There is no better indicator of the impact of social marketing on today’s world than the 2011 Forbes Most Influential Celebrity list. Lady Gaga toppled Oprah Winfrey from the top position this year, not just because of the pop singer’s $90 million concert tour, but also her 32 million Facebook fans and 10 million Twitter followers, an online fan base that was instrumental in purchasing 1 million digital downloads of Gaga’s most recent single in five days, as well as the sales bump in the cell phones and headphones that are featured in her videos.

Social marketing also was heralded as the primary accelerator of the recent political uprising in Egypt, where local activists said that a combination of Facebook and Twitter was used to schedule and coordinate protests with YouTube telling their side of the story to the world.