Here is a terrific opportunity for people looking to develop their skills in digital marketing and also for small businesses in Ireland who want to get their businesses online.

The programme is called WebActivate.

Listen to my podcast about the programme here:

At the moment the programme is taking registrants from people through to the 16 July 2010 - they mention on their website that applications are particularly welcomed from people who are unemployed with an existing educational attainment of NFQ level 6, 7, or 8. You will receive 6 weeks ‘In-Centre’ training following which you will spend 12 weeks with 3 different SMEs creating websites and coaching the employees of the SME's on how to maximise business through online channels.

During the work placement you will attend their designated training centres one day a week for classes, ongoing mentoring and coaching from the Webactivate trainers. You will be equipped with a Notebook computer, software and 3G broadband, all of which are provided through the WebActivate programme. Find out how to register HERE.

The curriculum includes modules in:

• Internet Publishing
• Marketing
• Social Media Marketing

Certification includes a suite of FETAC component modules with 4 credits at NFQ Level 6.

If you are an SME WITH NO WEB PRESENCE AT THE MOMENT then I also recommedn that you check out the programme and benefit from the skills that people will be learning. You will receive access to support by providing a workplacement to one of the participants of the programme. There are no fees or charges for the SMEs providing work placements in the programme. The programme will serve small to medium businesses in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway and you can register online here.

Twitter’s search engine is serving more than 24 billion searches per month compared to Bing’s approximate 4.1 billion and Yahoo!’s approximate 9.4 billion combined reports The Telegraph. I wonder what the numbers for Facebook search are however.

The newspaper comments that a study by Nielsen last year discovered that Bing was the fastest growing search engine in the US after its growth increased by over 22 per cent, post its launch. However since last April, Twitter searches have increased by 33 per cent.

To put this in context, Google supports approximately 88 billion search queries per month, however the article comments that searches performed on Twitter on are performed more with the intention of finding out 'real-time' information.

Back in April Twitter founder Biz Stone revealed that the current number of registered users of Twitter are 105,779,710 with about 300,000 people registering each day for a Twitter account.

Apparently a quarter of Twitter users have no followers (I am guessing some of those accounts are ones set up to protect brand names), 65% of the world’s top 100 companies (I think we have some way to go before this is the base in Ireland) have a Twitter account and there are more than 70,000 applications currently using Twitters API reports Emarketer.

There are apparently 65 million Tweets a day (how many of them are yours?

Facebook continues to grow as these statistics bear out:

• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook

• More than one million websites have integrated with the platform and over 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites each month

• The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events and creates 70 pieces of content themselves posted to Facebook (more than 25 billion pieces of content including web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums are shared each month on the Facebook platform

• Facebook is truly global with 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

• Each  month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Facebook applications

• More than one million websites have integrated with Facebook Platform - more than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month

• Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook
• Facebook users love mobile with more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices and they are twice as active on facebook than non-mobile users

And for more Irish specific Facebook stats read my previous article here.

The blog is authored by Ken Cohen who is vice president of public and government affairs for Exxon Mobil Corporation with worldwide responsibility for the company’s public policy, government relations, communications, media relations and corporate citizenship activities.

He comments:

To help encourage dialogue on the energy challenges we all face,  we’ve created the Perspectives blog. I’m calling it our “energy issues and policy blog,” meaning I’ll talk about ideas and actions from industry, governments, researchers and many others that affect the world of energy.

You will also find Exxon Mobil officially on Twitter (unlike their first account almost 2 years ago) - though interestingly they are using the channel for 'push communications' and aren;t following anyone at this time thought they have over 2000 followers.

What other corporate brands have you seen starting to blog this year?

Ho do you show appreciation to the people connected to your Facebook page?

Here is a great example from Coca Cola who have created a video showing Dusty and Michael, the fans who started Coca-Cola's Facebook page, thanking Coke's 5.83 million Facebook fans - one at a time.

One of my favourite tools for managing Twitter on my iPhone and in my browser is Hootsute so it was great to see a new update of the iPhone app released which has the ability to book mark Tweets that you want to come back to later with their integration of Instapaper.com.

You need to create an account with Instapaper which is free and you can also organise folders for future archiving and easy reference.

Read all about the new release of Hootsuite for the iPhone on their blog - they have also made the app available in Japanese, German, Spanish, and Portuguese and have enbled emailing Tweets (something I have loved for a long time on UberTwitter for the Blackberry.

I've tried the integration and it works smoothly - my only problem now is making sure I don;t bookmark too many Tweets or I will get no work done - but it is a great integration to support your online research.