2010 - My First Prediction

My 1st 2010 Observation and Prediction: Small travel-related and hospitality businesses who learn how to connect the social media dots in 2010 will be far ahead of their competition in terms of YOY bookings, revenue, new customers/guests, and profits.

Leisure travelers are finding services like Facebook and Twitter increasingly useful for research and trip planning, reads commentary from Tripit.com, posted in October, 2009.  Today, two months later in December, this statement seems like 'old news' - but only to active online users.  Viewers new to social media might be puzzled or 'disbelievers'.

However, here's a believer:  Frances Conklin, owner of Dog Bark Park in Cottonwood, Idaho writes in a recent FB post:  Got our first reservation via FB connections, so I guess it's worth the time!?

Here's some stats right from Facebook itself, that should blow your mind - in other words - help you to quickly become a believer.

• More than 350 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 55 million status updates posted each day
• More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 3.5 million events created each month
• More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
• More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

 As you can tell by the red highlight fact above, from a small business owner's perspective, that 700k figure about local business was particularly intriguing to me.  Quoting from the Press Release/Product Review on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics#/press/product.php): Facebook Pages allows local businesses, brands, musicians, and all types of organizations to create a presence on Facebook for free. Users can interact and affiliate as a fan of a business or organization in the same way they interact with other user profiles. Once a fan of a business on Facebook, users can share information about that business with their friends.

Here's to a cheery New Year!