Gawker Finds Out Social Media Is Still the Wild West by Erik Sass

Gawker.com was one of the first big success stories of online media: as a Web log (rather than a Web site associated with a legacy print publication) covering New York's media and celebrity culture, it demonstrated the power of social media, as well as its commercial viability, with rapid growth after its debut under owner Nick Denton and founding editor Elizabeth Spiers back in 2003. Sister sites like Jezebel and Gizmodo did the same for fashion and gadgetry, respectively. Thus it is ironic that this pioneering social media site should be brought to a standstill by social media, through social ...Read the whole story

  • Glam Media Names Stern To Head New Social Communities Unit by Gavin O'Malley

    Signaling broader social ambitions, Glam Media on Monday named Ryan Stern as head of a newly created Social Communities unit. With its blog-based origins, the female-focused media and ad network has always been "social." Yet, as CEO Samir Arora admits, the social landscape has changed rapidly since he founded Glam in 2005. "We are now building the next-generation social communities platform for authors," Arora said. ...Read the whole story

Email and Social Marketing Top Budgets by Jack Loechner

A new StrongMail survey in late November, conducted by Zoomerang, reflects the attitudes of business leaders in regards to their planned marketing budgets, priorities and challenges for 2011. The data reveals an optimistic marketing outlook, with half of businesses planning to increase marketing budgets, and another 43% keeping them steady. And, for the second year in a row, email marketing and social media marketing remain the top targets for increased spend. ...More

  • How Will Social Impact Paid Search? by Laurie Sullivan

    While the jury is still out on whether or not social will impact paid search, a heated discussion at the Search Insider Summit in Park City, Utah, on Thursday gave some insight as to how marketers will think about combining the two mediums in the future. It seemed a bit more difficult for panelists to wrap their heads around the concept of combining social and paid search, compared with social and organic search, but some gave it a try. So, will social relevance have an impact on quality scores? ...More

  • Will the Real Twitter Please Stand Up? by Catharine P. Taylor

    Hmmm. The people I hang with on Twitter are so out there. And here I thought I was part of the Twitter mainstream. Last night, I did my own rough survey of what my Twitter-verse (or at least those I follow), looks like -- and it in no way resembles what the well-regarded Pew Internet and American Life Project found when it looked at who in America is using Twitter. ...More