According to research firm, Forrester, the US will spend $2 billion on email marketing by 2014.

Imagine you’re on a deserted island (heard this before?), what would you take with you?? Your photos? Your pet? Your laptop? Well, chances are that the island won’t have internet, but a new study found 29% Facebook and LinkedIn users surveyed could “probably do without” social networking.

Lots of interesting findings. My favorites are in bold.

• 35% of the 5,000 U.S. social media users surveyed in May said they could do without MySpace, while a more modest 43% thought life still worth living without Twitter.
• 75% said Facebook was their most valuable network, followed by 65% who cited MySpace. Only 30% said the business centric LinkedIn was their most valuable network, followed by the 12% who gave it up to Twitter.
• An estimated 110 million people in the US, or 36% of the total population, are regular social networking users. Of that group, Facebook dominates with 78 million regular users — defined as those logging on at least once a month — followed by MySpace with 67 million, Twitter with 17 million, and LinkedIn with 11 million regular users.
• 61% of social media users are under 35. The average age of Myspace users in 29, Facebook is 34 and Twitter is 33.
• The majority of social networkers are now women by a margin of 55% to 45%.
• Men were more likely than women to use social networks for business purposes- 32% of male respondents said using them for business/career contacts was a key benefit, vs. 22% for females.
• Men seem to have more network connections with an average of 140 friends on Facebook, 53 Twitter followers and 71 LinkedIn connections; the comparable averages for women are 110, 18 and 36.

Interested in Lowcountry history but can’t seem to track down the information? History buffs or anyone interested in Lowcountry history can now visit a new online library launched this month

Until now, anyone searching for historical materials had to scour several small and and medium-sized collections for info. Many of the documents in the collection are fragile, but can be viewed online without any damaging them. This allows young children who usually can’t touch delicate items to enjoy the collection as well.

You may find a diary with stories about a family’s trip from Charleston to Key West, Florida before the Civil War, which contains accounts of family members’ discussions about the inevitability of the war and others about “loose women.” Or a diary from the 1820s includes a man’s account of dealing with tuberculosis. You can also find ”slave passes,” which were notes from owners that slaves had to carry to move about Charleston.

According to a Post & Courier article last week, Trident Technical College is implementing a green stratefy at all three campuses and every training site.

The initiative is called TTC Green and involves a partnership with Virginia Tech for help with things like “green” building construction, engineering technology and management and certifications leading to green careers.

Part of the emphasis includes a training program done in cooperation with Veterans Green Jobs, which will offer vets green jobs education and career development to help make a smooth transition into civilian careers.

In other green Charleston news, the airport has introduced recycling throughout the terminals. CRBJ announced today that the airport has already collected 90 tons of recyclables from airport staff in the last 10 months. I can only imagine how much recycling they can collect with both passengers and staff recycling!!

I saw an article recently with lots of interesting statistics about Twitter. Here’s some of the most surprising stats that social media analytics provider, Sysomos, found…

• 21% (One Fifth) of Twitter accounts are empty placeholders. These are the percentage of Twitter accounts that have never posted a single tweet. They may either be registered simply to hold a username for later use, or be experimental accounts started up but never used.

• Nearly 94% of all Twitter accounts have less than 100 followers. In a finding perhaps consistent with the newness of the tool as well as the fact that many people may currently have an account simply to start experimenting with the tool, Sysomos found the vast majority of Twitter users have an extremely low followership.

• March and April of 2009 were the tipping point for Twitter. During these months, Ashton Kutcher launched his quest to get to 1 million followers faster than CNN, Oprah started using Twitter, and the steady flow of new users to the site continued. For many, it offered a safer and easier way to get their feet wet with social media, 140 characters at a time.

• 150 followers is the magic number. In a particularly interesting data point from the survey, Sysomos found that Twitter users tended to “follow back” all their followers up until about 150 connections. Then the reciprocation rate fell off dramatically, which seems to indicate that this number may be the crossover point where people shift from using Twitter for more personal use to using it more for “lifecasting” their thoughts and actions to a community of people who they feel varying levels of connection to.

• A small minority creates most of the activity. A steep curve of a small minority of actively engaged content creators generating most of the activity on a site is common among social networks, but it is steeper and more pronounced on Twitter. 5% of users account for 75% of all activity, and 10% of users account for 86%. This seems to suggest that the site has managed to engage a mass audience beyond those who typically engage with social media.

• Half of all Twitter users are not “active.” If you take a general description of being “active” on Twitter to mean that you have posted a tweet at some point in the last 7 days (1 week), then the survey learned that 50.4% of all Twitter users fit this category. If you remove the 21% from point #1, this leaves about 30% of users who have an account and have tweeted before, but happen to be inactive now.

• Tuesday is the most active Twitter day. One of the most useful data points from the report is that it clears up the common question of which day of the week is the best day to tweet something. Sysomos found that Tuesday stood out as the most popular day for tweets and retweets, followed by Wednesday and then Friday.

