Out of the 540 total Twitter (Twitter) accounts registered by Fortune 100 companies, 50 percent of the accounts had fewer than 500 followers and another 15 percent weren’t being used at all.

…the study found that half of the accounts did not score well on engagement metrics used by Twitalyzer, which looks at number of links, hashtags, retweets and references. Being engaged and active on Twitter usually translates to more followers because it gives an account more exposure and chances of being retweeted and seen by other users (assuming the information is valuable).

If Genentech can keep up a decent Twitter feed, there’s no reason most other Fortune 100 companies can’t do it, too. The biggest thing stopping most of these companies is probably their perception of Twitter.

The Yankees won the world series last yesterday, thanks in part to Hideki Matsui’s stellar performance. They also top the MLB payroll for 2009. Here’s part of the list, as compiled by the AP:

1. New York Yankees $201,449,289
2. New York Mets $135,773,988
3. Chicago Cubs $135,050,000
4. Boston Red Sox $122,696,000
5. Detroit Tigers $115,085,145
6. Los Angeles Angels $113,709,000
7. Philadelphia Phillies $113,004,048
8. Houston Astros $102,996,415
9. Los Angeles Dodgers $100,458,101
10. Seattle Mariners $98,904,167

See the full list here.

Clearly, the Yankees used more than money to win last night. And if payroll is that crucial, what happened with the Mets, the MLB’s second-highest paying team this year?

CIT Group (CIT) filed for bankruptcy protection Sunday with broad support from its debtholders, but taxpayers will lose the $2.3B invested in CIT, marking the first definitive loss in the government’s rescue of the financial system.

Nearly 90% of CIT’s bondholders voted in favor of the prepackaged bankruptcy, which CIT says will enable it to reduce total debt by $10B, significantly reduce its liquidity needs over the next three years, enhance its capital ratios and accelerate its return to profitability. Bondholders will receive about $0.70 on the dollar, a number that could have fallen as low as $0.06 had CIT entered a freefall bankruptcy. With $71B in assets and $65B in liabilities, CIT’s bankruptcy ranks among the largest in corporate history.

CIT, which is not related to Citigroup, is a commercial and consumer finance company that received $2.3 billion from the TARP program. Now the CIT is filing for bankruptcy, common and preferred stock will get wiped out. However, bondholders will get a return of $0.70 on the dollar. In other words, taxpayers foot the bill.

Spend Matters analyzes what CIT’s bankruptcy means for the retail supply chain:

Kurt Cavano, Chairman and CEO of TradeCard and an expert in the area of global retail trade, stated this morning that CIT provided financing lifeblood for an important portion of the retail supply chain. While many exporters and importers — not to mention actual retailers, who are not always direct importers — pay a reasonable APR if their credit rating is strong (e.g., LIBOR + 200 basis points), Kurt suggests, for companies with less than perfect credit, trade financing costs can easily reach a 10-12% APR. I’ve personally seen actual APRs hit over 20% based on some research I’ve done in the apparel supply chain in the case of global suppliers who accepted early payment discounts.

According to Kurt, “CIT made a great living working the edge of the bad credit companies with high rates and keeping the risk down. This worked well until everything cracked. Then the 8-10% they were charging was not enough when defaults rocketed. Combine this with the fact that the management team was levering up the returns by investing in exotic instruments on Wall Street (e.g., CDOs) and it created a perfect storm.” However, it was not always this way. Kurt notes that, “CIT had always done a great job of profiting and working with those firms on the edge of bad credit.” But going forward, the question remains whether this group will be able to find the liquidity they need to run their businesses if CIT does not come back out with the same type of credit capacity. This is critical because as Kurt suggests, “a huge portion of the retail sector runs on very thin margins” and “use the credit of companies like CIT to run their businesses”.

The Atlantic Wire has a nice summation of who wins and loses as a result of the CIT bankruptcy. Losers, as mentioned above, include retailers and the US taxpayer. Winners: Carl Icahn, CIT itself, and (surprise!) Goldman Sachs.

This is a guest post by Resource Nation’s David Liu.

