With hundreds of new iPhone applications appearing every day, and with a cut-throat economy of third-party developers all competing for the top spot, how are these apps builders to stay ahead of the pack? The answer may just lie in crowdsourcing.

Our social networking addiction is growing. Add more time and more people and the implications are (not surprisingly) very clear: social networking has established itself as one of the fastest-growing and most used communication channels today. Combined with the explosion of our ‘always on’ mobile society this has cemented the Twitter’s and Facebook’s of the world as valuable customer service goldmines.

B2C social media initiatives get most of the attention, but that’s not to say there’s nothing innovative or interesting coming out of the B2B sector. In fact, business-to-business marketers are showing their savvy these days, even out-socializing most B2C players…

It’s never an easy decision to kill off a brand, particularly a geeky brand that was all the rage just a year ago. So, not surprisingly, Google’s announcement yesterday to pull the plug on Google Wave, a real-time communication/collaboration app, is not going over so well this morning with die-hards who’ve taken to Twitter, Facebook and blogs to voice their displeasure with Google. In real-time.

As far as social media integration on the enterprise level goes, these are early days. Scratch that. These are “scary”, early days for corporate executives, says digital pioneer Jeff Dachis, the founder in the 1990s of Razorfish, and now, the Dachis Group. Companies are still in the trial-and-error mode in terms of using the latest social media innovations and technologies to engage with customers and employees. Why the hesitancy?

PepsiCo’s head of social media B. Bonin Bough explains to SMI in this one-on-one video the key to implementing an organization-wide social media structure: it’s getting buy-in from the highest level of the organization. “That’s the win,” he says. And here’s what it means:

Buick, a brand favored by retirees, is delving into more youthful waters with a full-out social media campaign to coincide the debut of the new 2011 Buick Regal. Its tactic is to create a website of all social media channels called MomentofTruth.com that shows what everyone and anyone is saying online about the new model, certainly a radical step from granny-targeted TV ads.

That’s the conclusion of the latest comScore study which finds that women spend far more time than men online connecting with their social network of friends and acquaintances. Perhaps that’s not surprising until you consider that women, on average, spend roughly 90 minutes more per month on social networks than men. That amounts to 5.5 hours/month for women on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube compared to about 4 hours for men.

With the electric car market finally volting up manufacturers are turning to social media to inform and inspire a still skeptical public. General Motors this week is using its considerable social media prowess to build buzz behind the Chevy Volt electronic vehicle (EV). The momentum is already starting to build on the walls of Facebook.

Reuters’ Leslie Gevirtz kicked up a bit of a fuss earlier this week when she reported how French winemakers are still a bit too snobby when it comes to social media marketing, particularly when compared to more net-savvy New World producers. She based some of her reportage on a recent study conducted by My Social Winery that detailed just how anti-social French winemakers are. The results may surprise you.