• Why Twitter Should Pursue Revenue Streams Other Than Advertising
    Not that Twitter isn't normally in the news, but, sheesh. Between the murmurings earlier this week that it's about to launch a shiny new ad platform and today's announcement of a partnership with Yahoo, it looks as though the-little-tweetstream-that-could is making headlines because it's slowly inching its way toward a business model. But the two roads to revenue signified by these two bits of news diverge in a wood, of sorts. And I'm wondering if Twitter, like Robert Frost, should take the road less traveled.
  • Marketers Sit On Facebook's Mobile Sidelines
    There have been so many big numbers tossed out about Facebook lately, you'd think the site was in the lottery business. But the number that stands out the most to me is this one: 100 million. That's how many mobile users access Facebook across a range of devices -- actually, it's more than that, and growing daily. The safe bet is in time that the mobile user base will nearly mirror the overall user base, and that most of its usage will derive from mobile users.
  • Facebook Moves Towards World -- Not Just Social Networking -- Domination
    Let's just say it: Facebook rules. But I'm not talking about Facebook kicking MySpace to the curb some time ago, or Facebook's user base being much larger than Twitter's. I'm talking about Facebook vs. Google. Social networking vs. search engine-ing. In the last few weeks, I've seen a preponderance of data pointing to a few ways Facebook is ruling -- in ways I never thought it would.
  • Offerpal Befriends Direct And Brand Marketers
    One emerging business model that has caught on in social media is not particularly social at all. The model, especially prominent in supporting the booming social gaming business, allows marketers to target consumers with cost-per-acquisition deals that earn consumers points or virtual currency in the games. Among the best known players in this field is Offerpal, which says it reaches more than 150 million consumers. After missing the company's CEO George Garrick last month both when he was in New York and I was in San Francisco, we finally caught up on the phone for an exclusive interview.
  • Google Buzz May Help Its Rivals More Than Itself
    Did I just have a "Watson? Can you hear me?" moment, or another moment of online, over-sharing inanity? The reason I ask is that I just sent my first status update from my Droid on the new Google Buzz. It read: "Testing buzz again. Is anyone out there?" (OK, on the first try, my phone rejected my update, so call it my second.) So far, though, I'm a little clueless on how the navigation works (Buzz has yet to be added to my desktop Gmail), and it doesn't seem that anyone I know is on it. And I've waited a …
  • The Antisocial Bowl
    If social media has finally gone mainstream, where was it during the Super Bowl? It wasn't visible in many of the spots. With Facebook passing the 400 million user mark and so much of the buzz about the ads happening on Twitter, you'd expect more social media love from the ads. Instead, the Web site URLs at the end of the spots tended to go to the advertiser's main site. Where were the callouts to become a fan, follower, or friend? Here are ten reasons why social media wasn't front and center during the Super Bowl ad
  • How Much Blog Would a Blogger Blog If a Blog Chucked Its Comments?
    Now here's a question that, surprisingly, turns out to be more than rhetorical: Is it OK for blogs to get rid of comments? This is not rhetorical because Engadget has just done it, at least temporarily.
  • A Frank Conversation About Social Media Measurement
    Everything you need to know about social media measurement was covered in 45 minutes at MediaPost's OMMA Social event in San Francisco last week. OK, that's not entirely true, but the five panelists I had the honor of moderating covered a lot of ground. They probably could tell you everything that matters -- if you gave them just a little more time to do so. Instead of trying to rehash the session, I'm letting the panelists share their thoughts in their own words, below....
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