Yahoo has announced that it will end its paid inclusion program, formally called Search Submit Pro, by the end of 2009. The move comes after complaints against the search engine that claimed that having paid advertisements included in organic search results generated biased results for online marketing campaigns.

Search Submit Pro (SSP) allowed users to pay for page inclusion but not page rank, which allowed Yahoo to both guarantee page results but steer clear of offering a higher ranking. Having guaranteed page inclusion does, however, still allow web designers to optimize their pages for better search results.

The result allowed Yahoo to monopolize their search engine results, which turned key searches into full page ads for Yahoo SSP clients. Key searches for words like “refinance” on Yahoo came up with an entire page of SSP results, making it impossible for non-clients to show up on Yahoo’s top 10 results. Also, of the first 100 results for “refinance,” 80% were Yahoo SSP clients as well.

An additional search for “home mortgage” yielded 80% of SSP clients on the first page, allowing only 20% of Yahoo’s organic results to be listed. Complaints against paid inclusion had mainly focused on Yahoo’s SSP results taking over traditional SEO practices like pay-per-click ads and keyword manipulation.

Yahoo’s decision to end the use of paid inclusion had nothing to do with PR, however, and instead focused on their merger with software behemoth Microsoft. At their July press conference, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz had originally declared that they would “decide on that later.”

Of all the search engines interested in the new merger, the smaller web developers are probably the happiest to see the demise of paid inclusion. While most of these search engine developers were in Yahoo’s corner in 2003 when SSP was first introduced, the Yahoo’s monopoly quickly showed that Google would still be king.

Many people in the search engine field have declared that getting rid of SSP can most likely bring back some life to smaller SEO practices. Yahoo knows this better than anyone, having said that their official SSP stop date of December 2009 was chosen to to allow their advertisers time to adjust.

While the merger between Yahoo and Microsoft seems to be on the verge of revolutionizing some factors in the search industry (BingHoo, perhaps?) many talking heads still claim that Google won’t see any competition for the next two years.

Resource Nation provides free tools, tips, and purchasing advice for business owners and entrepreneurs in over 100 business categories ranging from phone systems to credit card processing. Whether it’s connecting businesses with local and national pre-screened vendors, or offering easy service comparisons on a VoIP service, Resource Nation empowers business decision makers by providing the information they need to make smart choices.

David Liu is a writer and comedian based in San Diego, California. He writes extensively for Resource Nation and VoIP service, an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Geocities, Yahoo’s free hosting service that divided (mostly tacky) homepages into (perplexing) neighborhoods, was officially put to today. Computerworld (via Gizmodo) has more:

The shuttering of GeoCities has both historical and contemporary importance. In the latter category, GeoCities is currently the 195th most browsed domain, and a highly referenced one, with two million incoming links — a popularity most other hosts could only dream of. More important, GeoCities (which popularized the notion of webrings) currently serves as a vast archive of information. Digital archivist Jason Scott eloquently explained:

Scott and his Archive Team are working to rescue GeoCities by downloading as much of its content as possible — which they estimate to be around ten terabytes. These historians recognize GeoCities as having played a critical role in the development of the Internet. Rather than protesting Yahoo’s financially motivated decision, doing fundraising to “Save GeoCities!”, or signing online petitions, these data hoarders have taken an active role not in preventing the inevitable but in mitigating its damage by preserving GeoCities in a format protected from further corporate terminations.

More.

What are some cash-flow options available other than traditional banks?

What is the biggest business blunder management is making regarding social media?

Should our website be ‘mobile compatible’?

If you’re a business owner or manager, questions like these probably cross your mind on a daily basis. How do you find answers for them? Ask someone on your team? Consult an article? Hunt it down in a forum?

Most importantly, do you usually find what you were looking for?

The people behind Bizmore know that finding intelligent answers to business questions can be a challenge. So they created a searchable Q&A website covering even the thorniest of business-related questions. Users generate questions, and their peers—many of whom are CEOs or experts in their fields—offer informed, germane answers.

Bizmore’s commitment to its niche (the audience is comprised of owners and managers of small- to medium-sized businesses) keeps topics relevant. They supplement their Q&A content with staff-written features, giving readers a complete interactive resource. And unlike other answers sites, you don’t risk running into juvenile or spammy content.

