Abigail Hamilton, contributing blogger on SEO ShootOut (of which I am also a part), mentioned a survey that is now available from A List Apart, which is looking to capture a view of professionals currently working in a field related to web site building and development. It includes a variety of questions including what you consider yourself competent in with regard to web design (writing/editing, graphic design, back-end development, etc.), as well as salary information, employment benefits, and bonuses.

There’s a new form of marketing in town, and if you’re prepared to do some work, a lot of doors will open for you.

[enter social media marketing stage left]

Wikipedia defines social media in its broadest form as “an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.” In essence, social media – or ‘new media,’ as it is often called – encompasses various methods of communication that go beyond the age-old standard of a marketing team talking to potential customers by adding conversation, fluidity, and collaboration into the equation.

Social media is available in many forms, including blogs (Blogger, Wordpress), microblogs (Twitter), photo sharing (Flickr, Photobucket), video sharing (YouTube), RSS, social networking (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn), wikis (Wikipedia), social bookmarks and commentary (Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit), instant messaging (AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger), podcasts (Podcast Alley, iTunes), webcasts and video blogs (Rocketboom), online communities (MyBlogLog, Plaxo, Google Groups), consumer-owned shopping sites (Zazzle), and even virtual worlds (Second Life). This list does not by any means encompass all social media outlets – and, of course, more are being created and developed every day – but it’s a good start.

“This doesn’t sound like anything I have in my so-called ‘integrated’ marketing campaign. Why would we use any of these strangely-named sites for marketing?”

Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe because over 112 million blogs are already being tracked by Technorati, a number which doesn’t even include those sites not submitted to the leading blog-sharing site. In January of this year, 79 million viewers watched over three billion videos on YouTube. User-generated content attracted 69 million visitors in 2006; that number is expected to jump to over 100 million visitors in 2011, generating $4.6 billion in ad revenue. These are just a sample of some absolutely huge numbers, people. Would it make sense to ignore all of these individuals by disregarding social media, one of the biggest – if not the biggest – consumer influencers? Because let’s be honest: consumers trust other consumers more than they trust any advertisement your creative minds could possibly think of.

HubSpot, now one of the leading internet marketing companies in the country, was a no-name startup just two years ago; it got to where it is now through the use of social media marketing tools like blogs and webcasts that deliver honest and useful information to the masses.

And it’s not just start-ups that benefit from social media marketing. Coca-Cola saw sales of Diet Coke skyrocket after they started creating professional-looking videos on YouTube that demonstrated the wonders of adding Mentos to the popular soft drink (and in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, watch one of the hundreds of videos available).

For further examples, the Internet Advertising Bureau released a study this year on user-generated content and its effects that includes a number of case studies similar to the ones above (and does, in fact, mention the whole Diet-Coke-and-Mentos thing). It’s only about fifteen pages long, and well worth a read.

In short, social media is everything ‘old media’ is not: fluid, transparent, consumer-driven, and open to conversation and collaboration. Remember: it’s only too late to embrace the ‘new’ when you realize your competitors have run you right out of business by doing it first.

Forrester Research has released the results of a survey that offer a different perspective from those mentioned in my previous post. In a nutshell, 1017 IT decision-makers in North America and Europe were questioned about their perspective and current use of open source software. The results were surprising given leading analyst opinion on the growing use of OSS.

Apparently a whopping seventy percent of those surveyed had no plans or interest in adopting open source software, citing security as the number one issue prohibiting them from doing so. However, it needs to be noted that of those surveyed, many of the decision-makers didn’t realize that some of their software is indeed open source.

Savio Rodrigues over at InfoWorld sums it up nicely in his latest article, “Forrester Finds Lack of Interest in OSS?,” by saying, “OSS vendors face an uphill battle to sell anything … if the top decision maker doesn’t believe that his/her company is using OSS. It’s not an insurmountable battle, but it is uphill.” Savio provides some pie charts and further investigation in his article, which is absolutely worth a read.

The actual report is restricted to those with a Forrester subscription.

Kingpin Intelligence, an IT-focused marketing firm, recently completed a study among IT professionals in the UK on developers and the use of open source. Unsurprisingly, a whopping 62% of those polled who do not use open source in their place of work actually use it outside of work. These developers would prefer to work in an environment that favors open source over one that does not, the study said.

“The cost and flexibility benefits of using open source technologies are appealing for developers and organizations in the current financial climate,” said Claire Roy, head of research at Kingpin. However, it was also discovered that a lack of faith in the quality of open source software is still an issue, with less than a third of those polled believing open source software to be of high quality.

Despite this, the use of open source software – specifically open source databases – will continue to grow exponentially, according to analysts. In an April Wall Street Journal issue, Gartner, leaders in the technology analyst sector, determined that sales of open source database software will be in the upper-$200 millions this year, jumping to $400 million by 2009. The article maintains that the comparative low cost of “open source” databases is a huge draw for companies looking to minimize their RDBMS spending.