Social media have helped corporations, retailers and small brands make a name for themselves and maintain sales during one of the toughest economic times ever. But it’s also had a significant impact on the entertainment industry, making unlikely stars and also highlighting flaws in some seemingly perfect icons.
YouTube is probably the best case study of how social media can create and deflate celebrity. Lonely Girl 15 was a realistic but fictional video docu-series that had everyone believing Lonely Girl’s life [...]

I found out this week that a friend of mine died. At age 35, I’m too young to start reading the obituaries; I found out by reading his thread on Facebook.
I’ve reported in the past that each day, I experience something truly phenomenal through social media and networking—but I never even considered that I would experience this, at least not this early in life.
“P”* lived in Dallas and was one of my more than 350 friends on Facebook, spread across [...]

When I think back to the early days of the digital media era, I find that we spent far less time debating the meaning-of-the-medium-as-a-medium and more time actually doing stuff. Does anyone else think it strange that we have social media sites with 300 million members and yet there’s never a shortage of participants debating the role of the medium? Did everybody get burned so badly building their store on Second Life that they’re afraid to venture into the social [...]

Online marketers and social media influencers have come under the microscope after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released guidelines on how they should disclose their working relationships in order not to misinform or falsely persuade consumers. (Here are some details about the guidelines.) It appeared that so-called mommy bloggers had been targeted as the main suspects for accepting bribes (e.g., money, products, free services) in exchange for positive postings.
Based, however, on my observation of the webinar called “Blog with Integrity,” [...]

I’ve been talking for years about how we’re all living online. But as Paul Briand, who writes the “Baby Boomer Examiner” column for Examiner.com, points out, we aren’t just living online but also dying online.
Let me explain. I’m talking about obituaries, and here’s why: A new study from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University warns newspapers to “adapt to changes in audience behavior and technology that will alter the way Americans memorialize the dead. Already, interactive memorial pages [...]

There is more being written about social media than any other marketing topic today. And with good reason: Social media has turned out to be a powerful determinant of a brand’s success.
Before a company ventures into the social media arena, however, it pays to take a look at what others before them have done in the space. Recently, I did a study on the social media strategies of organisations and found that they were using them at four key levels:
1. [...]

This is the third in a series of three.
My last two posts addressed social media, present and future. The social media thought leaders we spoke with also had some notions about the social Web’s global impact:
George Gallate, global chairman, Euro RSCG 4D:
“Social media has made fundamental changes to the community. Huge effect on children all around the world.”

This is the first in a series of three.
We just finished conducting one-on-one interviews with some of the brightest minds in the social Web. Here are some of their insights, which we shared with our general managers yesterday in Paris. Check in tomorrow for more of what these leaders have to say.
B.L. Ochman, president, Whatsnextonline.com:
“For big corporations, this stuff is still very scary…. Anyone who is a consultant must tackle fear.”
“A lot of companies should take their websites down, because [...]

As I’ve been working on this blog and charting a digital media course for clients, I’ve been thinking a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Most companies now have some sort of corporate blog, but few of them accomplish much. What separates the successes from the duds?
Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motor Co., offered some answers on his blog a few months ago. A fundamental problem is still resistance—a sense that it’s a passing fad, a [...]