Vistage International, an executive coaching and networking group, launched the site in July. Former CNET executive and veteran tech writer Alice Hill founded the site; Jeff Davis, who edited Business 2.0 magazine for nearly a decade, is Bizmore’s Editor in Chief.

Business Pundit recently caught up with Hill and Davis to discuss Bizmore’s history, uses, and implications.

BP: What inspired you to come up with the idea for Bizmore?

Hill: The idea came from our parent company, Vistage. Vistage is a leadership organization that’s been around since the 1950’s. It brings together a community of peer groups, mentors and experts to talk about their business and get answers from peers. That’s how you really grow your business and solve important challenges. We thought it would be great to bring this same experience to an online location, so people can tap into the same peer experience from anywhere, at anytime.

The small business (SMB) audience is such a huge part of our economy–they constitute 70% of all U.S. jobs and more than 50% of the GDP. And small businesses are underserved, so we thought: Can we create something online that has that same in-person, really intimate power of a leadership organization, but gives people a way to connect online and get answers and advice from other peers and experts?

That seemed like an exciting thing to do, an untapped audience and a lot of people with a lot of questions. It seemed like using a Q&A platform would be a great way to do something different than the usual expert articles and blogs that are out there right now.

BP: What do you mean by untapped audience?

Hill: Right now, if you are a manager or owner of a business, it’s really hard for you to get personal advice without having to hire a consultant, a lawyer, an accountant, or another expert. You can read articles and do research, but it’s really hard to have that conversation back and forth, especially online.

Online, you can comment, blog, have someone write back, or write an article, but there’s no back-and-forth. That’s why we thought that building a Q&A site would enable you to ask a question, then have experts, peers, and other people from the around the world answer, to help you look at the different perspectives that different voices bring to the issue.

BP: What’s the main thing that differentiates you from a LinkedIn group or a blog written by an expert?

Hill: As far as blogs go, Jeff likes to say we’re taking the comments in a blog and turn them upside down. You start your discussion with a question, with a person that has the issue, whereas a blog is more writers thinking up topics for the day.

If you’re a writer, you’re hoping that you’re picking something timely, or something that resonates. But it’s different when the user says that I don’t understand what’s going on, says I have a specific issue and there’s one that I need help with. It’s user-driven, but then the answers can be articles, experts, peers, all jumping in to help the user. It’s many to one, instead of one to many.

We’re not the same animal as LinkedIn. It’s hard on LinkedIn to just get advice, experts, and content in one place. LinkedIn is more about your career, your profile, and your contacts, but they’re not focused as an advice platform for a specific audience.

Davis: This is a very different world here. Our content is about recognizing that businesspeople are a bunch of experts. Our community is based on recognizing that high-level managers and executives of businesses know things about running businesses that are very hard for traditional business journalists to replicate.

We hand the microphone over to people inside of companies who do one thing really well. We get them to explain one method or management tactic that works for them that others can learn from.

There’s a lot of practical management and business advice that’s being put into practice inside of successful companies small, medium, and large. All we’re really trying to do is get inside of those companies and get them to share their wisdom.

BP: Can you tell us more about your experts?

Davis: We’re not the first website to offer up business experts. What’s different is that we handpick and share who our experts are, and they’re chosen purely with editorial objectives in mind.

It’s an independent editorial platform. There’s no issue or question that is out of bounds for these guys. As long it’s a relevant, compelling issue or topic, we’re going to try to find experts with the very best wisdom to share on that topic.

Our experts agreed to answer a handful of questions each week on our site. In exchange for that original content, we display their biography and some links to their books, white papers, and anything else that’s relevant to their topic. It’s a way for them to display their brands on the site, while we give users access to their great wisdom.

Our experts have been very enthusiastic. Many of them have come from a world of promotion where people call them up and ask them stuff, people write articles. You’d be surprised how few of them are interested in doing that the old way.

Instead of a blog, a call, or an article, I just offered the experts a chance to engage with an eyes-on business audience of senior managers, executives, and business leaders. I gave them a chance to directly contact those people.

These experts have jumped at the opportunity to have this kind of exchange. They’re tired of having one-way conversations with an audience. They’re willing to try out a new Q&A platform to get a more direct personal engagement with people they’re tried to reach.

