Gap offered a one-day social shopping spree last Friday for anyone who checked into its stores on Foursquare, with participants getting 25% off their purchase for the day. This is just part of a larger trend of retailers taking advantage of Foursquare’s increasing geo-social shopping utility.

When companies want to advertise on Twitter they will now have someone to call. Twitter is hiring an ad sales team to boost its revenues through Promoted Tweets, and it is giving advertisers and third-party developers an open application programming interface (API) to develop the catchiest pay-for-view Tweet tactics. With Twitter’s popularity going through the roof and easier access for ad-hungry brands, we may finally be seeing the start of a profitable ad platform.

Twitter is imposing password resets for accounts that bought followers from third-party applications. Besides being against the spirit of grassroots community building, buying followers is often detrimental for the health of subscribing accounts.

Many of you have commented on the one-on-one interview we did recently with Alexandra Wheeler, director of digital strategy at Starbucks. We thought we would also point you to her full SMI keynote presentation where she details how Starbucks built arguably the most successful social media brand marketing strategy. A hint: “it’s about relationships, not marketing,” she says.

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.

Like the coffee fiends we are, we are anxiously pressing the refresh button on the Starbucks Facebook page as it nears an unprecedented milestone for a consumer brand: the first to 10 million fans.

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 …

Alexandra Wheeler, Digital Director for Starbucks will be speaking at the Social Media Influence conference on June 22. Here we look at how Starbucks’ new free WiFi initiative can be traced back to a fresh dedication to online customer engagement.

Face it, we’re all suckers for a good list, a league table that ranks THE BIGGEST, the best, the most important. Marketers are no exception, of course, always trying to measure the ups and downs of the biggest/best/most important brands in our lives. The problem is the methodology to determine the best brand in the universe is questionable, at best. Now that we can measure Facebook fans and Twitter followers and YouTube subscribers can social media change all this? One firm thinks it can. And the winner is…

Still think Foursquare is just a silly fad for wired extroverts with too much time on their hands? Starbucks is one marketer who sees it differently, eyeing serious sales potential from the location-based social gaming app, announcing this week it will create a U.S.-wide loyalty program for the mayors of Foursquare.