• APIs have been the key to Twitter’s growth & utility. In terms of tools that people are using for Twitter, Sysomos found that more than half (55%) of all Twitter users use something other than Twitter.com to tweet, search and connect with others. This may, in part, be due to Twitter’s notorious reputation of failing/crashing, but also is a credit to all the third party applications that have been built on top of Twitter and do their fair share to bring new users to the service.

• Los Angeles is the fastest growing city on the list.

Are you a non-profit in the Lowcountry (Beaufort, Berkeley, Charleston, Colleton, Dorchester, Georgetown, Jasper or Hampton counties)? Could you use $1,000 for a one-time project?

If so, apply for the Thrive! Prize from Pluff Mud Connect, a new web-based matching service for nonprofits and local businesses. Pluff Mud Connect is offered five (5) $1,000 prizes for projects like strengthening a nonprofit’s staff, volunteer base, fund raising, marketing or other infrastructure needs.

To be eligible, applicants must be registered as a 501 (c) 3 and be physically located in Beaufort, Berkeley, Charleston, Colleton, Dorchester, Georgetown, Jasper or Hampton counties. Applicants must also be registered with Pluff Mud Connect (www.pluffmudconnect.com), which is free to all area nonprofits.

To apply for the prize, nonprofits need only answer one very simple question: “If your organization received an extra $1,000 that could only be used for a one-time project…what would you do?” Applicants must submit their answers to the full question at www.pluffmudconnect.com between July 1 and July 31. Winners will be announced in August 2009.

Semi-finalists will be chosen by the Pluff Mud Connect team. Members of the web-based community will then be invited to vote for the five finalists. “Involving our local nonprofit and business members in selecting the winners is a natural choice for us,” said Laura Deaton, founder of the site. “Since the funding is designed to help nonprofits build capacity by using enrolled local service providers, consultants, and businesses, it gets everyone invested in creating a win-win from the start.”

The Thrive! Prize fund is fueled through a portion of the enrollment fees paid by the local consultants, service providers, and businesses that join the service. Launched on May 15^th of this year, Pluff Mud Connect already counts more than 100 members on the site. Collectively, the buying power of its registered nonprofits totaled more than $96 million as of mid-June and business members provide services across more than 75 sub-categories, including infrastructure and technology, web design and other marketing services, printing and direct mail, fundraising, human resources, legal services, accounting services, and more.

These days, it seems like every client wants to jump on the social media bandwagon. While I don’t recommend every social media site for every client, I do think many businesses can benefit from using social media. It’s fairly easy to implement this strategy at small, locally-owned businesses, but corporations or businesses with numerous employees make things a little tricky. If you want your employees using social media, is every employee allowed to do so? Are there rules about what they can’t say? These are all questions that a recent Mashable article addresses.

The article describes two situations for policies-a company that prefers to see what opportunities and risks exist to determine the policy, while another wants clear guidelines set-up.

Here’s an excerpt of the 10 tips from the author:

1. Introduce the purpose of social media: All policies need to address what’s in it for the reader/user — what should the reader take away after reading the policy? This is usually accomplished in a format of what someone can do instead of can’t do (like traditional employee policies).
2. Be responsible for what you write: Your organization and its representatives need to take responsibility for what they write, and exercise good judgment and common sense.
3. Be authentic: Include your name and, when appropriate, your company name and your title. Consumers buy from people that they know and trust, so let people know who you are.
4. Consider your audience: When you’re out in the blogosphere or Twitterverse or other social media channels, remember that your readers include current clients, potential clients, as well as current/past/future employees. Consider that before you publish and make sure you aren’t alienating any of those groups.
5. Excercise good judgement: Refrain from comments that can be interpreted as slurs, demeaning or inflammatory even if the account or comment is not directly related to the position. Also, your employees should understand that companies can and will monitor employee use of social media and social networking web sites, even if they are engaging in social networking or social media use away from the office.
6. Understand the concept of community: The essence of community is the idea that it exists so that you can support others and they, in turn, can support you. You need to learn how to balance personal and professional information, and the important role that transparency plays in building a community.
7. Respect copyrights and fair use: Always give people proper credit for their work, and make sure you have the right to use something with attribution before you publish.
8. Remember to protect confidential and proprietary info: Employers may fail to make employees aware of any obligation they may have to protect confidential or proprietary information. Transparency doesn’t give employees free rein to share just anything and every state has a law governing trade secrets. Therefore, employees who share confidential or proprietary information do so at the risk of losing their job and possibly even ending up a defendant in a civil lawsuit.
9. Bring value: Social media will more likely pay dividends for you if you add value to your followers, readers, fan, and users.
10. Productivity matters: Your social media usage won’t get you very far if you don’t execute on the core competencies of your business. Remember that in order for your social media endeavors to be successful, you need to find the right balance between social media and other work.