Cable TV shopping juggernaut QVC is jumping into social media and e-commerce feet first, with the launch of a new social network, toGather, which resembles Pinterest and is intended to bring together like-minded shoppers and boost product discovery. The network officially launched Monday after beta-testing over the summer.

Anthony E. Zuiker, creator of the ubiquitous "CSI" franchise, has been busy plotting more murders -- but not for TV. Having built a devoted Twitter following for his reality murder mystery series "Whodunnit?" on ABC, the mystery master started organizing online competitions, inviting fans to solve fictional "murders" on Twitter for points and prizes.

No matter how you slice it, spam sucks: it's annoying for Internet users, while for marketers it threatens to decrease the effectiveness of email and social media as channels for legitimate marketing messages. Unfortunately there's only going to be more of it on social media, according to the "2013 State of Social Media Spam Report" from Nexgate.

It's an open secret that a large proportion of the worker's compensation and disability claims paid by the U.S. government and state and local governments are, in a word, phony. Now some local governments are using social media to ferret out fraudsters by looking at information they share of their own free will.

Amid growing concern among parents and teachers about what kids share online and its potential long-term impact on their lives, the California legislature is considering enshrining a "right to delete" for minors, which would require social media sites to remove content at the minor's request.

Qantas is testing technology that allows it to monitor social media conversations in airport lounges, according to Australian business magazine Business Review Weekly, which first reported the news.

Small business owners would like help managing their social media marketing, but many simply can't afford it, according to a new survey of 1,305 small business owners conducted by Constant Contact in June 2013. That means when it comes to their marketing priorities, social media loses out to older, more established local advertising platforms like radio and TV.

In theory the idea of creating small, compelling pieces of marketing content and letting them spread all over via social media and email sounds great -- but as so many marketers have discovered, it's hard to pull off in the real world. Part of the problem is finding the right individuals and groups for initial targeting, but that challenge may become a little easier thanks to a new study from scientists at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point's Network Science Center.

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on," according to Winston Churchill, and something similar may be true of anger and happiness -- at least on Chinese social media sites. That's according to a new study by researchers at Beihang University, titled "Anger is More Influential Than Joy: Sentiment Correlation on Weibo."

If you can't beat social media, join it: that seems to be the conclusion of several governments seeking to counter criticism and dissent by forming their own social media task forces. This week the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) formed a team of 6,000 social media activists to help influence public opinion in the digital arena.