If there's one thing to take away from the just-ended Social Media Week - a global conference hosted in Singapore - it would be that the social media phenomenon is here to stay and growing fast and furious.

But rather than just a marketing tool or for keeping in touch with friends, the use of social media has evolved, with creative individuals and businesses tapping into it to develop fresh business and community ideas that might not have flourished otherwise.

Adriana Gascoigne and Girls in Tech

BACK in 2007, Adriana Gascoigne was the only female employee in a United States video distribution company of 50 staff. "I work well with men, but it was strange to be in a company filled with them," she recalls. "I felt that the office dynamics could be more interesting and much richer with a more balanced gender mix."

Then again, Ms Gascoigne was working in technology - a generally male-dominated industry. "I was chatting with some friends and it occurred to me that there was a need for more women in the technology industry to have collaborative meetings with each other," she says.

With that in mind, Ms Gascoigne started the first chapter of Girls in Tech - a not-for-profit social network enterprise focused on educating and empowering women in technology - in San Francisco.

The aim: to inspire more women to join and reach the highest echelons in the industry. "When we first started, we did a traditional startup launch party - nothing big, just a lot of video filming and posting on YouTube and tweeting in real time," she reveals.

"But even though I didn't have a real growth strategy for the programme then, so many women came to support us. The idea resonated with them and I knew we were on to something."

Fast forward a few years and with the support of volunteers, Girls in Tech has approximately 38 chapters around the world. Singapore is one of its latest ports of call as Ms Gascoigne recently relocated here.

Girls in Tech specialises in creating platforms (conferences, events, online forums for instance) for women in technology to share best practices with each other, be it in terms of recruitment, monetising a technology business or even product marketing.

For example, initiatives that can be expected from the local chapter include an online business pitch competition where the winner will be awarded some seed funding as well as professional courses teaching aspiring female technopreneurs how to build a startup.

That said, all this probably would not have been possible without the advent of social media.

"Social media is the foundation on which Girls in Tech was created. It is a major factor of our success," says Ms Gascoigne who hosted the Women in Tech Panel Discussion on Wednesday as part of Social Media Week.

"Our members and targeted members are all online. After all, these are women who are either building products, marketing products or early adopters interested in learning more about social media tools and technology. So using social media as a tool for word of mouth marketing was a very useful and intuitive strategy for Girls in Tech.

"We use Facebook and Twitter to promote our events, LinkedIn for recruitment, we produce YouTube videos and we provide live streaming during our conferences so that people can hear us speak even if they're not present at a particular event."

Plus, not only is social media a very cost effective way to grow Girls in Tech, it is also the most effective avenue to get customer feedback.

"The use of social media allows information to reach us very quickly, even if the information is coming from another part of the world," she muses. "The advent of social media helps us to hear what our members want more of and is particularly helpful when we're trying to build a new chapter in another city."

She concludes: "We're really excited about the local chapter. Even though we've barely started, we already have a good pool of women who are keen to be a part of Girls in Tech, many of whom are women who are movers and shakers in the local tech industry.

"It was a natural decision as the economy is doing really well here and we expect it to be the new tech hub of Asia."

This article was first published in The Business Times.