Facebook is the social media site of choice for many US online retailers, judging by an August 2008 study by Internet Retailer and Vovici.
Nearly one-third of responding businesses said they had a Facebook page, compared with 27% that had a MySpace page and just over one-quarter that had a page on YouTube.

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Befriended and poked by companies
Nearly six out of 10 Americans who use social media interact with companies on social media Websites, according to a September 2008 study by conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for Cone.
The researchers found 85% of social media users thought companies should interact with their consumers through social media, [...]

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As the Web becomes a more social place, media companies are trying to make it easier to share links with friends, add comments to articles and extend users’ online identities.
This week, CNN will begin connecting “The Forum,” a site for political expression, to Facebook, the country’s second-largest social network, enabling users to [...]

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Many collegians are online daily.
Social networking is an everyday activity for the majority of college students, and the percentage of students who use the networks daily has nearly doubled in the past two years. EDUCAUSE compared social network usage at 44 colleges and universities in 2006, 2007 and 2008. It found that [...]

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NEW YORK - The Wall Street Journal is borrowing elements from popular Internet hangouts like Facebook as it seeks to boost usage.

WSJ.com, one of the few news sites to restrict many of its stories to paying subscribers, is changing its layout to help nonpaying visitors navigate and identify free, ad-supported content. Those [...]

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Jon Rognerud recently had the distinct pleasure of speaking to one of the Masters of Social Media, Brent Csutoras. He’s a leading internet marketing consultant who primarily specializes in social media, viral and search engine marketing strategies.
Not only does he enjoy speaking on the topic, but he has a deep understanding and [...]

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More than one-half of adults surveyed in 17 countries do not know what social networking is, according to Synovate. The company said it asked over 13,000 consumers in Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the [...]

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What started out in 2003 as simple community-based Web sites and tools for sharing information with friends, social media has grown into a phenomenon of epic proportions with the monumental success of sites such as YouTube, Bebo, Flickr, Digg and a myriad [...]

Does the world really need another social network? Konnects certainly thinks so. The startup formally launched its site Wednesday with the aim of filling what it views as a gap in the marketplace between business-focused LinkedIn and socially driven Facebook.

social networks

The writer’s strike has given corporations an opportunity to explore alternative advertising approaches.
Someone recently pondered if we were going to see a return to “the days of ‘Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom’?” That certainly looks to be one of the models. An article from The Hollywood Reporter mentions Johnson & Johnson funding an after-school program [...]