In less than a decade, social media has changed the way millions of people keep in touch with friends, read the news and share interests. Not engaging in these new types online social messaging can really keep a person out of the loop. The Rough Guide to Social Media for Beginners covers business, leisure and everything in between. The book focuses on the two most popular — and personal — forms of social medial: Facebook and Twitter. The guide walks readers through setup and maintenance and provides them with the skills needed to make pages lively and relevant to the people they know or work with, as well as the people they're about to meet.

• Social networking now accounts for 22% of all time spent online in the US (Nielsen)
• A total of 234 million people age 13 and older in the U.S. used mobile devices in December 2009. (Digital Venture Beat)
• Facebook has over 750 million users.
• Twitter averages 40 million tweets per day.