For all of you doubters out there who don’t believe social media sites like Twitter or MySpace can be successfully used for marketing your business.. I give you, The Goat. On February 6, 2010, “Can this Goat get more fans than Barack Obama” made its debut on the social media website more popularly known as Facebook. What started out as probably a little curiosity and humor combined has turned into probably the best proof that social media can be completely systemic. Six days later on Friday, February 12th, at exactly 4:20 in the afternoon the number of fans had already reached 99,078 and exactly four minutes later that number had jumped to 99,171. That’s 93 people/fans in just 4 minutes! And only 52 minutes later at 5:16 p.m. the number has grown by 1,362 fans, creating a new total of 100,533. Now, you don’t have to be a math genius to figure out that this is a substantial exponentially increasing number of people. The remarks on the page vary from “somebody feed him the health care bill please” to “I think the goat could pick a Super Bowl winner” (of course, you can’t have a conversation without mentioning the Super Bowl). They even have a conversation raging over what to name the goat. Those names range from just ‘The Goat’ to your everyday ‘Joe the Goat’ or ‘Bubba Goat’ to the more clever suggestions like ‘Oba-a-a-a-a-ma’ and ‘Baaaa Rack the Goat’. So whether you think this whole mess is just quite silly and even laughable, you have to admit that the universal effects of social media are astounding and cannot be denied. I invite you to examine the limitless possibilities social media has to offer your business endeavors. Of course, nothing takes the place of good ‘ole face to face interaction, but social media seems to come in a close second. Who could deny the insight to people’s emotions and opinions or the frank communication these platforms have to offer to the everyday person or businessman. Now just stop and think of those possibilities… reaching 100,533 in six days.