Over 1 million purchases in just 28 days places the iPad as Apple’s most successful product launch ever. No wonder Rupert Murdoch wants some of that business all to himself.

Polls open tomorrow for the UK general election but Facebook already has a beat on the winner after polling an impressive 463,000 eligible British voters on the popular social network this past weekend.
And the winner is…

Twitter is optimizing the way we search for tweets and, more importantly for its future, giving companies fresh opportunities to advertise within a Twitter conversation stream.

Edison Research came out with their yearly report on Internet and multimedia usage in the US. The big news is the massive increase in Twitter-awareness, but tweeting participation remains low.

The FTC investigation into retailer Ann Taylor’s blogger payola flap sent a jolting wake-up call to businesses looking to drum up some positive word-of-mouth buzz via the blogosphere. Ann Taylor may have gotten off lightly, but there are still some hard lessons for businesses to come out of this.

El presidente himself, Hugo Chávez, has joined this week the people’s movement, Twitter. Brandishing the very presidential handle @chavezcandanga, Chávez has amassed an impressive 85,900 followers after a single “victorious” tweet. I don’t want to let this occasion of Chávez’s triumphant arrival to Twitter pass without a similar welcome, so here are a few tips that he, or any CEO or jefe ought to consider once they make the plunge.

Millward Brown today released a new report ranking the world’s most valued brands. While the research agency mentions the importance of social media in future valuations (it’ll be big, they say), it bases its methodology on more traditional metrics. We thought it might be interesting to do a kind of mashup of the results, taking a look at how their top ten ranked if you added a measure of their social media presence.

It’s been over a week since the release of both Twitter’s @Anywhere and Facebook’s “Like” button. Both promised to change the way people interact with one another and with the issues and brands they feel most strongly about. But only one appears to be living up to the hype.

It was halfway through a conference presentation this week by Facebook that is dawned on me just how powerful the social network had become, just how big its own plans are and just how much it now has to lose.

Antony Mayfield, Senior Vice President of Social Media for iCrossing and author of “Me and My Web Shadow: How to Manage Your Reputation Online” delivered what appears to be (must confess: we didn’t make it …