You have read and heard about Facebook, MySpace. You do understand that it is an online type of whiteboard where people write thinks on about themselves, their friends and experiences. However, you do not quite grasp how it could directly help your business grow. Well, think again.

TravelBuddy (www.travbuddy.com) is an online social network about travelling. It was launched about 2 years ago but recently has seen its membership not double, not quadruple but grow 100 (yes ONE HUNDRED fold). Do you know how they have done that? No, it was not advertising in traditional travel magazines, nor did they get a PR boost by a fantastic article travel writer. The "culprit" ? Facebook. TravelBuddy developed an application that allows users on Facebook to add a map of the countries they visited to their profile. 500,000 Facebook users have so far installed this application on their profile...

Here are some stats from the TravBuddy homepage: in addition to its 1,018,142 members, the site has “13,530 travel blogs, 9,615 travel reviews, and 333,454 travel photos.” It is not rocket science....