Attracting bright young recruits has been the focus of HR professionals at the world’s largest companies for well over a decade now. It’s been the subject of flashy magazine articles that look at Google’s free lunches and Apple’s compensation plans and the cool factor of working for Facebook (the impending mega IPO there helps). There’s also hope for smaller firms looking to stay competitive in the talent wars: using social media for internal communications.

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.

For some, their local barista is a lifeline into a busy day, and when a big tip and a beaming ‘thank you’ just isn’t enough, there’s new iPhone app We&Co.

With continual talk of billions of dollars floating around the social commerce sphere, it’s easy to imagine the dollar signs flashing in the eyes of investors and entrepreneurs alike. However, a pleasing break from the money-focused merry-go-round was launched this week in the form of Farmigo

As no bidders came forward to buy the company, bookselling chain Borders is singing its swan song this week, and is heading for liquidation. Its remaining 399 US stores will begin winding down today, but what’s happening on its social media channels?

Social media monitoring will evolve towards real-time data-driven business improvement based on socialising customer insight within the firm as a whole, not just within marketing and outbound communications.

Any good social business is built on two carefully balanced pyramids, which mirror two different approaches that are required to coexist in a business that wants to thrive in a world where its customers are highly connected.

The first pyramid is the business as it’s usually intended. It is built top-down, where decisions and strategies are decided at the top level and propagated downward toward a single carefully crafted communication channel, which might even span or multiple media, but still fundamentally “broadcast” in nature.

For a good 500 years, spanning the 12th to 17th centuries, the Republic of Venice was the world power of maritime trade, with an influence that spanned Europe, Africa and the Far East. Its influence today is greatly reduced, but it’s still a fitting venue to discuss the future of the digital economy as we’ve been doing at the Digital Economy Forum.

InsideView hosts a social CRM software platform that aggregates unstructured information on a particular topic or brand from a number of sources including traditional news, financial markets and social media networks. This information can then be used to develop sales leads.

Virtue has developed a social media management platform that helps clients create and maintain their social media presence while effectively engaging with their followers to monitor the results.