As we write, the world is playing countdown to the biggest tech IPO in a decade. In a matter of hours, we’ll know how many billions (north of $100 billion) will add up to the value of Facebook. As we ponder all those zeros, here’s an interesting infographic on the 901 million-pound gorilla’s globe-spanning growth.

There have been a number of studies that look at the social smarts of today’s most tech-savvy companies. For example, last month we took a look at the phenomenon of the great stall happening on the corporate side with blogging and the subsequent surge in Tweeting. This is only one side of the story, of course. A far more telling picture is to look at uptake of social tools. And we have that for you here.

The visually rich Facebook Timeline has only been around a few months, but it’s already picking up big converts from social-savvy brands who want to invest in deeper engagement. A new infographic from Israel’s Storeya also shows it’s delivering promising ROI for retailers too.

We found this morning this brilliant presentation given by Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger loaded up to Scribd. It takes you into the wildly successful launch and rise of Facebook’s newest prized toy, photo-sharing app Instagram. As all start-up stories, it was a bumpy ride.

As data geeks here at SMI, we’re into the big numbers and the big picture. That’s why we send out each week to our subscribers a super concise bulletin of the big data points that are driving the sector. We informally call it “Social Media: By the Numbers.” With these data points, we tell you the big research insights, innovations and strategy points that explain what’s working and what’s not working. Today, I’m introducing a longer version that I will will occasionally reprise.

Unless you’ve been camped out in a deep, dark jungle (that doesn’t border Uganda) you now know the Internet this week has crowned a new viral video king, a “king” that features child-enslaving warlord Joseph Kony. It’s the most viral viral ever!, Mashable declares in a headline that’s sure to stay atop Google for months – or until somebody knocks off Kony. Who could that be? We have someone we’d like to nominate.

Here’s the second part of our Q&A with Storeya, a Facebook commerce specialist who shares with us the formula for turning fans into shoppers.

An interesting new piece of research came our way late yesterday from Porter Novelli looking at the social networking of European consumers. The research points to a few important distinctions that can be made from the individuals within the online crowd, namely that women predominantly use social networks to make and maintain personal connections while men Tweet, post, update their networks with opinion and to display status updates. There’s also an important distinction to be made around brand loyalty.

Yesterday we launched the 2012 SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index. Here is the presentation deck that we shared with attendees of the launch.

Last week I was asked to deliver a presentation on social SEO and what Google’s search formula tweaks now mean for brands and organizations looking to boost their visibility. This is a rapidly evolving issue, but there are some enduring points here that all organizations (and journalists too!) should keep in mind. Hopefully this guide will help you.