When Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff — co-authors of Groundswell and analysts for Forrester Research — created The Social Technographics Ladder as a tool for analyzing social technologies, they apparently didn’t anticipate the explosive growth of micro-blogging. There was no rung on their “social ladder” for people who regularly participate on Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, or FriendFeed; people whom they’ve dubbed conversationalists. That is, no rung until today.

So, one third of the US (adult) online population are having “conversations” at least once a week via sites like Twitter and Facebook. According to Forrester they’re most likely to be female (56%), hold a college degree, young (70% are 30+), and earning about $2,100 more than the average online user.

It will be interesting to see how this group evolves over the next 12 months as the US economy and unemployment rate shift.

Whether you are an avid Twitter power-user or just learning to get your “tweet” wet, you should know about TweetDeck.

To put it succinctly, TweetDeck is an desktop Twitter client application. Currently in beta and available as a free download. For business owners, brand managers, public affairs managers, or anyone responsible for their company’s reputation, TweetDeck is a must. TweetDeck makes it easy to track and organize what’s happening now on social networks like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook.

Once installed, specify the account info for each social network you’re a member of and then create a column for keywords you wish to track such as the name of your company or product.  TweetDeck will give a little “chirp” anytime a match is found. This is a great way to find out what people really think about your brand, your customer service, your competitors, etc.  If someone says something negative, address it. If someone says something positive, thank them. By participating you encourage and even direct the conversation, which is always good for your brand. For an example, read how Stew Leonard’s and Whole Foods are using it.

Using TweetDeck in conjunction with Google Alerts (for less time-sensitive monitoring) will make reputation monitoring a breeze.

Aside: If you rather get simple Twitter Alerts via email (like Google Alerts) then check out TweetAlarm.

If you still think that Social Media is a fad then you’re not only missing the boat, you can’t even find the ocean.  But hey, not all is lost. Here is a nice video summary from Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics. Lots of stats presented in the same vein as the “Did You Know” videos.