff at CNET regularly put out text and video reviews of gadgets built for business and personal use, and user input helps to complete the picture. CNET was purchased by CBS not too long ago, and some are expecting the adoptive parent to focus more on the TV-style projects being produced at the technology site, but for the time being, CNET is still a decent choice for aggregate opinion.

We covered Sazze earlier this year when it introduced itself as product review site with a social component, and it continues to look like a solid place for reviews. Its home page highlights a select number of products, and beneath the cover there are thousands more. There’s a good chance you’ll find what you’re looking for here, and each page is laid out intelligently, so it’s all very easy to browse.

Reevoo launched last summer, and in that time it has built itself a bit of an international name with the debut of a French adjunct in March of this year. Simple enough to use, with a database fronted by five main categories - ‘Phones & Computing,’ ‘Entertainment,’ ‘Photography,’ ‘Home & DIY,’ and ‘Toys & Baby’ - Reevoo has quite a lot of reviews and ratings beneath the hood. Take a look, we say. You might like it.

Not to be confused with the option above, Retrevo is sort of a hybrid of reviews and general product information (product manuals, etc.). The site is completely intuitive, and while its presentation of data might not be everyone’s favorite cup of tea, its gets the job done.

You might like it for its name alone, Buzzillions, but past the title, it’s actually a good piece of kit. It has a wide reach across the product realm, and everything is pleasantly wrapped. It is for sure one of the better places to visit among sites listed here.

Another product search and review engine that presents itself as infused with expertise, Crowdstorm is low on material on its front page, which might be a touch disappointing for some visitors, but its method of delivering information is rather interesting. You can browse for products manually, or ask for “expert” advice on stuff you seek to buy. Crowdstorm operates sites for both US- and UK-based audiences.

PEbuzz is one part social network and one part gadget review joint. We offered a few thoughts on the site some weeks back, and while it could definitely use a nicer, more modern exterior, it may well be what you’re after. For what it’s worth, PEbuzz is free to join.

Photo enthusiast are you? Look no further than Digital Photography Review. Covering everything from the latest industry news to detailed - and we mean detailed - product reviews and comparisons, DPR is the place you want to go for anything to do with digital imagery.

RateItAll has some decent offerings. It likes to tout lists having to do with anything deemed culturally or consumeristically (not part of the official lexicon, but we’ll go with it all the same) significant by the populace. Will this serve you well? That depends. If you’ve read this far, it’s safe to assume you’re privy to lists. And RateItAll is right down that alley. The site also offers applications for Facebook and MySpace users.

Omgili covers more than just product reviews. Or, as it describes them, “consumer experiences.” But part of the puzzle has to do with stuff you buy, so what they hey, it gets the final spot here. Enter a search term, and you’ll get back a search page with product results along with ratings bars that manage five degrees of buyer approval/disapproval, from “excellent” to “miserable.” Omgili pulls reviews from about seven independent sources, including Amazon, PriceGrabber, NewEgg, CNET, Target, Yahoo Shopping, and Edmunds.

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

ExpoTV Adds DFJ Gotham to Round of Venture Funding
Amazon Launches Product Wiki
About.com Takes ConsumerSearch for $33M
Testfreaks Launches Alpha Review Site; Seeks Testers
Amazon Acquires Digital Photography Review Site
Ciao Launches Lists Function: What’s On Your Top 10?
Crowdstorm Still Kicking

There are only so many hours in a day, and you’ve got to determine which social media tools drive business, which ones build community, and where you can learn the most in the process. Maybe you’ve built a blog or a home page or some other starting point for your online presence. How do you manage the rest of your online presence, and how do you keep track of everything? I have some ideas for you. Let’s start by building the following:

Listening Post

Get a Google account and get Google Reader. Go to Technorati and Google Blogsearch. Find the search bar and put in:

-Your name in quotes.
-Your company name (if that matters).
-Your competition’s name.
-keywords to your industry.

Every time you do a search, look for the orange RSS subscription button on Technorati, and click it. Look for the RSS subscription link to the left on Google Blogsearch. Click it. Add all of these to your Google Reader (upper left area of the left sidebar).

You’ve just built a rudimentary listening post.

