With social media a key new battleground in the fight against violent extremism, Israel's Foreign Ministry is expanding its capabilities in social media counter-messaging with the launch of a new unit to combat online "incitement" by Palestinian militants.

Social media contributed a larger volume of referrals than search for most of the year's top news stories, according to publishing analytics outfit Parse.ly.

Black Friday (and various associated Cyber Days) is upon us once again, and savvy retailers have been building online buzz and anticipation with social media campaigns appealing to the more spendy angels of our nature.

IIranian hackers have infiltrated State Department computers by gaining access to email accounts as well as the social media profiles of young State Department staffers, according to The New York Times, which cited diplomats and law enforcement officials familiar with the matter.

With Brussels locked down amid an ongoing manhunt for suspected terrorists, Belgian police asked inhabitants not to tweet details of police operations or share their own movements or whereabouts on social media.

Over the past year, MediaPost has partnered with ListenFirst to analyze companies in the Redbooks 500. Having just passed the first anniversary of the project, we thought it would be a good time to look back over the first year and see if any major trends stood out.

While many of us old (30+) people tend to picture teenagers as being more or less enslaved by their mobile devices and social media in particular, young people are actually developing strategies to moderate their usage, including taking breaks and even deleting social media apps.

If it were anyone else but Google, people would probably stop picking on Google+, the spunky little social network that both couldn't and didn't.

Sponsored social media advertising is more effective than many traditional marketing approaches, according to a survey of 511 marketing executives and managers conducted by the Halverson Group on behalf of IZEA.

Social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, sprang into action following the terror attacks in Paris on Friday, November 13, offering tools to help people in the area tell family and friends they were safe.