The news that both Facebook and LinkedIn are preparing to take their shares public has created a froth of both investor and media excitement. Facebook’s projected $50 billion valuation would be more than Starbucks and Dell. Combined! And the head-scratching headlines don’t end there.

Ah, if it were only that easy. In truth, companies are still playing lip service to the practice of “social co-creation,” or using social media to tap your customer base for innovative ideas, new research has found.

Dell LogoIt’s a question that gets posed regularly within an organization: just how many people within the company should be trained to blog, Tweet or post on behalf of the brand? The answer?

Our editorial and social media training partner, Custom Communication, has gone back through six years of social media and compiled a visual narrative of company misadventures with bloggers, tweeter and other social media voices.

As far as social media integration on the enterprise level goes, these are early days. Scratch that. These are “scary”, early days for corporate executives, says digital pioneer Jeff Dachis, the founder in the 1990s of Razorfish, and now, the Dachis Group. Companies are still in the trial-and-error mode in terms of using the latest social media innovations and technologies to engage with customers and employees. Why the hesitancy?

We were lucky to be able to call upon the expertise and insight of a number of top social media thinkers at this year’s Social Media Influence conference. Adam Brown was one such expert.

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 …

Shop much at 6pm.com, the web retailer owned by Amazon.com? The site made a collossal mistake over the weekend, pricing all items at $49.99, a blunder that it says cost it $1.6 million. People will be talking about this mishap for some time, but not because it lost a bundle, but rather because it’s generated so much praise from the web community for honoring every transaction at the mistaken knock-down price, even, reportedly, a $1,400 GPS system.

We’ve run our Social Media Influence conference for five years now and we’re excited to announce that, on June 22, at the London Marriott, Grosvenor Square, once again we’ll be bringing some of the smartest social media thinkers together for a day of debate and best practice presentations.

One of the sea changes being seen by companies in this social media era is the new way they have been forced to communicate with their customers. But how should resource this new form of customer engagement?