EMARKETER — Older web users are flocking to social networks, according to a May 2010 Pew Internet & American Life Project survey. Usage among internet users ages 50 and older nearly doubled during the past year, from 22% to 42%. More specifically, 47% of 50-to-64-year-old internet users and 26% of seniors ages 65 and up indicate that they now use these sites, with Facebook and LinkedIn being the main beneficiaries of the more mature traffic...

RADIAN6 BLOG — For all that social media is all the talk of the business town these days, the B2B sector seems to be having a tough time making sense of – or seeing the value of – these channels. Are they really useful for the B2B world? All we see is B2C success, are there cases of B2B social media success out there? How do we make social media work for us? We offer a resounding "Yes!" as answer to those first questions, and as for that last one, well, that’s the question we’ll be working to answer for you throughout September. This month we’ll be offering up as many tips, concepts, anecdotes, and examples to help you start connecting the dots between your B2B company and social media. And to support our social-media-for-B2B endeavors, we’ve written up quite the eBook [PDF Link] that faces head-on the argument that states social media only fits the B2C business dynamic...

SOCIAL MEDIA EXPLORER — Rule #1 of Twitter use – be helpful – right? Does that make sense to you? Absolutely. Can you screw up your implementation of Rule #1 and ruin your Twitter presence? Absolutely. By the way, this rule applies to all forms of social media. Let’s look at the idea of sharing in the context of two questions: What to share? How to share? You can automate parts of your social media presence. ReTweet buttons are a simple example: two clicks and you’ve Tweeted a useful link instead of typing it all out. You can even set up automated Tweets, similar to E-Mail autoresponders. Similar examples apply to other social media tools. But here’s the important question: Why automate? There’s two ways to answer this question...

MASHABLE — You have created a Facebook Fan Page. Now what? I bet these questions come to mind: "Is my page a success?" "Who is engaging with us?" "Is our engagement effective?" "Does our content strategy work?" The Facebook Insights dashboard will help you answer some of these questions. As defined by Facebook, "Insights provides Facebook Page owners...with metrics around their content. By understanding and analyzing trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content, and creation of content, Page owners...are better equipped to improve their business with Facebook." So what’s the best way to use this relatively new tool? We’ve outlined some steps below that should have you measuring Facebook engagement in no time...

VENTUREBEAT — The problem with most web analytics is that they give you insight into numbers. You can see how many users are visiting your site, when they do so, and where they are coming from. But you don’t understand anything about them as people. That’s where Frosmo, a Helsinki company originally founded as a tournament gaming company, could prove useful. Frosmo launched its Frosmo World casual game tournament business on Facebook last year. While doing that, it became intimately familiar with Facebook analytics. As Facebook expanded its reach to web sites this spring with its ubiquitous Like buttons, Frosmo saw an opportunity to deliver much better analytics. Taking advantage of the fact that real people indicate whether they like a web site or not, Frosmo aggregates that information into useful analytics that companies can act upon...

MEDIAPOST — Contests in which consumers help design or contribute to special product labeling -- closely tied in with digital/social media and larger marketing missions, of course -- seem to be popping up with increasing frequency among food manufacturers these days. Two recent examples include Chiquita Brands International and Knorr, Unilever's largest brand...

INSIDE FACEBOOK — The United States has fully bounced back from a period of slow growth in June. Following fairly strong July numbers, we’re now seeing a big gain of five million new monthly active users in August for Facebook’s home country. Seasonality can serve to explain some of what’s happening in the US -- early summer has traditionally been a slow period for social networks and other youth-dominated sites, as high school and college kids take a break from school. But there appears to be more to the story...