The communities by their nature help promote the business through discussion and sharing content with their friends and workmates. This is an extremely powerful benefit! The community is promoting your business for free to their own networks, which you may never have been able to reach (or if you did only as an outsider to be distrusted).

package of government bailout packages could cost $23.7 trillion, according to testimony prepared by a special inspector general expected to appear on Capitol Hill this week.

Critics believe that going back to the moon is, as Aldrin put it “a glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago”—something that would waste time and money that we could be spending on a trip to Mars. NASA argues that going back to the moon and establishing a permanent base is an essential stepping stone to a successful Mars mission—a feat that would take at least 20 years to accomplish according to their estimates.

What big brands do the best job with social media? A new study by analyst Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint ranks the top 100 brands by social media engagement. You can find the report embedded below or on ENGAGEMENTdb, which was presumably created with Wetpaint’s site-creation software.

A new study released by enterprise wiki provider Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group shows that the brands most engaged in social media are also experiencing higher financial success rates than those of their non-engaged peers

Just a little more than a year ago, I went into the office of the Austin American-Statesman’s Internet managing editor and asked whether I could start using Twitter to engage the social media community. I got the green light that day, and I have been tweeting as the voice of @statesman nearly every day since (in my own voice as opposed to using an RSS feed). We have more than 50 Twitter accounts run by newsroom folks, engaging people on a variety of topics.

Looking back on that year, here are five things that I have learned: