Social Media

Brands may be shifting more money to digital advertising and social media marketing efforts, but so far that's not buying them a lot of trust from consumers, according to a new report from Forrester Research. Seventy percent of more than 57,000 U.S. consumers surveyed trust brand or product recommen...

After a year of testing and much feedback, Twitter on Monday released a set of tools for small businesses and self-service advertisers -- tools that will give businesses more of an opportunity to speak directly to consumer interests. Targeting was the most requested feature in the feedback that the ...

The Federal Trade Commission released its updated Dot Com Disclosures guidance on Tuesday, emphasizing the requirements for advertisers targeting mobile devices. In short, the rules that apply to ads in newspapers, radio and television also apply to mobile devices and social media. The update is th...

The social bookmarking site Pinterest, one of the fastest-growing social networks of the last two years, released a new analytics tool Tuesday so that users -- especially businesses and marketing professionals -- can do a better job of tracking traffic and sharing aspects of the site. Pinterest Web ...

Facebook unveiled its new look this week, providing bigger photos and more links in users' News Feeds, along with additional ways to view specialized streams based on topics of interest, such as music. This is apparently an attempt to corral all the random musings and disjointed pictures users are a...

Facebook has flatly denied the suggestion by a New York Times columnist that it might be gaming its own system -- that is, that the way it pumps up views of fee-based promoted posts could be by limiting the sharing of ordinary posts. "There have been recent claims suggesting that our News Feed algo...

Facebook users will soon see ads in their feeds that are more specifically targeted to what they like and where they've shopped -- both online and offline -- thanks to a series of agreements with data companies announced Wednesday. The agreements expand the social network's Custom Audiences program ...

Twitter launched an API for advertisers Wednesday, a move designed to help the social network boost revenues to better compete with its Internet ad competitors. The company has had an ad structure in place since 2010, when it launched its Promoted Tweets program, which allows advertisers to push 140...

The Twitter accounts for fast-food chain Burger King and automaker Jeep were taken over by hackers this week, prompting calls for stronger authentication practices while forcing marketing professionals to once again confront the shadowy regions of social media. Burger King was the first brand to rep...

Facebook's policy of requiring that users post profiles under their real names was upheld by a German court on Thursday. The decision reversed last year's Independent Center for Privacy Protection ruling that Facebook had to permit the use of pseudonyms in Germany. The ULD -- the privacy regulator f...

Zynga's shares got a lift from better-than-expected earnings reported earlier this week. The picture wasn't entirely rosy, though. The maker of once-popular social media games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars reported revenue of $311 million for Q4, flat compared to the year-ago quarter. Zynga admit...

The tweets were flying this week, and not just about Beyonce and blackouts at the Super Bowl. Twitter was itself the subject of tweets following the announcement late Monday that it had inked a deal to buy social TV analytics firm Bluefin Labs. Terms were not disclosed. Bluefin Labs, founded in 2008...

As the U.S. prepares for kick-off of Sunday's Super Bowl, advertisers already have their plays in motion. Many of the commercials are already viewable online, and ads get support from online components. Over the past few years, the brands who buy air time for the Super Bowl have begun posting their ...

Pinterest, the social scrapbooking site that has quickly captured the Web's attention, this week rolled out a beta test of a redesigned look that features larger pictures and a new way of navigating pages. The biggest change to Pinterest is that images are larger, and there's more information on pin...

This week's revelation that a pornographic video briefly made the "Editors Picks" recommendations for the new Twitter app Vine is raising questions about whether the ultra-short form video-clip sharing app is at risk for more such content -- and whether this could scare users away from the service.