I've said it before, and now the GoDaddy debacle gives occasion to say it again. Social media is great, but even the most innovative social media strategy is futile when your company's top management is stupid, malicious, or both. I have absolutely no idea why GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons thought it was a good idea to post video of his elephant hunt in Zimbabwe on Twitter.

Social media is one of the main channels used by online bad guys to deliver malware to victims' computers, according to Symantec's latest Internet Security Threat Report, which also warned that more malware was being delivered to mobile devices (of course there's a great deal of potential for overlap between these two areas).

One of the most incredible things about social media is the sheer amount of information people post about themselves. And this isn't just a valuable resource for marketers: it's also valuable to the users, even if they aren't always aware of the potential treasures hidden in their profiles. That's where the apps come in. The most intriguing example I've found recently an app under development for the Clinton Global Initiative University, MTV, and the College Board, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

While everyone and their mom is now using social media, it has continued to suffer in comparison to established media like, say, television in one crucial regard: ratings and measuring return on investment. Fortunately a new cooperative effort by leading social media companies, the Social Media ROI Taskforce, has resolved the problem of measurement once and for all

Gender stereotypes are great for stirring the pot, and this opportunity is too good to pass up. It seems a large proportion of women on Facebook report finding many of their online friends (or perhaps that should be "friends") annoying, according to a survey of 400 women by daily deals site Eversave. Gawker.com notes that the Eversave survey was originally intended to help understand the market dynamics of daily deals on social networks -- but the stuff they found about women secretly hating their Facebook friends was too hilarious not to publish.

Okay, time for a full retraction of my earlier off-the-cuff opinion that professional video did a better job documenting the Japanese tsunami than amateur, user-generated content. Because this video pretty much seals the deal. I won't spend too much time describing this amateur footage of the tsunami hitting the small port town of Kesennuma: suffice it to say, it is simple, incredible and awful, and must be seen to be believed. But I would like to make a couple observations about why it is superior to most other footage I have seen, and also why I think that matters.

Two of the most successful businessmen and investors alive today have warned against what they say is a growing bubble in the value of social media companies over the last couple weeks. But both Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and Barry Diller, founder and chairman of IAC, also conceded that there will still be long-term winners along with all the losers, affirming the real value underlying social media as a revolutionary new communications technology. However there's still going to be a lot of carnage.

Despite the Chinese government's squashing of planned protests over the last couple months, demand for free speech is clearly simmering not far beneath the surface of Chinese society -- and social media is clearly central to this trend, judging by the results of a recent poll cited by The Economist. According to The Economist, when ordinary Chinese folk were asked what they considered the key elements of happiness, 11% of respondents included the ability to express their feelings online. Presuming the figure's accurate, that works out to about 150 million Chinese who find happiness in self-expression on the Internet.

I think it's safe to say health is one of our big national obsessions, if not the biggest, and it's also an obvious area of interest for social media: patients can share information, advice, and moral support with each other, doctors are curious about how to use social media to share information with patients and network professionally, and insurance companies are turning to social media for marketing and customer service.

Social media just seems to lend itself especially well to certain sub-cultures, and sports fandom is one of these sweet spots: there is a lot of text, photos, and video to share, comment on, and argue about; there's the shared TV viewing experience; and then of course the actual communal event of gathering with thousands of other fans in a stadium.