So how does a company that doesn’t really publish anything except a list of business names, addresses & phone numbers attract links? Well, one way is to do it with data.

Mike Schwede (now of Goldbach Interactive) alerted us to a piece of social media analysis he just completed that we couldn’t resist publishing here – “The Royal Wedding: Social Media Buzz Report.” We’re not all that surprised with his findings that the House of Middleton outscored the House of Windsor on the sentiment side. What astounded us is that Pippa and her famous backside was not nearly the most chatted-up wedding attendee that day. Who was it?

In September, BigPoint CEO Heiko Hubertz was bemoaning the “crazy valuations” being tossed around in the social gaming sector, singling out Disney’s $532 million buyout of Playdom as the inflated cherry on top. And today? He’s guaranteeing a billion-dollar valuation after landing a massive $350 million funding round of his own this week.

I stumbled onto a post (thanks Twitter!) from 2009 by Ross Mayfield, Co-Founder of SocialText, called The Social C.R.M. Iceberg. It’s a long piece but Mayfield’s insights and anecdotes about how social engagement is empowering organizations is worth the time for any of you who are pondering your company’s social strategies.

Part of Apple’s phenomenal growth story over the last decade can be seen here in Europe. A decade ago, Euro Mac addicts were hard to spot. Now they seem to be everywhere. Fittingly, it’s Apple gadgets like iPhone, iPod and iPad leading the charge with mobile-mad Europeans.

Of all the lofty life-changing objectives set out in the UN Millenium Goals, bringing clean water to the world’s poor is the most achievable. It would take a surprisingly small(ish) investment in aid and new infrastructure to eradicate waterborne diseases and pump fresh drinking water to villages. How much of an investment? The NGO charity:water estimates just $20 a day from each of us. It’s just the kind of achievable do-good message suitable for a social media awareness campaign.

Late last month we cited the latest IAB UK statistics to point out that the social media ad spend — the fastest growing in all of digital — last year grew a staggering 200% to top £132 million in Britain. We have some new projections for the U.S. market and the growth in social spending is even greater.

This is so brilliant, we’re a bit dumbstruck it didn’t happen sooner. ETrade’s loveable toddler trader spokesperson (the message being it’s so easy to trade online with ETrade that a… right, you got it) is the victim of a spoof ad in which he starts trading in, quite naturally, toxic assets and loses EVERYTHING.

SocialFlow operates a social media monitoring platform that focuses on the hot topics that are relevant to clients. From there,delivers for clients targeted social messaging services. it helps that it has unique access to Twitter’s Tweet stream.

LivingSocial is a social commerce service that works on the concept of “group buying” — encouraging users and their friends to buy special deals at, say, restaurants and other local businesses via a daily deals hook.