BP: How do you envision Bizmore in its most successful form?

Hill: We want to attract as focused an audience as possible. We want to make sure there’s no solicitation on the site. We want to keep the quality high as we grow as big as possible.

There’s also a huge international audience, outside the US, who are trying to figure out how to get business inside the US. Especially with the recession, there are also so many American companies who are trying to figure out how to diversify inside the US. The Internet is a phenomenal way to reach people internationally that is hard to do in other models.

We’ll also build out the features in the site over time. We’re talking about adding a marketplace so that people can promote their companies in a way that’s not soliciting, but gets the word out about their companies, job boards, and business-related things.

I think that at the core, we just want to have the best, most relevant living archive of business advice. The audience will constantly improve on it. We’re hoping that as more and more questions get added, the site becomes more useful to every person who jumps on.

Explore Bizmore for yourself. Read Q&As anonymously, or sign up for a free membership to gain full access to the site. You’ll join 15,000 Vistage CEOs, twelve distinguished industry experts, and a host of other users.

October 16 is National Boss’s Day, the day employees thank their bosses for their contributions to the workforce. To honor the day, we’ve created a list of five characteristics good bosses share. Where does yours fit in?

1. Flexibility. Bosses, from middle managers to C-level executives, face changes during the course of their jobs. These days, it might have to do more with downsizing or restructuring, but good company times bring upheavals, too.

A good boss reacts to change in a proactive way. She supports her organization by making the changes it requires. At the same time, she communicates clearly and respectfully to her employees about upcoming changes. Her behavior informs employees’ perspective of the change, affecting their reactions. A panicked manager can bring down an entire team. A good manager knows this, and reacts to change with poise.

2. Knowledge. A good boss knows his company, his field, and his employees. He helps his company grow and prosper by executing the tasks required of him. His knowledge of his field helps him suggest new innovations, directions, and projects that will benefit the company.

He also knows his employees’ personalities well enough to know how they feel about their jobs. He regularly drops in and talks to them, learning about their concerns, ideas, and achievements. That way, employees feel supported, and the boss can help drive individuals and the team in the direction it needs to go. The company benefits as a result.

3. Job satisfaction. If a boss doesn’t like her job, she transmits her dismay to her team. The individuals in her team suffer as a result. Have you ever had a boss who does things half-assed? Or one so insecure in her position that she tries too hard to control her workforce? It doesn’t make for a good working experience–or a good team.

4. Organizational concern. You might think the best bosses are concerned more with their employees than their company. This is not the case. An employee-centric boss may bend to his employees’ needs, but they won’t see him as much of a savior if he drives his team or company into the ground.

A good boss works to secure his organization’s good fortune, ideally creating more jobs in the process. He balances his organization’s needs with those of his employees. If the interests of his organization clash with his employees, he is a successful liaison between the two. He knows that being a boss isn’t only about his employees, or about his own career advancement. It is about mobilizing his workers to do a good job for the organization.

5. Respect. A good boss treats coworkers with respect, no matter what level of the organization those people operate in. He respects people as individuals, regardless of age, working background, race, religion, or political beliefs. He recognizes that each of his employees provide the company with a valuable service. That service matters more than an employee’s belief structure or background. Not being respectful fosters fear and resentment–hardly the ingredients for a successful team.

If you’re an employee, wish your boss Happy Boss’s Day with a card, gift, or friendly email. If you’re a boss, Happy Boss’s Day!

For the first time in history, women may outnumber men in the workforce. Job losses and women’s ever-changing roles are responsible. USA Today has the scoop:

Women held 49.83% of the nation’s 132 million jobs in June and they’re gaining the vast majority of jobs in the few sectors of the economy that are growing, according to the most recent numbers available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the current pace, women will become a majority of workers in October or November.

The only parts of the economy still growing — health care, education and government — have traditionally hired mostly women. That dominance has increased in part because federal stimulus funding directed money to education, health care and state and local governments.

There may be a she-vival in the he-cession. Ideally, however, the economy will grow to a state where everyone has a shot at employment, regardless of gender.

