Source: Mashable.com  Facebook snapped up the hugely popular photo-sharing app Instagram Monday, for roughly $1 billion in a combination of cash and stock. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in a post on his Facebook Timeline Monday. The sale is expected to close later this quarter, and will bring the nine-person staff of Instagram to the social network. “For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience...

June 19, 2011 by Harish Kotadia, Ph.D. One year ago (June 15th, 2010 to be precise), I wrote a post titled Social Media: The New Front End of CRM System in which I highlighted that in spite of undergoing a fascinating technological transformation over the last decade, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems essentially record transactional information using pre-determined fields on the screen (front-end) and store that...

Should people be disciplined for harassing Facebook posts? If so, where do you feel the discipline authority should reside? At school? At work? At home? Culpable negligence has some profound implications and I think it’s getting way out of hand! Author: John Wind, a Martin County resident, is a marketing executive in the telecommunications, digital media and cloud computing industries. News Posted September 17, 2011 at 4 a.m. TC...

1. Social media is an important SEO tool. Links from social media are playing an increasingly important role in your site’s search position. Since 80% of consumer purchases start with search, this reason alone is a good argument for embracing social media. 2. Your customers expect you to be social. 60% of Americans spend time on a social network at least once a week. YouTube reaches 36% of all business decision makers, more than...

Facebook has 610,736,920 MEMBER PROFILES. That’s one for every ELEVEN people on the planet. Facebook has 610,736,920 MEMBER PROFILES. That’s one for every ELEVEN people on the planet. Based on page views and users, Facebook is the NO. 2 site in the U.S., behind Google and ahead of YouTube and Yahoo. EVERY 60 SECONDS ON FACEBOOK, USERS send 230,000 messages, update95,000 statuses, write 80,000 wall...

Facebook has received a massive new round of funding: $450 million from Goldman Sachs and $50 million from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, according to a new report. Facebok has raised more than $800 million over five rounds of funding. With this round, the social network will have raised more than $1.3 billion. The New York Times says that the deal sets the company’s valuation at a whopping $50 billion. Facebook’s...

For companies that are still operating in the stone age and chose to ignore the fact that 127 million Americans use social media, this list is for you! 10. We don’t have the resources. 9. We can’t justify the costs because it’s too difficult to measure success. 8. Our company just isn’t ready for it. 7. It’s only good for consumer brands. 6. We have more important things we need to focus on first. 5. The audience isn’t quite big...

So, you ask if social media is “hot” or just a temporary trend? Read on… There’s a new first in the realm of outer space social media activity: a Foursquare checkin. Moments ago NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock checked in to the international space station, hence unlocking the “NASA Explorer Badge.” If space travel isn’t in your immediate future, don’t fret — there will soon be a way for NASA enthusiasts to unlock...