A Social Hub or Two

Go to FriendFeed. Build an account and add your blog, your Flickr photos, your Upcoming.org, and your whatever-you’re-doing-on-the-Web into it. This is another way to share out what you’re doing, but also another place where conversations are happening that you might not see if you’re not there with another kind of listening post.

You might also check out Lijit, a service that offers a different spin on a similar thing.

Some Social Network Outposts

At this point, my top 3 choices for social networks are:

-LinkedIn - for professional networking.
-Facebook - for social circles.
-Twitter - for everyday conversation and networking.

I belong to and use several other networks for different things, including Utterz (I’m on their advisory board), Flickr, several Ning sites, and a few other niche things. The three listed above are the ones I think have the most resonance. You might substitute MySpace for Facebook. You might like Jaiku more than Twitter. The details don’t matter. I just listed what I feel are the best choices at present.

On those sites, amongst other things, be sure to point links back to your primary site or your blog. Thread the needle for people.

Note: several of these sites also have RSS subscriptions for comments and other updates. You can add those to your Google Reader, too, to keep track of it all.

What to Do With It All

This is partially difficult to answer, as it’s up to you what your goals are for using social media. But some of the things you can do once you have this all in place are:

-Learn who’s talking about you (or your company, or the other keywords you put into your reader), and engage them in conversation on their site.

-Make relationships with others before you need them on social networks.

-Find other professionals in your field, or in unrelated fields on social networks.

-Connect with old friends and business colleagues.

-Discover new people through reading and learning, and follow the media they make on the various networks, and/or in Friendfeed.

-Learn more about your competitors through the media they make, and discover where you can build more value.

Obviously, there are dozens more possibilities. If nothing, I hope to have provided a potential starter kit for managing some of the elements of online presence around your primary blog or website. You might have some different experiences along the way, and some parts might not work, so feel free to adjust. Your mileage may vary.

Would you add anything else to this premise?

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

GMnext Is an Online Car Show (With Commercials and Without the Models)
Podcast: A Conversation with Metacafe’s Michelle Cox
NetShops Adds Google Brand Executive to the Team
ad:tech Panel: Advertisers Crave Social Networks and Social Media
PopularMedia, Getting Your Brand Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Google Still The World’s No. 1 Brand
Yahoo To Launch Brand Sites with Avatars, Yahoo Answers, del.icio.us, Flickr and More

Company Name: Copenda
Founded in: 2007
Location: Tel Aviv

I had the chance to interview Gadi Reichman and Tal Cohen from Copenda, the Israeli startup that offers an online social people search that allows users to find new friends and dating partners across social networks and dating sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Match, Plentyoffish, and more. Gadi and Tal founded the company with David Kariv nearly a year ago when the trio noticed a trend that young people were searching social networks for dating partners rather than searching dating sites.

In our video interview below, I speak with Gadi and Tal about the birth of Copenda, the service’s features, and the various projects they have lined up for the future.

Ayelet Noff, also known as blogger Blonde 2.0, is a social marketing strategist and consultant who has been an influential force in the Israeli tech scene for many years. Noff specializes in helping companies strategically market their brands online.

[Disclosure: Copenda is a past sponsor of Mashable events]

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Announcing MashBash Tel Aviv and Israel Media Tour
Shalom and Welcome to the Israel Media Tour
Discount Code for IsraelWebTour, Hosted by Microsoft
Now Available: Final Tickets for MashBash Tel Aviv
MashBash Tel Aviv and Israel Media Tour Updates - Last Set of Tickets
MashBash Tel Aviv Adds 300 Tickets to Meet Demand
MashBash Tel Aviv and Israel Media Tour

Thanks to this week’s advertisers and partners for helping us grow to be the #1 social news blog in the world.

Advertise with us and get noticed.

Help us to help you. Mashable is seeking out site sponsors for our large diverse audience — social media users, venture capitalists, PR people, developers, bloggers, and many more. You’ll receive hundreds of thousands of views a day in addition to weekly recognition to thank you as our premium sponsors. Are you interested? Contact us for more information and to receive our brand new media kit and rate card.

This week, our valued sponsors are EdgeCast, IDrive, Clickatell, and Userplane.

