A note from eMarketer based on an study carried on by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research reveled that the Inc. 500 fastest growing companies are continuing to increase their usage of some social media tools, while pulling back from others.

Nearly three-quarters of the companies studied were using LinkedIn in 2011, and almost half had adopted YouTube. Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare were up in 2011.

Compared to 2009–2010, the usage of blogs, online video in social media, message/bulletin boards, podcasting and Myspace were all down. There was also a 50% decrease from 2010 in Inc. 500 companies who said they used no social media marketing tools.

However Message and bulleting boards along with blogging are some of the tools that marketers are abandoning the most even when are still reported to be highly effective (at least for those companies that continue to use them). While a strong majority of respondents indicated they were having success with Twitter (86%) and Facebook (82%), this was lower than several other, less-popular services.
This could mean that marketers can be abandoning techniques that are generating properly results

However, it could also be a sign that marketers who have mastered these techniques are sticking with them, while those that have seen less success in these areas are pulling back from their efforts.
Those marketers who continue to blog are likely the ones who have seen the most blogging success, for example, while those who found blogging’s return on investment too low have likely moved on.

In addition, the overwhelming popularity of Facebook among marketers means that those with less social media marketing experience or sophistication are likely using it, perhaps pushing success rates down.