Last month we looked at a promising study that demonstrated how social-savvy businesses were seeing “four times greater business impact” than their less socially engaged peers. That finding masked one not-so-rosy issue that continues to hold back further take-up and investment in social: the difficulty of measuring its ROI. A new piece of research drills down into the UK and finds companies having increasing difficulty calibrating just how far their social investment is going.

This is one of those questions that admittedly is being asked in just a handful of companies these days. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a pressing question for brands, publishers and organizations of all stripes who seek to reach a global audience on the device they prefer. A new forecast on tablet sales may just accelerate the conversation at the board level.

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans,” said a wise John Lennon, and that was before the dawn of the social media age, which sees us fervently engaging in aspirational living without actually getting out there and doing the things we chat about, or taking ownership of the items we so publicly covet…

A favorite topic of ours here at SMI is tracking the corporate take-up of social media and seeing how some of the world’s largest companies are using the technology to connect with stakeholders inside the organization and beyond. We came across this infographic this morning that pits the Fortune 500, the world’s biggest companies, vs. the world’s fastest growing companies, as represented by the Inc. 500, in terms of social media smarts. Who wins?

Smartphone users are, en masse, expected to download more than 32 billion applications and games this year, generating revenues of more than $26 billion. That’s good for a staggering 30% year-on-year growth rate and it’s bound to be good news for content publishers and games makers. But there’s a sector that appears to be even more bullish: mobile advertisers.

The International Olympic Committee has launched a new social media hub that aggregates social media conversations by and about the athletes taking part in this summers London Games.

To illustrate the effect social media is likely to play in global interaction with the games, the IOC also produced this infographic.

Despite the Twitter population giving a general thumbs down to sponsored and promoted tweets with claims that they’re too intrusive, Facebook is following a similar suit with its new Offers feature.

The future of daily deals, those ubiquitous email offers for spa treatments, DJ classes and half-off designer sunglasses, is a bit in doubt these days as consumer complaints mount. But one of the praction’s pioneers, LivingSocial, believes strongly they are here to stay, and has even expanded the idea to introduce the concept of the weekend-long deal with high street giant Boots.

We’ve written a few times here about Ford’s for-the-people approach to marketing its new models, an approach that relies heavy on social. As a kind of follow-up we have an interesting piece of research from social metrics specialists Inefegy that looked at how Ford weathered a recall storm a few weeks back. Hint: there’s a silver lining in here for save-the-world eco-types.

As Facebook purchases Instagram for a not-too-shabby $1 billion, the web is awash with folk lamenting that they wish they’d thought of it first, or brainstorming new ideas in a bid to net themselves a tidy profit. To celebrate the outstanding success of that forward-thinking 13-man team, we take a look at what may well be the next big thing in the world of creative apps