EdgeCast Networks offers a superior, cost-effective, global content delivery service that gives our customers competitive advantage in the delivery of digital media. Our world-class content delivery platform provides customers the cost benefits and flexibility of controlling their own content delivery network while liberating them from ISP contracts, capital investments and operational hassles.

Social Networks and Applications are the bread and butter of the new age Internet, commonly referred to as Web2.0. Clickatell believes that using SMS to bind the two worlds together is the most cost effective, reliable and simple to implement method available. With Clickatell’s truly global reach, your social application can now extend its mobile communications channel to 750 networks spanning 212 countries

IDrive is a leading Consumer and Small Business focused Online Backup service. IDrive is a simple and safe way to back up all the important stuff on your computer. A copy of user data is stored in a secure, remote location for safekeeping, so that in the event of disaster user data is retrievable from anywhere via Internet. IDrive’s features include automated critical data selection and scheduling via web as well as desktop agent, fast search to backup data, central console to manage multiple accounts, Continuous Data Backup, Open File and Locked file backup, Virtual Drive access and many more.

Userplane is the premier communication platform for online communities. The company’s hosted applications enable instant community and communication for websites of any scale and audience. The combination of instant and elegant with robust and powerful has made the platform a must-have for thriving sites worldwide - supporting millions of daily users.

Additionally, thanks to the following partners for making Mashable happen:

Thanks to ConVerdge for implementing our My Mashable social network and W3 MARKUP for the development and maintenance of Mashable.com

We can get your name out there.

Contact us for more information on supporting Mashable’s growth and development. Alternatively, visit our advertise section for more details about:

-Competitive direct ad sales
-Sponsorship Opportunities for Events, The Daily Poll, and other channels
-Sponsored giveaways and contests
-Custom ad deals and partnerships

CPM-based advertising is available through our partner, Federated Media, but contact us for information and unpublished discounts.

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

The Billboard: Big It Up for PartnerUp and KillerStartups
Thanks to Our Sponsors: PartnerUp and KillerStartUps
Thanks to This Week’s Sponsors: PartnerUp and KillerStartups
About Us
Big Thanks to Our Sponsors: PartnerUp, KillerStartups, and ShareThis
Thanks to this Week’s Sponsors: PartnerUp, KillerStartups, ShareThis, and Kluster
Thanks to Leap Year 2008 Sponsors: ShareThis, Kluster, KillerStartups, and PartnerUp

Google has acquired Russian contextual advertising company Begun from Rambler Media for a total of $140 million.

Begun is currently owned by two companies: Rambler Media owns 50.1% of Begun, while Bannatyne Limited owns the remaining 49.9%. Under the terms of the deal, Rambler will first buy Bannatyne’s stake and then sell the entire company to google.

Begun is one of the leading ad services in Russia’s huge market, but knowing Google’s acquisition history, they’re probably not in it only for the market share, but also for the technology.

*Update: Svetlana Gladkova from Profy, who’s well informed on the subject, explains in a comment below and in a blog post that Begun is not only one of the leaders in Russia’s contextual ad market, it’s almost a monopoly, so market share is definitely a big reason for Google’s acquisition.

From the official PR [PDF link]:

“Rambler Media Ltd. (“Rambler” or “the Company”), operating one of Russia’s most popular internet brands, announces that it has agreed to sell its contextual advertising company ZAO Begun (“Begun”) and related subsidiaries to Google. Rambler currently holds 50.1% of Begun. The transaction will consist of Rambler buying the remaining 49.9% stake in Begun from Bannatyne Limited, affiliated with the Finam group of companies, immediately after which Rambler will sell 100% of Begun to Google subject to certain approvals and conditions precedent for a total cash consideration of US$140 million, of which US$69.9 million is attributable to Bannatyne, with customary closing adjustments.

Rambler’s net gain from the disposal is expected to be approximately US$50 million after all direct costs associated with the transaction. Proceeds received in respect of the sale of its holdings in Begun will be retained by the Company for further investments and potential acquisitions in line with Rambler’s stated strategy. The Company’s net cash position after the completion of this sale is expected to reach US$100 million. The Company’s directors consider, having consulted with its nominated adviser, ING, that the terms of the transaction are fair and reasonable insofar as its shareholders are concerned.”

