About a year ago, many brands at Reed Business Information drank the Twitter Kool-Aid. I recently analyzed how things were going, and learned quite a bit about the benefits and challenges of Twitter within business media. Today, I want to share some metrics of our use of Twitter and explore what it means for B2B media brands.

I looked at the use of Twitter across 35 RBI brands and close to 60 employees. Here is some data:

Last September I wrote about Richard Wallace's startup, The Next Silicon Valley, a global news and insight website established to connect VCs and tech companies in order to help promote regional economic development in emerging markets. Bloggish back in September, the site – officially launched on Jan. 14 – is now a fully functioning media outlet. 

While all eyes are on the New York Times and its “frequent payer” experiment, several other funding developments are being overlooked.

An important aspect of developing a social media presence for your publishing brand is consistency. As I wrote previously, you should have a Twitter editorial calendar in place so that each reporter knows when they should post so the publication’s Twitter and Facebook accounts have fresh content daily (posts = followers  = exposure for your brand).

This week’s eBook Summit in New York is a chance for attendees to talk about the dawning of the e-reader age, which publishers need to begin preparing for. I stalked the virtual conversation about the event that took place yesterday on Twitter (#ebooksummit).

How much clout do you have? Are you, as they say in marketing, an influencer? Or a connector—could you make it as an agent if you charged your friends for introductions? More importantly, does your brand sway public opinion?

To anyone old enough to remember the early days of the Web, the rise of Twitter should be déjà vu. Twitter, like the early Internet, is filled with content, though it is often difficult to parse the good from the bad.