The whole world waited in anticipation for Facebook’s “something awesome” event on Wednesday. During the event, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that Facebook now has more than 750 million active users, there by making it the world’s leading social network, and that by some distance. Google+ is a new kid on the block and it remains to be seen whether it can …

Full-featured smartphones are about to take over the mobile phone market. A new Nielsen survey found that a majority of all mobile phone purchases for the past three-months were smartphones. With more affordable pricing, more choices in carriers, operating systems and a slew of tempting applications, smartphones are now the preferred choice over simple feature phones. Users today no longer …

Google’s popular Realtime search feature quietly vanished during the long Fourth of July weekend. Why? The search engine’s two-year deal with Twitter providing it with access to Twitter’s live “firehose” of public tweets expired on June 2. Rather than continue offering pointless trending social media results minus instant tweets from the world’s most popular micro-blogging service, Google removed Realtime search …

Black Hat spammers and malicious cyber criminals have figured out that members of social networking websites are easy marks. The cunning cyber crooks exploit our collective insecurities. We all want to be liked by our social networking friends. So, chances are, quite a few users would automatically click on a legit-looking email notification of new messages or alluring invites. When …

With all due respect to Google, its social media efforts till date have been nothing to write about. Google Wave was a disaster and Google Buzz made a limited impact. In contrast, Facebook has gone from strength to strength and emerged as the world’s leading social network that’s fast approaching the 600 million member mark. It’s been a bitter pill …

Just in case you missed it, yesterday was Social Media Day! Last year, I wrote a piece dedicated to Social Media Day celebrations. This year though, I feel the social media day phenomenon has been largely overshadowed by Google+ and Facebook’s pending announcement for next week. In the past, I’ve often emphasized on the importance of social media for businesses. Facebook, …

Social media professionals have grown accustomed to monitoring online brand conversations using tools, such as Meltwater Buzz. It’s extremely useful to track the online buzz that your particular brand is generating, good and bad. But without integrated social CRM capabilities, it’s difficult to engage directly with the individual people generating the buzz, as a company. Not anymore. Meltwater introduced a …

A lot of folks are considering or do consider themselves social media experts because they do manage various social media channels for themselves or for others. There’s a difference between being a social media expert and being a social media manager. A social media manager does a lot during the course of a day. If you are an individual or …

Advertisers and marketers, jittery since the Great Recession, are now more optimistic than ever before about hiking their ad spending. According study conducted by Advertiser Perceptions, advertising spending is poised to exceed even the pre-recession freewheeling spending boom of 2007. For the first time in four-years, major brands have adopted a cheery economic outlook, and plan to increase spending on …

With the rumor of the iPhone 5 still swirling in the tech and mobile communities, you would wonder what’s next. Apple has been very tightlipped about the next generation iPhone but various reports have been suggesting leaked features from manufacturing partners and competition analysis. Below is a very interesting roundup of what may be on the next generation iPhone and …

Is Google Offers a Groupon killer? A few months after Groupon spurned Google’s $6 billion takeover offer, Google is poised to make a big splash in the daily deals pre-paid coupon business. Google Offers, the search engine giant’s answer to Groupon, the king of the growing plethora of deal of the day services, is making headway after less than a …

Twitter is gearing up for an imminent rollout of a new advertising feature that will be more visible to everyday users than ever before. The micro-blogging platform is pushing its growing suite of promoted products to further increase advertising revenue. According to the chatter coming out of this year’s Cannes Lions Festival, an annual global shindig for the communications industry, …

It’s not often that global entrepreneurs are presented with the opportunity to change the world. That’s exactly what the rapidly growing economies of sub-Saharan Africa offer smart investors and ambitious startups. The untapped potential in the African continent for consumer goods, social networking services, telecommunications and mobile advertising is huge, and it’s there for the taking. Right behind China and …

In the words of Martina McBride, “This One’s For The Girls.” Don’t look now, but women have taken over social media channels. Females spend more time than males on social media sites. They also contribute more, use mobile social networking more and they buy more stuff online than men do. A new survey released this week by the Pew Internet …

As soon as you begin to pat yourself on the back for mastering the wild and crazy world of Twitter and Facebook, something new crops up on the Internet horizon. And before you know it, your social media marketing channels are in danger of becoming obsolete. Remember MySpace? In this fast-paced environment influenced by 140 character tweets, unless a social …