As f-commerce continues to find its legs, brands are looking at other ways to capitalise on people’s addiction to their smartphones. Transactional and commerce-led apps are making increasing noise on the landscape, so here we round up three of the strongest new contenders.

This could be the toughest job yet in social media: running Goldman Sachs’ largely neglected social media communities. That’s right, the world’s most reviled investment bank – a.k.a. “the great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” – is looking to hire a social media community manager. Interested?

Engagement is the new currency for social marketing effectiveness, particularly for brands who are seeing renewed life on their Facebook fan pages ever since the new Timeline was introduced earlier this year. A new study out this week looks at which industry sectors are getting the most mileage (there’s one hint) out of their social engagement strategy.

Imagine the collective sigh of relief when Unilever’s skincare brand Dove launched a new campaign to banish aggrieving adverts and replace them with Dove-sponsored feel-good messages.

There are now more than 46 million avid “gadget” gamers in Western Europe, and Britain leads the league table by a surprising margin. Looked at another way, over 40% of Europe’s smartphone users are using their sleek new handsets for gaming, a phenomenon triggered by the success of Angry Birds, Farmerama and Draw Something. Gaming has now leap-frogged music as one of the most popular uses for smartphones.

Hello Fresh delivers exact quantities of specific ingredients direct to customers’ doors, so they can create great-tasting meals themselves, in the comfort of their own homes. Kicking off their Facebook Offers journey was a £20-off deal – pretty generous considering that represents about 50 percent off most of Hello Fresh’s packages

2012 is fast living up to its billing of being the year of Big Data. And it’s getting a bad rap from privacy experts. But does Big Data have to be bad? Here’s how it can be used to make business and society more sustainable.

Are you prepared for the seismic shifts of digital/social/mobile transforming the business world, where the referral economy teams with the power of mobile computing to create tomorrow’s winners (and losers) in retail, publishing, marketing, communications, you name it?

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.

A bit of bad news on the job front for SEO specialists. According to a new piece of jobs data, veterans in the field of search engine optimization are finding a relative decline in demand for their services. What’s in demand? Mobile app developers and social media channel specialists.