In 2006, as a guest of Deutsche Telekom, I saw an early round World Cup match pitting those two soccer powers: Togo against South Korea. In the last World Cup, held in Germany, …

Our online video habit is rapidly becoming a pastime, with new research showing that the average online viewer spent more than 13 hours a month viewing online videos in May. Does this hail the end …

Coca-Cola has hit the ground running with a digital marketing blitz to increase fan participation in its World Cup-themed The Longest Celebration video contest and raise awareness that it’s one of the games’ deep-pocketed sponsors

If Facebook is ever to pull off an IPO it needs to show investors it hasn’t yet hit a wall in terms of user growth. Even with the magic 500 million users announcement looming, Facebook founder …

There’s little joy in Paris and Rome today. France and Italy, the 2006 World Cup finalists, are out. Could Spain be the next upset?
Speaking of World Cup winners and losers, some of the tournament’s major …

Morgan Stanley’s latest crystal ball-gazing reveals some fascinating insights into how far we’ve come and where we’re heading with online innovation. Amazingly, we’ve downloaded roughly 4.5 billion apps and, by 2012, smartphone shipments (all those …

Can you tell from that headline we’re a bit inspired? It’s the morning after Social Media Influence 2010, a fascinating day of discussion and debate about what makes for a social company, the kind of …

Twitter sure picked the right partner in Disney-Pixar with which to debut its new “sponsored trends” advertising platform. Toy Story 3 appears to have blown away even the rosiest of forecasts, pulling in an estimated $158 million global box office take this weekend, Variety reports, a record for Disney-Pixar. This figure will no doubt add to the debate of whether Twitter’s new ad platform has the power to build instant buzz (and sales) for a brand, or whetherit’s just a nice-to-have add-on to an existing ad campaign.

Earlier this year, a survey of corporate social media strategy showed Twitter was undeniably the channel of choice among the world’s largest companies. And, as we’ve been seeing, the corporate Twitter strategy, for the most part, begins and ends with customer service/outreach. Twitter has become the front line customer service hub for companies to calm customers’ nerves, keep them informed and engaged. But, we wonder, can’t that also be achieved on Facebook and YouTube?

The verdict is still out on sponsoring the trending Tweet, that form of minimalist advertising Twitter just unleashed on the world. Here, we take a look at which companies, brands and products would be wise to splash out cash on the trending tweets, and which ought to stay well away.