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

LiveJournal Announces Russian Partnership
It’s Official…Google Buys MeasureMap
Ask.com Launches AdSense Competitor
Blinkx Launching Video AdSense
Google Answers to Make Triumphant Return?
How I Spent My Billions: A Brief History of Ad Network Acquisitions
Google Answers to Bring Back Human Powered Search

There’s a wikipedian event called Wikimania 2008 happening in Alexandria, Egypt from 17-19 July. One of the main topics discussed is something called “flagged revisions”, an experiment that’s already taken place in some iterations of Wikipedia - its German version, for instance. Simply put, it means that no changes will appear on Wikipedia without the approval of an expert.

Without going into the technical implications of this obviously large-scale operation, or even the problems that might arise when you try to define who’s “expert” in what field, the main thing that interests me is this: will this make Wikipedia just another boring encyclopedia?

I know that Wikipedia has problems with vandalism. I also know that it’s not 100% accurate (no encyclopedia is, but Wikipedia is probably a bit worse with this regard). And I know about the issues of gaming Wikipedia, be it for fun or profit.

However, I’ve gotten used to this. I don’t care if some jerk somewhere will change the national anthem of some country to a Morbid Angel tune. If it happens, the community will fix it soon; and if someone gets really offended and worked up in the meantime, well, that someone has too much time on his hands.

The experiment is being conducted carefully, which is a good thing. NYTimes writes:

“The Germans who are implementing the idea stress that the checkers are not a heavy hand, but are doing the most cursory examination to see that no curse words or obvious non sequiturs have been added. While some revisions can wait a day, usually they only take minutes, as checkers like Mr. Schindler spend hours going through lists of changes to approve.

Also, they point out that edits that haven’t been approved are still in the system and show up to anyone who later wants to make edits. So contributions would not be lost or overwritten as they wait for a checker to approve them.“

The bottom line, however, is that Wikipedia is an incredibly fast source of news on not only important events but also on a million little things such as the color of the lightsaber, and having to wait for editors to go through all that might make Wikipedia a bit dull. Hopefully, the final solution they come up with will manage to avoid that.

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Despite Recent Drama, Wikipedia Gets $3 Million Donation
Wikipedia Bans Overstock.com
Wikipedia: 2 Million Entries
Wikipedia May Add Color-Coding to Mark Bad Entries
Mashups Page Now on Wikipedia!
Wikipedia Now Uses Creative Commons
Wikipedia Interest Shows Support for Ron Paul. Why?

In what seems to be a continuation of a never ending growth pattern by Meebo, it was widely reported this morning that they’re now going to be offering branded chat for social networks and online communities. They have a staggering list of volunteer launch partners as well, including DanceJam, Flixster, myYearbook, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group’s AddictingGames, Piczo, SparkArt, Sugar Publishing and Tagged.

Sean and I had a great discussion with two of the three founders of Meebo on today’s Mashable Conversations, and we came away with two main things that really are noteworthy about this implementation, aside from the technology aspects of it.

First of all, the sheer size of the expected network growth is particularly eye-popping.  According to Seth, Meebo, after implementation is finished, will have a global reach of 54.7 million, including an unduplicated reach in the US of 23.3 million. This is accomplished by allowing inter-site communication.  If you sign up on Piczo, for instance, you’ll be able to speak with users from Flixter.  This is accomplished by use of the XMPP (Jabber) architecture for the IM service backend.

The other thing particularly noteworthy is that each partner is entering into a revenue sharing agreement, so that advertising supported chat will not only be a tool to significantly increase stickiness, but it will be a profit center as well.

Aside from that, we got a little bit of insight into exactly where the name Meebo comes from - you can too.  The video is embedded below (or you can download the MP4 version here).

Never Miss an Episode!
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed).
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Meebo Rooms Launches API and an Ad Network to Monetize It
Meebo Firefox Extension Now Live
Create Custom Designed Meebo Rooms
Meebo Plugin Now Available for Facebook
Meebo’s Breakthrough: File Transfer Between IM Networks
Meebo’s Chinese Clone Causing Too Much Trouble
Meebo’s Custom Chat Rooms for New Advertising Options

PodTech, one of the earliest companies to form around the concept of podcasting, has finally seen an exit following what can best be described as an extremely tumultuous history. As someone who’s followed the saga of PodTech from the very beginning, the image to the public as well as what’s been going on behind the scenes has been at best, confusing.

