Trying to make their user-friendly blogging platform a little bit more social, WordPress just added a “Like” button (just like the new famous Facebook one) as well as the possibility to “Reblog” any article. Find out more here.

Already being way more SEO-friendly than Tumblr, WordPress is now just as social. Is WordPress going to win the blogging platforms war ?

The “mummies on the bus go chatter, chatter, chatter” sound familiar?

Research released from Neilsen in the UK shows that women (over 35) are the fastest growing demongraphic on sites like Twitter and MySpace as reported by The Times:

Figures gathered for The Times by Nielsen, the market research firm, show that just over half of all social-networking users in the UK are women. But almost 59 per cent of females “consume the content” of these sites — a jump of almost 10 per cent since last year.

Not surprising really is it? Social networks are merely just another social arena, so it was only time before women caught up with the latest place to have a good chat and gossip.

But what does this mean from a marketing and corporate communication perspective?

Mommy Bloggers have long been on the radar as Darren Rowse (@problogger) wrote some time ago about Five Reasons why Mom Blogs are the Blogs to watch.

Corporates must be careful though: Nestle recently tapped into this influential group of women only to have it backfire on them according to an article in The Age last week.

Interesting article in The Age today claiming Facebook will be merely a footnote in social networking’s history and for those who doubt the impact social networking will have, those who are are “just waiting for this social media fad to pass” and “making sure it proves itself before we get involved”, this video I saw on Craig Wilson’s post this morning about this video from Socialnomics might be of interest (nb sources aren’t quoted but maybe they are in the book?).

It’s quite long so if you don’t make it to the end, here’s some highlighted stats:

Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million listeners

TV took 13 years to reach 50 million viewers

Internet took 4 years to reach 50 million users

Facebook in 9 months added 100 million users

25% of search results for the world’s top 20 brands are links to user-generated content

>200 million blogs / 34% post opinions about brands / 78% consumers trust peer recomedations / 14% trust advertising

more than 1.5 milion pieces of content (web links, blog posts, news stories etc) are uploaded to Facebook daily

I found a great resource today: The Top 100 Best Social Media Books, ever by Jurgen Appelo which is a pretty impressive feat considering he’scovered everything the novice to the expert might be intersted in and rated them all against several criteria.

I came across this list thanks to David Meerman Scott, who has no less than two books in the top 10 and (for our Australian readers) will be out in Aus in September to conduct social media masterclasses - a great opportunity to hear from the author of bestselling World Wide Rave and the new rules of Marketing and PR.
Great to see Melbournian, Darren Rowse, come in at Number 14 with Pro-Blogger: Secrets for blogging your way to a six figure income - a must for anyone who’s serious about making money out of blogging.

But if you are intersted in learning about social networks from a business and corporate point of view and how to use these tools to build and manage your reputation online you might want to have a look at Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents which I’m looking forward to reading when it arrives on my doorstep from Amazon. He’ll also be speaking this September (it’s a busy month down under) with Darren Rowse, and a heap of other other social media gurus like Laurel Papworth aka silkcharm, at the Marketing Now! conference.