Latest Social Media News & Articles

Buyers no longer follow a linear process when making purchase decisions. The traditional sales funnel has become more like a plate of spaghetti — with twists and turns throughout the website and different paths for mobile devices, print, contact centers, and now, social networks.

Successful cross-channel marketing strategies require a new approach which incorporates social networks into the marketing mix. Web Engagement Management (WEM) systems provide the foundation for delivering a successful cross-channel marketing strategy and should be extended to treat social networks as a primary customer channel, alongside websites, mobile devices, print and contact centers.

Despite Twitter (news, site) buying up the most popular third-party apps, there is still a booming market for new tools to help manage the sprawling Twitterverse, and guess who is helping Twitter support that market? Aquia & Drupal.

It's rare for businesses today not to do some social media marketing for promotions and online engagement, but not everyone knows how to actually use the data gathered from these activities. Awareness, Inc., (news, site) creator of Social Marketing Hub, has recently launched a reporting module that gives access to detailed analysis for social marketing data.

So, Google+ (news, site) is almost two weeks old and doing booming business, despite invites still seemingly like gold dust. What are people making of the Facebook-killer?

Netvibes (news, site) has added social analytics to its social media monitoring solution. But these are ordinary analytics, says Netvibes, they are "adaptive".

Have you ever been tagged by fellow Facebook users for photos that don't actually include you, but are of products of dubious origin? Have you been invited to install an application, but find your account spamming everyone in your contact list afterward? Have you fallen for tricky login boxes that gain access to your password and email inbox? Welcome to the world of social network spam. You are not alone, as Symantec (news, site) reports that social network spam and malware attacks are on the rise.

Web discovery site StumbleUpon (news, site) is generating more traffic for other websites than the mighty Facebook.

Social networking is big. Even in China, where access to information is supposedly filtered and censored strictly, hundreds of millions of netizens use social networks for personal and business purposes. Sources from the financial sector say that the Chinese government is keen on securing enough Facebook shares of stock in order to have some clout in the company.

Engaging your audience through social media might be easy, but tracking the performance and returns from these is not necessarily a piece of cake. Clearspring's latest updates to its AddThis (news, site) platform makes it easier to track the performance of sharing. A new partnership with the BlueKai data exchange also expands users' network for better campaign monitoring and tracking.

As users start checking out each other's latest hairstyles/facial hair and other distinguishing features thanks to Facebook's (news, site) new video chat feature, what do the industry bigwigs make of it?

Google (news, site) is making all user profiles public, removing all private profiles by the end of the month, to help boost the growth in Google+.

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• Twitter Surpasses 200 Million Tweets Per Day
• Google to Retire Blogger and Picasa Brands
• Social Network Spam On The Rise
• First Presidential Twitter Town Hall Today

Facebook and Skype have announced an in-browser video-based chat feature as its next big thing. Will this new feature dent the interest in Google+?

One way of making a website more interactive and up-to-date is by pulling content from other, relevant sources. While content aggregation is one thing, adding a social dimension to content mash-ups will make things more interesting. Popular social bookmarking site StumbleUpon (news, site) has launched an application that makes such sharing of content easier through widgets.

Popular social site Tumblr (news, site) is doing even better than believed, as a code error was found to be underreporting the number of visitors it gets, with the revised results putting it among the top 25 U.S. sites.

Google (news, site) has sneaked out its latest social venture in beta for some lucky users to try, offering a service that looks, well, rather familiar.

Social network behemoth Facebook (news, site) is receiving criticism yet again for acting first and explaining later — this time with developers on its application framework. Facebook implemented a “new enforcement system” that resulted in several popular applications being disabled.

Social networks are often an easy target for malware authors because of the social aspect. Unsuspecting social network users are often too trusting of content and network contacts, and usually end up transmitting and receiving all sorts of malicious code. Wedge Networks (news, site) addresses this by killing off malware at the source with the BeSecure appliance, now available for social networks.

Just when you think you have your Facebook fan page strategy down, a new report provides more insight into how users interact and engage. This week, PageLever shared new statistics and analysis that seem to indicate that Facebook Pages with more fans receive fewer unique Page views per fan.

Business social site LinkedIn (news, site) reckons it can make more money with targeted advertising based on whom you follow, but will users follow the plot?