We all know the age-old “If a tree falls in the woods…” question, but in the age of social media an equally important question is now being asked by the masses: If you’re in a relationship and it’s not documented on Facebook, does it even count?
We all have friends who record their entire relationship through social media channels—whether through constant tweets proclaiming their love for their romantic partner, frequent wall post declarations of love, or pictures posted of flowers or [...]

Whether or not, like Woody Allen, you’ve experienced sex as the most fun you’ve ever had without laughing, some days I can’t help but think that the online erogenous zone deserves another one of the comic’s lines: “When it comes to sex, there are certain things that should always be left unknown, and with my luck, they probably will be.”
I’ve been looking this week at how e-seekers of romance, love and eroticism feel about the new possibilities of the Internet [...]

Around Valentine’s Day 2011, our thoughts immediately turn to…social media. Well, why not? Social media is linking people in more ways than we can imagine and changing every day. It’s driving trends across all kinds of sectors and all parts of real life. But what are the new norms of love online today? Are there any universally accepted virtual behaviors that are contributing now to a cultural e-dating code?
Euro RSCG Worldwide, the parent company of [...]

There’s a certain set of consumers who don’t just passively consume goods and services; they proactively seek them out, help to produce them and help to propagate them. Alvin Toffler coined the term Prosumers in his 1980 book The Third Wave to label people similar to the leading-edge consumers we were studying at Euro RSCG Worldwide, the parent company of the PR agency I head up. When we started using the term later, it [...]

It’s Valentine’s Day once again, when lonely hearts turn to thoughts of love, Cupid’s lets his bow fly, and e-dating across the U.S. and the EU approaches a whopping $1.6 billion market.
But even as cyber-matchmakers here grow e-dating conferences and invent netiquette for the ethics of finding romance or dissuading cyberstalkers, this engine of moving parts raises a lot of questions. It’s a 21st-century McLuhan-esque stage, and the medium might still be the message, but [...]

Hello again, and happy seventh birthday, Facebook! What has happened during the last seven years? Tech18 explains it in seven interesting points.
That’s all about Facebook this time. But that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been other interesting social media topics during the last week.
Apple and News Corp., for example, finally launched the Daily iPad newspaper. “New times require new journalism. Our challenge was to take the best of conventional journalism…and combine it with the best of new technology,” Rupert Murdoch [...]

The Wikimedia Foundation’s study of Wikipedia’s contributor base has hit the Web—and it doesn’t look good for the ladies. According to the survey, women comprise a measly 12.64 percent of Wikipedia’s contributors, while a whopping 86.73 percent of contributors are men (.63 percent identified as “other”).
The gender gap in public forums is widely recognized, but Wikimedia’s research had the potential to start the conversation about why such a substantial gap exists and how it can be closed. Unfortunately, the study [...]

Hello again, and welcome to another Week in Social Media.
Let’s start again with the usual topic: Facebook. The platform giant has recently launched a new ad tool: Sponsored Stories. It will turn activities by users like page updates and places check-ins into ads—of course this only happens when users like or comment on pages or check in at claimed places from an application that has paid for Sponsored Stories.
Let’s wait and see how users will like this new way of [...]

It has been a while since we’ve heard people talk about “the death of advertising.” A few years back, the birth of social media and interactive marketing had ad watchers sounding the death knell, but we now know that although advertising (and media in general) has changed, the ad biz has certainly not disappeared—and is not going to.
But what is emerging and shaking things up is a new creative class of people who might not necessarily work within our industry [...]

It’s no surprise that The Social Network caused a huge stir in the film world this past fall, as everyone (or everyone I know, at least) is curious about how the biggest social networking site came about from a drunken dorm room escapade.
It was quite a surprise, however, that the movie was the big winner at the 68th Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, taking away four major awards including best drama, best director, best screenplay and best original score—especially when [...]