Facebook and Twitter, in their rises as platforms, created usable social graphs, and social apps represented the first use of social tools. But for much of their existence, through Facebook Connect, the use of these tools has been along the lines of a monkey smashing something with a rock or poking something with a stick. All of a sudden the monkeys have fired up power drills, table saws and jackhammers.

John is an average 35-year-old guy. He has a college education, a job and a girlfriend. His passions hew to the Comic-Con vein: superhero flicks, graphic novels, Andy Kaufman conspiracy theories - the kind of stuff that was geeky before geeky sold out. But there is one way in which John is a very strange dude. He never checks his email. This can make friendship with John a challenge. If you want him to show up at an event planned by email - which, let's face it, most get-togethers among college friends are these days - John requires notification via …

'Twas a dark and stormy night, as dark as it was stormy. On the couch I sat, my eyes darting from screen to screen with cat-like quickness. Only a low constellation of small flashing lights illuminated the anteroom where I'd passed the last fortnight, or perhaps even longer.

Today's China and the hyperconnected Chinese marketplace are concepts so big it can be hard to wrap your intellectual arms around them. It helps to focus on only a few impressive facts at a time.

San Francisco is known for cultural experimentation, natural beauty and proximity to Silicon Valley, and those factors have all helped define the city as an ad town, too. On the advertising map, the City by the Bay has come to be known as both a digital and a creative epicenter.

Agencies have long claimed the best way to get to know them is through their work, an expressway to their souls. AKQA's Web site is all about the work - literally.

In 1998 I joined four friends in Orlando, Fl., to produce what started out as a traditional independent film project and ended up as The Blair Witch Project. Bringing to life the legend of the Blair Witch across various media - film, Web site, TV special, book, comic-book series and PC games - was the most unusual and incredible storytelling experience of my life.

Social media seems to be everywhere you look nowadays - no longer just connecting individuals but actually making the news. In recent months, social media has helped to bring down the government of Egypt, spread the word about the killing of Osama bin Laden, voice frustrations over the debt-ceiling crisis, register public outrage over the U.K. phone-hacking scandal and catalyze a massive outburst of civil disorder in the same country not long after. Meanwhile, Google, by far the largest company on the Internet in revenue terms, is desperately trying to crack the social media market with Google+. But for all …

Hyperconnectivity. It's not in the dictionary. Yet. But it's all over the Internet. Plug the word into Google and it returns 46,400 results, the first from Wikipedia with a warning that the topic itself "may not meet the general notability guideline." Google's 46,400 results beg to differ.

Speedo is known for innovations ranging from the creation of the first-ever non-wool Racerback swimsuit in the 1920s yes, there was a time when wool was the fabric of choice for swimwear to the high-tech Speedo lzr Racer swimsuit in 2008, worn by nearly all of the medalists who swam in the Beijing Summer Olympics that year, including American phenom Michael Phelps.