Many companies and even some industry experts dismissed the value of social media in its infancy. However, most companies have re-evaluated that thinking.

Travel companies are paying close attention this time. Southwest Airlines lists nearly 70,000 “fans” on its Facebook page, and Virgin Atlantic has approximately 20,000 followers and American Airlines has more than 10,000 followers. JetBlue leads the pack on Twitter, with well over 700,000 followers. Southwest has more than 100,000 followers.

Last week, a Los Angeles-based blogger and her kids were stuck waiting for their Virgin America flight to take off. The blogger twittered her situation on her iphone. “Dear Virgin Air,” she wrote. “My children have been on the tarmac for one hour with 90 more minutes to wait. I am at JFK gate b25. Pls RT.” “RT” is shorthand for “retweet” her message, or rebroadcast it. And re-tweet they did. Within minutes, Virgin had phoned the blogger. “Within 20 minutes of that conversation, the plane took off.”

In Atlanta, people communicated by traditional methods during recent flooding, but others exchanged information, photos and videos via social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. In emergency situations the social networks you’ve been building up that sometimes seem like a waste of time, suddenly become useful,” says a professor at Georgia Tech. Many times, you can learn more, faster than you can from a professional media outlet.

Crowd Science Inc., an online measurement service, reports that 1 in 10 Twitters admitted posting while driving at least once in the past 30 days. Crowd Science also determined that 5% of other social media users have posted while driving. 17% of Twitter users confessed to using the micro-blogging site from the bathroom, while 12% of other social media users said they had done that. In addition, 31% of Twitterers said they tweet from restaurants, and Twitterers are twice as likely as non-Twitterers to access their social networking site from a theater during a movie or live performance.

The Crowd Science survey also showed that many people are using Twitter mostly because of peer pressure. 17% of Twitterers said that they are reluctant users but fear that their social status would be hurt if they stopped tweeting. 32% of Twitter users said that they spend too much time using social media, 22% said they have written things on social media that they later regretted, and 16% reported that they often neglect important activities to spend time on social networking sites… Other findings reveal that almost 60 percent of people have tweeted during work hours, 17 percent from a restroom and eight percent from a movie theater or live performance. 40% of Twitter users have accessed the service through their mobile devices, compared to 32 percent of Facebook users; accessibility seems to account for the odd locations.

At Adweek’s Social Media Strategies event in San Francisco an online reporter observed the following comments made:

“Trying to remove something from the Internet is like trying to remove urine from a swimming pool.”

“You can’t just aim to get people from Facebook to your destination. People are the destination.”

“If everyone agrees that word of mouth marketing is one of the most important tools for marketing products and services, why wouldn’t they leverage social media? “

“There are many components of social media: entertainment, thought leadership, customer service, etc. So there’s no one solution fits all. Before getting into the approach or platform, first you must consider what your objective is and then determine where and how you can achieve it.”

“What’s the next Twitter?” Meaning, what’s the next hot company in the digital media space? Responses were video overlays, augmented reality, virtual currencies and location-based mobile tools.

“Focus on the numbers. I don’t agree with this now. Instead, find people and create engaging conversations only with those who truly matter to your business.”

“I used to think social media efforts wouldn’t last forever. But I realize today that they do. There’s value in conversations and campaigns that happened a year ago.”

Social media has changed the way we do online business. If you were formerly on the fence with regard to a social media build for your business entity, you may want to quickly re-think those reservations.