Social media

Here's where to start.

Why a dry-cleaning app will never make money.

Abuse. And it's not only a problem for Twitter.

In the latest issue of Business Week, Stephen Baker’s article “Beware Social Media Snake Oil” makes a provocative argument. He claims that all the hype around social networks, wikis, and blogs for business neglects the potential risks and time wasted. While I think he is overstating the argument, he is bringing up a vital question […]

How does a customer-service expert in Seattle catch the attention of a hot San Francisco startup in San Francisco, 700 miles away? The answer these days is likely to involve networking and brand-building on social media’s “fun” sites — even the ones best known for their tweets, pokes and cat videos. It’s been obvious since […]

The internet has changed a lot since the Communications Decency Act was passed in 1996.

Don’t fault us for not getting the torch up in time, Canadians invented insulin not viagra. #van2010 #olympics Joseph Uranowki’s joke entered the flow of Olympic tweets during the opening ceremonies. Just moments before, live broadcasts showed three legs of the Olympic cauldron rising out of the stadium floor, while a fourth conspicuously failed to […]

Though celebrity influencers get lots of attention, they often don't produce sales. When Bocconi University's Maximilian Beichert and colleagues looked...

It can be a powerful tool for learning.

Lessons learned from Oreo on how improvisation, combined with Big Data, can cut through the media clutter.

Even as companies devote increasing shares of their marketing budgets to paying social media influencers to tout their products, researchers know little...

A Q&A with the company’s VP of Engineering.

Dave Balter is the founder and CEO of BzzAgent We haven’t seen the last of Facebook’s hotly debated “Beacon” peer-recommendations application. Hardly. This story is just beginning. Social networks will not be overrun with Facebook refugees searching for a virtual home that better safeguards their privacy. And another network isn’t likely to take over Facebook’s […]

Becoming mobile-friendly engages new kinds of customers — and yields surprising results.

Can the Next Big Thing be chased down? Can coolness be hunted on purpose? That's the premise of a new book called Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big...

Pinterest is the social media darling of the month, growing madly and reported to be driving more traffic to third-party sites than Google+, YouTube and...

Yes, Buzzfeed is a media company. But it's also riding a technological shift.

Yesterday morning I gave a talk on social media to a group of Canadian government employees. The talk was organized by my sister-in-law, Jennifer Jager, who is part of the marketing team at Public Safety Canada that is responsible for promoting emergency preparedness across the country. The fifty civil servants in the room represented a […]

Knowing when to post what types of content can increase click-through rates and, by extension, digital advertising profits.

Pilot programs that save resources (and prevent food poisoning).