A lot of people have raised concerns about personal security for users of location-based social networks, including the meet-and-greet or "mobile flirtation platforms" as I call them. It turns out those concerns were quite justified, in light of reports that three teen and pre-teen Skout users are claiming they were raped by older men posing as teens on the service.

Following a moderately disastrous IPO and amid heightened skepticism about the efficacy of social media advertising, Facebook has responded to critics with a new study of social media ROI performed in collaboration with comScore.

The average U.S. user of Facebook spent over six hours on the site in April, according to comScore, up 16% from just over five hours in April 2011. That's a lot of time, in the online world, but it doesn't hold a candle to the huge amount of time Americans spend watching TV.

While concerns about the decline of civilization are probably still warranted, at least there's one less thing to worry about: U.S. consumers aren't terribly interested in the idea of accessing social media when they're driving, according to new data presented by Gartner at the Telematics Detroit 2012 conference in Novi, MI.

Visible Technologies has been selected by WPP, one of the world's largest advertising agency holding companies, as its preferred provider of social listening and analytics. That means Visible will be on tap to provide social intelligence to more than 300 advertising, marketing and media agencies and related businesses owned by WPP.

Now here's a cool piece of social-experiential marketing: NASA is giving 25 of its most loyal social media followers ringside seats (on Earth) for the upcoming landing of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover on Mars. NASA is inviting the lucky nerds to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, from August 3-5, for three days of events culminating in Curiosity's landing in the Gale crater on the Red Planet at 1:31 a.m. ET on August 6 (10:31 p.m. PT).

The Internet (or at least the part frequented by marketers) is suddenly abuzz with the realization that time spent online doesn't necessarily translate into advertising revenue. No surprise the most-cited example is Facebook, which soaks up tons of time but has only a fraction of the revenues of Google, with a smaller share of our online activity.

Somehow I missed this the first time around -- which is weird because if news involves a giant subterranean structure near the Arctic Circle, I'm usually the first to know. It turns out Facebook's memory needs have grown so large that the company is now situating new server farms in cooler climates to save on cooling costs.

Companies are understandably concerned about the potential for security breaches or embarrassing incidents resulting from ill-judged social media activities on the part of employees. But many corporate policies intended to head off these problems risk going too far, according to a new report by the acting general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, who recently reviewed the social media policies of seven big companies - and found six in violation of the National Labor Relations Act.

Women are heavier users of social media sites than men, at least in the U.K., according to a new survey of 2,000 Brits by BT (British Telecom). Over half of female respondents said they use social network sites like Twitter and Facebook, compared to just 34% of men surveyed.