To mark the launch of its new sporty MiTo Quadrifoglio Verde, Alfa Romeo plans on not simply breaking a world record, but bursting it. Naturally, the iconic Italian auto maker is turning to “gamification” to pull off the job.

Instead of fan pages, blanket messages and the encouragement of ‘likes’, the ROI-focused product measures more traditional ecommerce metrics, such as traffic, conversion rates and sales, and – crucially – offers a wealth of socializing options that allow users to discover products based on advice from friends.

Major companies and organizations are investing in social media monitoring to protect their brand’s reputation. After all, nobody wants a customer gripe to go unnoticed and turn into a viral PR nightmare. It’s sound planning, a smart investment. But social media monitoring software is no panacea. Reputation monitoring, or e-reputation if you will, very much requires the human touch.

I’ve only twice ever turned to Twitter to clear up a vexing customer service glitch. The results were deeply gratifying: I got a helpful response in a fairly timely manner resolving my ongoing feuds problems with Groupon Italia and Bank of America. Turns out I’m not alone in thinking this is the future of attentive customer service, as new research shows.

As winter creeps into many parts of the world, men everywhere must steel themselves for the debilitating seasonal condition that affects an alarming number of them every year: Man Flu.

By adding the Open Graph protocol to eBay’s ecommerce platforms X.commerce, Magento and GSI, merchants can add Facebook sharing options to their sites, including ‘want’ and ‘own’ buttons, which add a deeper dimension than the simple ‘like’ button.

I was recently asked by a very frustrated marketer why it was that sometimes she could spend half her morning coming up with a post idea, writing it, and then despairing afterwards when nobody commented on it or clicked “Like.” Equally baffling, some of her breeziest posts were getting a great response.

Coca-Cola has ranked at or near the top in just about every measure of social engagement for some time now. It is the Lady Gaga of brands. How does it manage to keep its 34 million-plus fans sated on a daily basis? An interesting new piece of research offers some insights.

Social injustice now faces another formidable foe as the Salvation Army, award-winning mobile marketers DIDMO and GetJar, the world’s largest open app store, have joined forces to inform, educate and engage a global audience about social issues facing teens and young adults.

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco yesterday, famed digital analyst Mark Meeker gave her annual “Internet Trends” address that touched on everything from Greek debt to a long-overdue re-casting of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs putting our digital/mobile needs over self-actualization. Here’s the presentation in full: