Indianapolis Small Business Computer

My Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers still make fun of me for my prediction in the mid-nineties that we were only a couple of years from being able to talk to our computers just like Spock and Kirk did on Star Trek. At the time there were several major companies investing big dollars in voice recogmition. It seemed like a safe prediction. So you can imagine that those same computer outsourcing customers take my predecitions with a grain of salt. Heck, so do I, most of the time. Nonetheless, I've been right more often than that talking computer proclamation would indicate.

The latest advice I gave to my computer services customers was to get involved in social media in 2009. I told them it was transforming from a fringe thing into a mainstream tool for business as well as personal activities online. As the year comes to an end, the statistics are proving me correct. Let's just look at Facebook:

• 350 million users worldwide with 35 years and older representing the fastest growing group
• 10 million people daily becoming fans of one of the 1.6 million fan pages daily
• 6 billion minutes spent there each day - twice as much as Google and 55 minutes per person
• 55 million updates, 14 million videos, 2.5 billion photos added daily
• 45 million active groups with the average user belonging to 12

Sure, it's possible to waste a lot of time in the social media space, but it's time to invest a little in figuring out what it's all about. Remember wishing you'd started doing email sooner? Our communications world is changing again, and it's going to have as big an impact as email eventually.

There are a few days left in 2009. Sign up somewhere and start learning about these new communication tools.