Despite Social Media, Americans Are Less Social Than Ever by Erik Sass

Being critical of social media, nowadays, is like shouting "stop" at a speeding freight train: Don't expect to make much of an impression. The same is true for observations about modern society in general, where trends emerge and unfold on such a huge scale that all the individual can do is take note of them (and maybe cynically cash in, if blessed with an entrepreneurial bent). But I am all about being quixotic. Just show me the windmill and I'll tilt, baby, I'll tilt! And with Thanksgiving approaching, I thought I'd take a look at the bigger "social" implications of ...Read the whole story

  • Mint.com's StumbleUpon Social Strategy Trumps Search Marketing by Laurie Sullivan

    StumbleUpon released an Android app recently. One of the most popular tools has become the app discovery feature where a site visitor picks a few categories to find apps. More than one million apps have been stumbled on. The success is no surprise for some execs. ...Read the whole story

  • research Study: Put A Face On Those Social Sites by Aaron Baar

    Social media are more relationship based. Therefore, they need much more nurturing and personalization than other approaches. "You have to abandon the corporate mentality and approach and think of it as a person and interact with them as a person," Firefly Millward Brown's Rob Hernandez says. "You've got to be interesting and be relevant, with a personal connection with [consumers]." ...Read the whole story

  • TVGuide.com Personalizes 'Social TV' by Joe Mandese

    In a bid to become the primary online online destination people use to figure out what to watch on TV, TVGuide.com this morning announced it has added personalization features to its popular "TV Check-in" feature, which allows users to share the shows they are watching with their Facebook friends. Starting today, logged-in TVGuide.com users will also begin to see a personalized "Hot List" of their favorite shows throughout the site, featuring tune-in information for those shows, as well as "I'll Watch" buttons to alert their Facebook community of friends. ...Read the whole story

Reaching The 'New Mainstream' Via Social Media by Joe Kutchera

One marketer who clearly sees the growth of multicultural audiences converging with the growth of social media is McDonald's. Rick Wion, director of social media for the company, gave an excellent keynote presentation on "Multicultural Social Media," specifically detailing how he manages its 3.6 million fans on Facebook, 60,000 followers on Twitter, 4000+ daily check-in's on Foursquare, and 2 billion daily views on YouTube. ...More