An interesting article from CNet News following up on a press release from Datamonitor on its latest research into social media and its growth.

Whilst focussing on investors, and the risk of this rapidly growing market segment slowing down in 2009 and beyond, what is interesting for marketing and HR people alike are the numbers involved.

They estimate that by the end of this year there will 230 million active users of social media tools and it will continue to grow over the next 2 years.

For marketing people that is a lot of people in conversation with each other. Your products and company will almost certainly be being talked about. What are you doing to monior this conversation and become part of it?

For HR this is recruitment ‘pool’ but equally what are potential employees saying about you? Are you are employer of choice? Also those with well established contacts – social and business – indicate a type of personality that may fit well into your company (equally not if you are one of those that has banned social media tools like Facebook). Just think how highly your sales and marketing teams value networking contacts.