Today, Eric Eldon over at VentureBeat is reporting that PodTech has been sold for a startlingly small sum: less than half a million. The buyer is a relative unknown called ViewPartner, supposedly a communications technology company. According to multiple sources, the company was expected to make $7 million in revenue on the production side alone.

The confusion about PodTech goes way back for folks like me who’ve been a part of the podcast community since its inception.  Most of the other organizations and networks that have formed around podcasting have all been grassroots in nature and PodTech bucked that trend by being squarely corporate, and thus a slight bit disconnected from the rest of the podcasting scene.

Still, that didn’t prevent them from having a bold plan for success employing social media and podcasting.  That’s why it was particularly confusing when the wheels started coming off the bus last year starting with funding issues, then Irina Slutsky being let go along with other employees and the Vloggies, then John Furrier essentially quitting, and his eventual abrupt leaving.

Then, last October Fake Steve Jobs broke the news that Robert Scoble was leaving the company, which was hastily denied, defended, and then fulfilled.

It’s a sad end for a company that held so much potential, but has lacked direction for quite some time now.  Just about everyone felt that the end was imminent, and while this isn’t exactly a eulogy for a dead company, there are a lot of folks who ended up with the short end of the stick on this deal.

I’m certain the analysis will be spun by many folks in the coming days that this is yet another nail in the coffin for the idea of podcasting and business being bedfellows.  Keep in mind that a company that was only a few years old went through a number of regime changes and strategy shifts, and where it ended up can’t be taken as a measure of what’s possible in the business.

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Podtech Is Alive And Well, Claims Scoble
PodTech Loses Founder John Furrier (Almost)
PodTech’s Demise Imminent?
Microsoft Beware: Adobe Flex Goes Open Source
PodTech.net Gets Scobleized
Out with Furrier’s Vloggies; In with Slutsky’s Winnies
FastCompany Launches Online Video Network Under Scoble

Some of the first-day statistics are in for JibJab’s video ditty for the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. And a number of figures, when placed side by side, are pretty interesting. It turns out that among the third-party channels utilized to spread the jingle far and wide, none other than Microsoft’s MSN Video site charted some 870,000 views, effectively landing it at #1. The industry giant YouTube netting just over 100k, placing it third, where it sat behind MySpace TV’s view count of 255k plus by the 24th hour.

This afternoon, those three channels report views of 907k, 157k, and 267k, respectively.

Where MSN Video failed to muster a good amount of momentum, however, is in user response. While YouTube and MySpace have seen thousands of viewer comment posts combined, Microsoft is largely barren, with a mere 6 to name currently. Peculiar? Oddities on the Web are known to surface, so this may well be MSN’s lucky day. More to the point, JibJab is showing a healthy start in its move toward matching or perhaps even surpassing the benchmark previously set by 2004’s famous “This Land is Your Land.”

Of course, ample time has not yet passed to offer a sensible prediction on the matter. We’ll have to revisit the comparison if and when a substantive trend arises.

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

JibJab Takes $3 Million in Fresh Funding
JibJab’s Hilarious Video Greeting Cards
Make Your Own JibJab Movies
Brain Dead Republicans & Zombie Democrats Duke it Out on JibJab
JibJab Debuts its Election Video Carnival for 2008
In Case You’re Still Not Ready for Valentines Day… JibJab and FaceSpace
Imeem Gets Full Length Horror Film: Debuts Next Week

Changing employee behavior is challenging, and social media participation is often looked at as an additional burden rather than leveraged to improve the efficiency of a current task. Unless traditional communications are replaced with social media infused conversations though, it’s difficult to seed corporate adoption of these new tools.

Here’s a list to stimulate ideas for better social media integration into traditional business practices, which we’ve broken down by department:

Human Resources

Introducing New Employees. Many companies ask new hires to send an email introduction to their department or to the entire company (depending on its size). Instead, start an internal blog or social network where new employees can post their introductions and connect with other employees that share their interests. Dow Chemical is one large company that launched an internal social network.

