Social Media News, Features, and Interviews

Facebook appears to have a new product up its sleeve that it will unveil on Thursday at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Traditional print media and TV remain the two most preferred media channels for Australian consumers to view ads, according to a new survey sponsored by digital and creativity software vendor, Adobe Systems.

Picture this: You own a small retail shop. Maybe a restaurant. An angry woman comes into your store and begins complaining--loudly and profanely--about bad service she says she received the prior day. She demands satisfaction--free stuff, mainly--and she's filming all of this on her cell phone. Compounding the problem, you're not actually at the store. There's just a lone, underpaid employee to deal with the increasingly crazy demands of a borderline lunatic ranting about something he wasn't even involved with originally.

Taking a page from Twitter's playbook, Facebook started to roll out the use of hashtags.

Microsoft has taken the first step in its integration roadmap for SharePoint and Yammer, allowing Office 365 customers to replace SharePoint Online's activity stream with Yammer's.

Google CEO Larry Page strongly denied on Friday that Google allowed the U.S. government back door access to its data centers via a controversial snooping program revealed this week called PRISM.

A cheery new YouTube video called "Facebook - The Musical" is on its way to going viral at more than 500,000 views during its first few days on the Web, thanks to a campy crew of crooners singing the praises of the social network.

Facebook is gearing up for a new project to simplify its advertising platform, making it easier for marketers to decide how to place ads across the site.

Until last month, few had heard of Amy's Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro restaurant in the US city of Scottsdale, Arizona. It's a family-owned eatery offering slightly upmarket burgers, pizzas, and cakes.

New research released by Microsoft on Tuesday dives into raging debate of whether social tools like Twitter, Microsoft Lync, and Facebook belong in the business realm. Do they enable employees to become more productive, or are they distractions that should be limited in the workplace? The answer, it seems, depends on what country you work in.

With Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer taking steps to transform the company back into a top-tier player, reports are out that Yahoo is in talks to buy Hulu for as much as US$800 million.

Over the last three years, Vodafone Hutchison Australia has experienced what every marketer dreads: Consumer backlash on a grand, public scale.

This week Twitter announced a bold expansion of its year-old Twitter Cards program, giving marketers a new way to directly obtain interested business leads via the social media service.

Twitter has rolled out Twitter Amplify, an official program that lets broadcast companies and their advertisers push out promoted tweets. The move is aimed at tapping into the lucrative second screen market of consumers simultaneously watching TV and interacting through mobile and other devices.

Marketers must embrace hyper-targeting, cross-platform campaigning and advanced analytics if they’re to succeed in the digital revolution, Facebook Australia’s head of insight claims.

Monitoring brand activity across social media channels, then assigning a sentiment, engagement and ROI value to it, is a key challenge for any marketer. So you can imagine how complicated it gets when the ‘brand’ you represent is Australia.

The latest 2013 Yellow Social Media Report has confirmed what many marketers identified some time ago: That more Australians are connecting to social media using a mobile device instead of a laptop or PC.

Yahoo has confirmed widespread reports that it will acquire the popular blogging service Tumblr, and also promised not to "screw it up." The deal is worth about US$1.1 billion, nearly all in cash.

Yahoo's board of directors has approved spending $US1.1 billion in cash to buy popular blogging site Tumblr, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Members of a U.S. congressional group on privacy wrote Thursday to Google CEO Larry Page requesting information on how the futuristic device handles privacy issues.

While Google promotes its Glass head-mounted display as a new way for people to receive and document information on the fly, several social networking companies including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr now want a piece of the action, by offering social applications on the device.