Breeders around the world covet certain animals for their economic potential. Some produce a lot of meat. Some are iridescent. Others fit well into small spaces.

Nevertheless, all of the animals featured below have two things in common. One, they have highly unusual attributes. Two, those very attributes make each a potentially lucrative business proposition:

7. Giant Guinea Pig

Cuy meat is lean, protein-packed, and versatile. Better yet, cuys, or guinea pigs, reproduce quickly, offering a steady supply of meat. One Lima official said that guinea pigs will feed a family of up to eight people for only USD $3.20. Peruvians eat about 65 million guinea pigs per year.

With meat in mind, scientists in Peru set out to supersize the cuy. 34 years after they came up with the idea, scientists introduced a giant cuy weighing about 2.2 lbs, twice the usual size. The guinea pigs were especially prized for export, allowing Peruvians living abroad to get a (big) taste of home.

6. Belgian Blue

Known as the Incredible Hulk cow, Monster cow, and Schwarzenegger cow, the Belgian Blue takes the world’s blue ribbon for buffness. The cow’s hereditary myostatin defect results in excessive muscle growth known as “double muscling.” As a result, the breed produces a large amount of lean beef, endearing it breeders looking to penetrate a health-conscious beef market—or just trying to look good with a stable full of manly cows.

5. Fainting Goat

Fainting goats are bred to fall over. A hereditary disorder, myotonia congenita, causes their muscles to freeze when they’re scared, often resulting in them collapsing on their sides. Their small size makes them ideal for small farms, where they won’t hop fences—or will scare themselves into collapsing when they try.

According to oral history, the fainting goat was a good asset protector. Handlers would keep them with other (more valuable) animals, like sheep. When a predator came around, the fainting goat would collapse, effectively sacrificing itself so that the other animals could safely run away.

4. German Giant

The German Giant, one of the biggest domestic rabbit breeds on Earth, can grow to the size of a dog. Breeders covet giant rabbits for their looks, their fur, and their meat.

Breeder Carl Szmolinsky produced Germany’s biggest rabbit in 2006. His win inspired North Korean officials to purchase twelve of Szmolinsky’s German Giants to start a food breeding program. The giant bunnies’ offspring would help alleviate North Korea’s endemic food shortages.

Szmolinsky was scheduled to fly into Pyongyang to help them establish the program. North Korean officials, however, canceled his visit. He suspects that government officials ate the rabbits. “North Korea won’t be getting anything from me any more,” the upset Szmolinsky told Spiegel in this interview.

3. Minicow

If supermarket beef is becoming too expensive, don’t fret. You can purchase your own German Shepherd-sized minicow for a few hundred dollars. It’s tiny, meaty and, best yet, fits in your backyard. Homesteaders can choose from Irish Dexter, Mini Hereford, or Lowline Angus cows, which the Times says produces 70% of the steak of a cow twice its size. All you need is a couple of acres of grass and a little fencing. In return, you get organic, grass-fed beef, sans hormones or slaughterhouse.

2. Jersey Giant

Why eat turkey when you can buy a giant chicken instead? That’s what 19th-century breeders John and Thomas Black were thinking when they introduced the Jersey Giant. The breed, originally crossbred from three other kinds of chickens, produces hens weighing an average of 11 lbs, and cocks of 13 lbs. The meat industry initially took to the idea, but then cast Jersey Giants aside because they don’t grow fast enough.

1. GloFish

Swim aside, goldfish. The Sunburst Orange ® GloFish ™ is genetically engineered to outshine you by miles. And unlike you, boring, traditional goldfish, the GloFish ™ also comes in Starfire Red and Electric Green.

These colorful zebrafish hold the dubious honor of being the world’s first genetically modified pet. In 1999, Singapore-based scientists inserted fluorescence proteins from coral and jellyfish into a zebrafish embryo, resulting in the GloFish’s luminescent qualities. The idea was to create a fish that would fluoresce when it came near toxins, allowing it to detect pollution.

When businesspeople caught wind of the glowing fish, they saw great pet potential. In the US, Austin-based Yorktown Technologies licensed the GloFish—initially created in Singapore—for consumer sales. People continue to buy the dazzling danios, though GMO laws in Canada, and the EU ban people from possessing them.