Employee Newsletters. Replace the monthly employee newsletter with regular updates to an internal blog. Use tags or keywords to categorize the content, which gives employees a searchable database of information about the company rather than a folder full of emails that are cumbersome to review. Then when employees contact HR with questions about 401(k) contributions or sick days, direct them to the appropriate post on the blog. Employees can also pose questions and HR will be able to answer them once for everyone to see.

Training. Depending on your business, consider leveraging one of many virtual world environments for training purposes. For a business that deals with customers, create a replica of your store or office where new employees can engage in a variety of real world scenarios, from responding to customer questions to learning where to find inventory and supplies.

Sales

Sales Collateral. An internal wiki allows sales teams scattered in various locations to create, collect, share and download the most updated sales material from one location. By limiting the exchange of PowerPoint presentations, product sell sheets and other support collateral to one place, management eliminates a significant amount of heavy email storage and ensures everyone has access to the most updated information in real time as well as improves the ability to track edits and updates by team members.

Lead generation. Many business people create profiles on popular social networking sites like LinkedIn. However, few use it for more than a contact database. Sales teams can leverage their vast network of contacts to generate sales leads, secure new business introductions and demonstrate industry knowledge. Sales managers can incorporate social networking challenges into sales goals.

Management Communications. An internal blog run by the sales leads is an ideal platform for team communications. To ensure participation, ask each sales team member to leave a comment confirming they read the post.

Marketing/Communications

Public Relations. With an external facing corporate blog, the communications team can engage its publics (customers, media, analysts or other audiences) in brand conversations. Blogs can extend the conversation beyond the press release, provide a platform for thought leadership, and in the case of a crisis, prove an invaluable channel for direct community communications.

Interactive Newsroom. Create an interactive newsroom where traditional media and bloggers can find links to the company’s social presence. This may include high resolution product photos hosted on Flickr, a link to the company’s Twitter profile, a bundle of RSS feeds for the company’s blogs, a searchable repository of podcasts, or even social profiles for media contacts (AIM/Skype/Avatar).

Better Customer Engagement. Several companies, including Starbucks and Dell, have created social networks where customers can provide direct feedback on products and services as well as interact with each other. This two way channel allows for improved customer relations and a much quicker feedback loop with the company’s most loyal customers. Even in the B2B space, a blog or social network created exclusively for a specific customer set demonstrates a commitment to customer service and illustrates your company’s efforts to get as close to your customer as possible.

Thought leadership. A CEO can submit an op-ed piece to the Wall Street Journal or Inc., but those opportunities are few and far between. Supplement traditional thought leadership pieces with a monthly or quarterly podcast, where employees can discuss industry trends and company views to a wider audience. These podcasts also become sales engagement tools and can be posted to internal employee blogs as well. And you don’t have to be a big company to host a successful podcast, as this example illustrates.

Product/Design Group

Customer Support. A staple of many technology companies, support forums are searchable threads of conversations where engineers or product designers can answer questions and help troubleshoot issues. The best part is that once a question is answered, the link to the discussion thread can be shared with others who have the same question, eliminating duplicate efforts.

Product Prototypes. Creating prototypes is an expensive endeavor for many businesses. Furthermore, it’s difficult to share prototypes with teams spread out around the world. Virtual worlds allow for teams to collaborate in real time with 3D models, which are less expensive to create and easier to discuss during the development phase.

Innovation. An internal platform where engineers or designers are encouraged to share their most outrageous ideas, pet projects, or passions often helps foster creativity. This in turn leads to new products and a greater sense of community at every level of the company.

Conclusion

There are many more ideas than just those listed here. If you have tips on how your company uses social media to improve productivity or otherwise improve the flow of information between groups, please share them in the comments.

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Aloha Social Media Summit Hawaii Discount Code
Small World Labs Gets $1M to Compete with KickApps, et al.
Save the Date for the New Communications Forum 2008
Canadian Bosses Think Facebook Is More Important than TV
Be a Digg Rockstar with Social Media Firefox Extension
Ticket Giveaway to SMX Social Media in Long Beach, CA
Business 2.0 May Be Getting the Axe from Time Inc.