Advertising on-line, outside their corporate websites, is a technique that even the largest of corporations are beginning to look at seriously, a quick peek over the social media shows us. From computer manufacturers to pharmaceutical firms, everyone is starting to expand in this area, as it becomes clearer to managers that the sales potential is enormous.

Basically, most companies look at social media as if it were an on-line word-of-mouth kind of system. "There are tons of studies that say word-of-mouth is more effective than any other marketing, and this is essentially word-of-mouth on-line," says the head of Ignite Social Media, Jim Tobin.

Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace are now extremely popular attractions on the Web, as statistics estimate that the number of Internet users who log on to these spaces has increased from 48 percent in 2007 to 69 percent in 2008. Looking at the evolution, it's safe to assume that the trend will only go up, seeing how it's so easy to create an account on one of these sites – or many others just like them – and communicate and share media files with users from around the globe.

The discussions that accompany popular YouTube videos, for example, can be a great way for companies to get feedback from their customers. On the other hand, if a critic posts a video, the whole thing can go downhill even for the most respectable producer, as critic videos and pictures usually go viral over short periods of time, in that they get over 1 million visitors in 1 to 5 days.

This kind of bad publicity can hardly be erased, especially if the video or picture is very explicit. That's why some companies even employ blog and social media scouts, businesses that simply look for any news on that company and see if the posted content is something to worry about or not. If the scouts discover a critic, often they notify their employer, which calls the critic personally and mitigates the problem. However, if the video is the viral type, then all this has to be done within a matter of hours, otherwise the video picks up momentum, and there is little companies can do after that.

Over the next years, we will undoubtedly see an even larger use for social media, as even politics and campaigns have taken off on-line this year. As more and more people create accounts and start sharing their opinions and media content, the cultural exchange will achieve unimaginable proportions, and companies will find it very difficult to sell a poor-quality product, when one dissatisfied customer can warn thousands against buying the same thing.