Portsmouth, NH -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/22/2010 -- If you doubt that social media—and consequently, social network analysis--has an effect on your business– consider this: Time Magazine just named Facebook founder and social misfit, Mark Zuckerberg, Person of the Year. With ½ billion people signing on to Facebook (that’s one out of every ten people on the planet) it’s clear that social media is heavily impacting every aspect of the way we relate to each other—including in business.

“Facebook is probably the most important development on the Internet since the Internet itself was created,” said Jim Fredirick, Time.com Managing Editor.

“Big deal,” you might say. “My business has a presence on Facebook and Twitter and we blog constantly.” Ah, but what you don’t know is what people are saying about your companyon Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, YouTube or the hundreds of other places that people “get social” online. Social Network Analysis lets you find out who is saying “what” and “where” about your business online.

If you don’t think Social Network Analysis is important to keeping you on top of your business presence online, you should. I guarantee that there are hotels across the world that saw their business drop suddenly. Sadly, they had no idea about the recent trend where people reporthotel bedbugs on one of the many bedbug sites. It didn’t matterthat their hotel had bedbugs or not, it has been an effective (though underhanded) way for competitors --or customers miffed about anything from cold toast to a TV not working--to take revenge.

Using a Social Network Analysis tool such as JungleTorch would have alerted them to the issue in real time, which means they could have dealt with it in real time.

Fortunately, sounding the “revenge taking” alarm is not the primary use of Social Network Analysis. You can use it to track positive social happenings: For example, you might note that a large contingent of people are constantly linking your company to another site because they’re buying your product and then buying something somewhere else to enhance that product. Knowing that, could prove to be a marketing partnershoip in the making.

How far we’ve come, since Mark Zuckerberg’s only intention in becoming the Father of social media was tosimply meet people online. Something he was unable to do successfully in person.