If you are aware of SAS, a company located in Cary, NC then you understand or have a need to understand business analytics. As the largest privately-held software company in the world, SAS often flies under the radar because what they do isn’t sexy. Instead, it is necessary.

Necessary business functions don’t get the same attention or play that the exciting new and ‘edgy’ companies get. SAS is OK with that though. If you’ve ever visited their campus and saw how they treated their employees, you may quickly value necessary over sexy. A result of this reverence for their employees, the company merited the top spot on Fortune’s Top 100 Best Companies to Work For list this year. Actually you can find the company somewhere on that list just about every year but this year it’s number 1.

It’s rare that Google gets trumped on news but with all the Apple iPad (insert your favorite disgusting nickname here) hoopla from yesterday the announcement that Google’s social search is now in beta for all to use kinda slipped by. After a little reading on the subject there may be a good reason for this. In other words, Google maybe didn’t want to make a big deal on this one. Read on to find out why.

The Official Google Blog announced the move with this

We think there’s tremendous potential for social information to improve search, and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface. We’re leaving a “beta” label on social results because we know there’s a lot more we can do. If you want to get the most out of Social Search right away, get started by creating a Google profile, where you can add links to your other public online social services.

Twitter is making sure that they are not left out of the year of mobile / local / smart phone etc, etc by announcing a new trending service that helps users figure out what might be the buzz about things in their neck of the woods. More and more we are seeing people getting drawn back to their lives on the move rather than behind the computer screen.

The Twitter blog tells us more about this addition

As Twitter evolves, and more people share what’s happening in their own world, we want to provide another way for people to discover topics that may be relevant to them. Last week we began to slowly roll out a new feature called Local Trends to expose what people are talking about on the state and city level, and today we’ve fully launched so everyone can use it.

Facebook is getting to the level of ubiquity that is only afforded a few things in this life. It seems as if everyone is on the service to one degree or another. If someone is not on it they have heard about it and have likely gotten some ribbing about not being involved. Very few people leave (although a friend of mine recently did because he felt like he understood “how it worked” so when his kids are ready to get on it he can monitor it. I tried to explain the whole innovation and change thing but he wouldn’t hear it). Many are so entrenched that there is the idea that the service is “locked in” to the fabric of life and will continue to do so more and more.