Micro-blogging platform Plurk is a social journal that puts “your life, on the line.” A timeline that is. Plurkers add plurks (up to 140 character updates) to their Plurk timeline via text, instant messaging or the web. So, about now you have to be thinking – “Oh, it’s Twitter with a timeline.”

Considering this is my demographic, I found this to be quite interesting.  But even more so, this study, reported by eMarketer.com, once again supports the importance of adding social media marketing to the marketing mix.

Blogging has never been easier than with Posterous where a blog post can be created by simply sending an email to post@posterous.com. That’s it. And not just text blog posts – photos, text, MP3′s, documents, videos – all can be added to posts via email.

Social media site, Pownce, announced today that it will be closing the site down in two weeks.
According to the Pownce blog, they will “be closing down the main Pownce website two weeks from today, December 15th.”

Social bookmarking site, Ma.gnolia, puts the social in social bookmarking providing an online venue to “Discover, Share and Discuss the best of the web.”

Business social networking and online address book provider, Plaxo, has been gaining popularity and, according to their website, currently “hosts address books for more than 40 million people (and growing rapidly).”

In anticipation of the October launch of his new book, Tribes, marketer Seth Godin created Triiibes, an invitation-only community this summer. Those receiving an invitation were required to pre-purchase the book to gain access to the online community of marketers, which is created on the Ning platform.

Squidoo is a collection of over 700,000 pages created by users about whatever they want the world to know – ideas, recommendations, interests, instructions – basically any topic that they know or care about. Squidoo lens index well and can create traffic to your website, so give it a try.

Goodreads is a really cool site for personal use and the business social networking opportunities are also terrific. Add some books you’ve read from your target market’s industry, write some thoughtful reviews & voila, easy business social networking.

For those of you following this series on the business use of social media and implementing the tips on using social media in your business, this article and research firmly supports your efforts at using social media to interact with the community and promote your brand and business.