Social Media is a hot topic that will only get hotter in the years to come. People are scrambling to catch up to this fast moving train. Seeing a great opportunity to support the local community, Keller Crescent has launched Evansville’s first Social Media Club.

The Social Media Club of Evansville brings together bloggers, technology experts, business leaders, artists, and community advocates to socialize, and to discuss and learn about social media. The club meets at Ri Ra Irish Restaurant and Pub every third Monday evening.

When asked about his reason for launching the club, Tim Piazza, Vice President, said “It was clear to me that Evansville needed a forum for connecting people who embrace social media in their professional and personal lives. Many of us are using these tools every day, but are chained to our computers and don’t know who else around us is doing it. This club gives us a good reason to step away from the computer.”

To join the Evansville Social Media Club of Evansville, or to learn more, visit SMCEvansville.org.

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, is back on the bestseller list with another big idea. Free: The Future of a Radical Price went on sale at booksellers this summer to wide acclaim. Chris begins with some folksy stories about iconic brands starting out in the trunk of a salesman’s car promoted by giving away samples, cookbooks, and razors. But to make his case, he aims squarely at the internet, where products can be given away because software has such a low manufacturing and distribution cost that once you scale it globally, its price is virtually free. But let’s be clear. It may be free, but not free to everyone, and not without a cap on quantity.

A new way of searching the web has arrived to challenge Google’s dominance as the world’s most popular search engine. But can this new contender unseat the reigning champion?

For more than ten years Microsoft has played a role in the search engine market by leveraging the ubiquitous presence of Microsoft Windows operating system and Internet Explorer. But even with this advantage, Microsoft has never held more than a #3 position below Google and Yahoo in search engine popularity. What has been more troubling to the people at MSN and Yahoo is that Google continues to grow in popularity at an accelerating rate, and is now in the enviable position of having greater total market share than all of the other search engines combined.

With the announcement of a healthy 3.5% annual rate improvement in the GDP from July to September, the U.S. economy seems on track to climb out of a painful recession.  This subdued growth is tempered as excessive debt and high unemployment still burden confidence.  Yet, a small growth is a sigh of relief after the economy shrank 6.4% in the first quarter and another 0.7% second quarter.

“Consumer spending, housing, business equipment investment, exports and federal government spending are adding to growth,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist for forecaster Moody’s Economy.com. “However, most of the growth was driven by (federal) stimulus.”

The Cash for Clunkers program is credited with buoying auto sales.  The $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers helped revive house sales, and the extension of unemployment benefits put money in the pockets of people who would spend quickly on necessities.  These federal programs were fundamental to stepped-up marketing programs to encourage consumer spending this year.