I had the chance to speak to Ruth Speakman of Sony Europe on the sidelines of Social Media Influence where I posed the question: how did you get “social media” in your title and how is Sony Europe implementing this social discipline across such a vast organization? This is what she had to say:

In this week’s insightful guest analysis, Headshift director Lee Bryant argues that social business design may yet succeed in making IT departments relevant and useful within companies.

As the tech press (and Diane Sawyer) prepare for the imminent, champagne-filled announcement of Facebook eclipsing the 500 million user barrier, we hate to be killjoys here at SMI but we feel it necessary to point out that the first 500 million, that was the easy part. For Facebook, the vast unconquered terrain lies in China, Japan, Korea and Russian-speaking countries where Facebook is an also-ran.

The mobile apps marketplace will top a staggering 25 billion downloads by 2015, according to new research by Juniper Research. To put that in further perspective: the estimate is that smart phone sales will reach 1 billion annually by the same period. That’s an impressive number of downloads per handset user.

Can the publishing industry be saved by the apps revolution? Will it be in the form of subscriptions or heavy-trafficked free apps? Bernhard Warner, editor of SMI, had a chance to speak to put these questions to Jonathon Moore, Mobile Product Manager for the Guardian, in a one-on-one interview at Social Media Influence conference 2010

The London 2012 Olympic website is expecting an astonishing 10 billion page visits by the end of the games, making it one of the most visited web sites ever in the world of sport. But there’s one fickle group that still must be won over: videogame-obsessed teens.

Earlier this week we reported how Starbucks hit a new milestone in social media marketing, the first brand to surpass 10 million Facebook fans. A few weeks back I had the opportunity to interview Alexandra Wheeler, Starbucks’ director of digital strategies, on the sidelines of the Social Media Influence conference.

Over the past few months, Old Spice has captured the hearts of millions through a viral video campaign that combined the reach of TV commercials and now the personalization of social media. Could the hunky …

Seven out of ten retailers have already implemented or plan to implement the Facebook Like button into their websites, concludes a new survey by SeeWhy Research. But taking a closer look at online retailers, the ground-zero for next-generation social shopping, it seems like the biggest retailers are merely paying lip service to “Like.”

Long abandoned marketing campaigns and defunct products are still visible across much of Facebook, turning the social network into an eerie graveyard of yesterday’s brilliant marketing ideas gone stale. We look here at the most visible ones, and offer a suggestion or two on how to clean them up.