Social Media: Social media business in 2011 continued to make headlines.

Social media business in 2011 continued to make headlines. As social media use intensified and spread into every nook and cranny of people's lives, the companies that make the leading tools for social networking and online sharing were insanely busy rolling out new services and tweaking existing ones.

Google and Facebook continued their duel to be the Web's top dog, while Twitter, the third major player in social networking, enjoyed another incredible growth spurt.

Most leading social media businesses bought at least one startup or rival in 2011, and the first of what is expected to be a major wave of social media IPOs hit Wall Street when professional networking service LinkedIn sold stock to the public.

Social media in 2011 was a busy place as its many players expanded en route to collectively becoming a giant industry.

Since year end is a traditional time to take stock of noteworthy events that took place, here's a look back at some of the top social media business stories of 2011:

7 Key Social Media Business Events of 2011

• Google Gains Social Media Traction -- After a bunch of false starts in social media, Google finally got a solid foothold when it rolled out its +1 button across the Web and its much hypedGoogle + service in June. "Real-life sharing rethought for the web" is Google's slogan for its Facebook clone, which amounts to a clever attempt to tie together a bunch of different Google services into a Facebook-like social network.
• Facebook Aims To Be Lifebook -- For its part, Facebook made a big effort to expand the role it plays in people's lives by rolling out a new storytelling profile feature calledTimeline. Equally significant, it announced deeper integration with third-party applications like social music-streaming service Spotify. The new apps that Facebook is enabling through outside partners will allow for more automatic sharing of content than the active ways Facebook users traditionally share content, such as posting photos and status updates. The big story for Facebook in 2012 likely will be its planned offering of public stock. For ideas on what else might be in store for Facebook, Mashable offered some predictions for where Facebook is going next.
• Social Media IPO and Investment Craze -- LinkedIn, the professional network, sold stock to the public, becoming the first major social network to go public with an IPO. Its shares rose quickly and stayed well above its initial offering price of $45. Social couponing marketing service Groupon and social game-maker Zynga also held IPOS in 2011, but didn't fare as well. Groupon went public at $20 and was trading at $20.60 on the first trading day of 2012. Zynga did worse, trading at $9.31 in early 2012, putting investors who bought the initial offering at $10 underwater. This article on social media investment outlines how social media companies did on Wall Street last year.
• Twitter Sees User Growth Spurt -- The third big social network, Twitter, underwent a growth spurt in usage but not advertising, raising questions about whether, when and how Twitter will turn itself into a viable big business like rival Facebook. Many analysts feel Twitter positioned itself to make a business makeover and move more aggressively into advertising with moves it made in 2011. Those include rolling out a new Twittertimeline and interface to become simpler for users and friendlier to advertisers; integrating itself into the Apple iPhone mobile operating system, iOS; and purchasing the TweetDeck software for managing tweets and other social media.
• New Players Go Mainstream -- StumbleUpon,Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram were just a few social media services that enjoyed major growth in traffic and users in 2011, catapulting them into the ranks of leading social networks.
• Data breaches Worry Companies and Consumers -- Data thefts and similar hack attacks hit social media in 2011, heightening concerns about the safety of people's personal data when they use social media. in one of the highest profile incidents, Sony's PlayStation Network got hacked in April, exposing 100 million customer names and other records and leading to a week-long shutdown of Sony's online social gaming network. In the United Kingdom, one report said there was a 20 percent increase in the number of employers cracking down on social media use in the workplace in response to a rash of data breaches.
• Social Media Takeovers and Acquisitions -- Social media takeovers made headlines in 2011. In addition to Twitter's purchase of TweetDeck, other deals included a big one in the social gaming industry--Electronic Arts bought social media gaming firm PopCap Games, maker of the popular title Bejeweled and similar mobile phone hits. In other acquisition news, MySpace finally found a buyer--but the news coverage was mostly about the low purchase price. Specific Media, an online advertising firm, bought MySpace for an estimated $35 million, a far cry from the $580 million that News Corp. paid for it back in 2005. Another major acquisition this year took place when AOL bought Huffington Post, widely regarded as a leader in social news.

Social Media Business Trends Made Headlines All Year

By Leslie Walker, About.com