Social Media

Despite Groupon's recent high-profile missteps, enthusiasm over the daily deal site's anticipated initial public offering doesn't seem to be dissipating. That's unfortunate, at least in my opinion -- and my thoughts have nothing to do with Groupon running what were widely perceived as culturally in...

Anyone in the technology industry not captivated by recent events in North Africa and the Middle East needs to consider a change in career. First in Tunisia and then in Egypt, Internet-connected mobile devices and social networking sites were reportedly leveraged by protesters to effectively exchang...

Facebook is tracking your comments for ad opportunities. On Tuesday, Facebook announced its new advertising platform, called "Sponsored Stories." The new ads will be integrated near the user's news feed. Advertisements can be prompted by words that appear in apps, statuses, check-ins and "likes." A ...

While marketers have long pursued the mobile or "third" screen, this channel is just now becoming a realistic option for most brands. Meeting consumer demand at the precise moment of that demand is not just push marketing, either. The new mobile environment empowers consumers to initiate the interac...

Sometimes it's best to say you're sorry. Groupon's CEO, Andrew Mason, released a subtitled video on YouTube apologizing for problems Japanese customers experienced during a New Year's promotion. Groupon's deal-of-the-day site offers promotions and discounts to local markets. The company emphasizes s...

A major source of Facebook's success is its "social graph," a term coined in 2007 by company founder Mark Zuckerberg to describe the network of relationships between Facebook users. Facebook's social graph is a valuable component of the Facebook platform. The robust mapping of relationships and pref...

Monitoring online conversation can provide insights that are relevant to a range of functions and activities, and that drive different types of value to a company. Companies need to understand what these sources of value are and then design their social media monitoring program so that the findings ...

In the rush to Facebook, marketers are discovering that different kinds of content drive different kinds of results -- and different social networks respond in different ways. It was not that long ago that the experts warned that brands could not "sell" in social media, that the audience would rebel...

In the movie "The Social Network," the Zuckerberg character keeps insisting to his marketing director that selling advertising on the site would make Facebook uncool. Six years later, we've grown accustomed to advertising on Facebook. Now, Zuckerberg's team is ready to take the commercialization of ...

Twitter has received $200 million in financing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, according to Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. The funding pegs Twitter's valuation at $3.7 billion. Clearly, the investors believe Twitter will find an effective way to squeeze substantial revenue from its massive use...

With holiday online shopping numbers at an all-time high, retailers understand that the Web is a critical sales channel. What they might be overlooking, however, is just how influential social networks have become in the shopping process -- both online and off. As more consumers turn to the Web and...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said in his 1964 Order that he could not use words to describe pornography but "I know it when I see it." Even though judges may not be able to define "social media," they generally understand the complex circumstances in legal disputes. However, s...

Facebook brushed itself up with a new makeover Sunday, this time focusing on the layout of members' profile screens. Users' profile pages now begin with a snapshot of information about themselves and feature recently tagged photos of the user. Facebook users can list their activities and include fri...

With more than 500 million people around the globe spending 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, there is no question that it is the most important and pervasive social ecosystem in the world. It's no wonder that brands of all shapes, sizes and offerings are leveraging the user base to connect...

MySpace and Facebook -- bitter enemies until Facebook left MySpace far in the dust -- have announced new and tighter integrations between the two. The announcement constituted a tacit, but completely unnecessary, concession by MySpace that the social networking wars were over and that Facebook was t...