Chris Brogan has produced a list of ‘power’ Twitter tips. It is a long list. But there are a couple of nuggets in there for businesses.

In particular I like: ‘invite your customers to Twitter, then make it worth it for them’

I think too many companies view Twitter from their own narrow perspective and not enough from the perspective of their  diverse range of stakeholders.

Also, I just don’t think that pumping out links to press releases to every stakeholder is a credible strategy. To journalists and analysts yes, but not to every stakeholder of your business. Twitter needs to be used more imaginatively.

In an established media context, companies don’t offer the same story to every newspaper, radio station, and publication regardless of the different editorial styles and demographics, so why should they use social media as if it is read by one passive monolithic audience?

I also liked this tip for businesses: ‘use Twitter as a personalised communications tool, not another blast’

I couldn’t agree more.  Social media presents a unique opportunity for businesses to present themselves in more individual ways, and to treat customers and stakeholders in more personal ways.

The participative social media culture invites businesses to drop the corporate mask, get involved, and be more friendly.  Think First Direct with its friendly, real customer service and less like a big stony hearted, impersonal Government department helpline.

It is essential that businesses use these tools to reach out to their stakeholders, to build influential online coalitions with the aim of creating online fan communities.

The aim is to be less of a  stranger to your customers and stakeholders in this networked world, to listen to them, to take on board what they are saying and to talk with them. This is so you win their trust and acceptance and become recognised members of their communities.

Then if a problem or issue raises itself they are less likely to go screaming off, forming a mob, and generating diastrous comments about you. They will instead come to you directly and listen to what you have to say.

Some companies are behaving as if they can act despite what is being said on social media or in denial of existence. Such a position is unsustainable.

Facebook claims now to have about 400m active users worldwide. I think if the FT or Times had those numbers, then companies would be investing in resources to get their messages across!

It is really worth setting aside a short amount of time to watch this fascinating FT interview with Bob Iger, CEO of Disney.

Iger  succinctly explains his views to FT editor, Lionel Barber, about the importance of organisations embracing social media to remain relevant to their audiences.

He underlines the fact that companies cannot expect audiences to come to their web sites any more and says that you ‘have to fish where the fish are’.  He says a critical reason for embracing social media is that Disney wants to remain relevant. As  a brand it doesn’t want to allow itself to be relegated to the old platforms; and it wants to be there first so it learns quickest.

A great quote from Iger in this interview with Barber is when he says: ”The status quo is not a strategy.’ He emphasises the need that the world is changing  and that Disney has to look at that world from the perspective of its consumers and not from the perspective of people who don’t want to embrace social media for a host of reasons.

Iger argues that social media presents a platform to learn from customers, listen to customers, communicate with customers and trade with customers.

Disney has  the right mindset from the top – and that matters a lot.  Iger sees social media for what it is. He is not threatened by it. He wants the business to adapt to it quickly and that is what Disney is doing.

A New York burger restaurant has decided to integrate social media fully into its offering with customers being encouraged to order on iPads and create their own commercials on Youtube.

Is this the start of the re-engineering of restaurants to make themselves more relevant to social media?

Search engines are racing to incorporate social media. Last week, Bing announced that it would start adding realtime updates from Twitter and Facebook to its search results. Similarly, Google also announced changes to its infrastructure, which are designed to improve the freshness and visibility of social media in search results. Google’s realtime upgrade is arguably more fundamental, as it is premised on a two-year redesign of the underlying index.

Previously, Google separated its index into layers, which were updated at different speeds. The main layer was usually updated every two weeks. Known as Caffeine, the new system separates the index into billions of ‘batches’, each of which refer to specific websites. Rather than analysing the web in larger layers, Caffeine now trawls content in smaller batches. This enables Google to update its index on a continuous and global basis.

As a result, the underlying index is constantly in flux; it is estimated that Caffeine now analyses hundreds of thousands of web pages every second. According to the official announcement on the Google Blog: “If the Google index were a pile of paper, it would grow three miles taller every second”. All of which has required a significant investment in new hardware and software. For example, Caffeine is built on the new Google File System (dubbed GFS2), which processes and stores content from the web with reduced latency. In turn, GFS2 resides within more powerful custom-built server hardware, which are believed to include new innovations such as solid state hard drives.

In sum, the race to analyse and index the growing torrent of social media is a challenging and expensive process – but one that will increasingly differentiate the web services of the future. The pressure to do so will escalate as more of our digital attention shifts to mobile devices, where recommendations and social search are taking over from straightforward search. Compared to its relatively static predecessor, the realtime web will require companies to nurture a very different set of technologies and skills if they are to remain visible.