A favorite topic of ours here at SMI is tracking the corporate take-up of social media and seeing how some of the world’s largest companies are using the technology to connect with stakeholders inside the organization and beyond. We came across this infographic this morning that pits the Fortune 500, the world’s biggest companies, vs. the world’s fastest growing companies, as represented by the Inc. 500, in terms of social media smarts. Who wins?

It’s not much of a contest when it comes to one measure, corporate blogging. The small, but nimble Inc. 500 list is much more adept at blogging than the Fortune 500 crowd. As the infographic – essentially a visualization of data from The 2011 Fortune 500 and Social Media Adoption by Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth – shows, Fortune 500 companies have been stuck in blogging neutral for the past few years with just 23% maintaining an active company blog. In comparison, some 37% of Inc. 500 listed companies are blogging (though this is down from 50% the previous year). Could it be that small business owners simply have something more meaningful to say? Could it be that that Fortune 500 companies, usually listed somewhere, fear saying too much and having regulators or investors breathing down their necks? The disparity isn’t that surprising. We saw how Inc. 500 companies were beginning to pull away two years ago.

Where the Fortune 500 companies seem to be spending more of their time, as shown by this Infographic, is in Tweeting, and on Facebook. No word yet on Pinterest.

UPDATE: We’ve been informed that the original source of the data for the above infographic comes from The 2011 Fortune 500 and Social Media Adoption, a study conducted by Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.