Whether it is a welcome bit of techno optimism in an otherwise dour market, or the enduring legacy of denial on the Web, San Francisco-based microblogging service Twitter is living the online vida loca. Twitter - founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams - leapt into the No. 3 spot for all social networks in February, right behind giants Facebook and MySpace, according to TNS's Compete.com.ea

Tools of the Trade Are all media created equal?

It's amazing how much more stuff you can cram into your brain when you actually have a desk," says a fresh-faced Michael Dory, research director for the newly launched Socialbomb.

In 2007, as the cola wars intensified and consumers kept backing away from carbonated soft drinks, Pepsi-Cola turned its attention to a demographic that still very much cared what it put into its body - young men with a thirst for challenge, competition, camaraderie and carbonation.

When Skittles gave its landing page over to a Twitter feed, much hand-wringing, fingerwagging and prognosticating over what it meant to new-media marketing ensued. But an awful lot of hot air was wasted, because ultimately the experiment probably didn't mean very much at all in the grand scheme of things.

I'm sitting in a conference room at 11 Madison Avenue, a facility that has become part of a new wpp laboratory for inventing the "agency of the future." At least that's what its chief scientist, Torrence Boone, is telling me, as he scrutinizes a series of boards surrounding us on the room's walls.

When people on Madison Avenue discuss the creation of an ideal advertising system that will one day enable marketers to figure out the perfect way of delivering their ad messages to the right people, at the right time, and with the right effects, they typically refer to it as a "Holy Grail."