How confusing can the advertising picture on Facebook get? You know all about General Motor’s $10 million pull-out last week. That move, and the dud underwhelming Facebook IPO, prompted WPP chief Martin Sorrell to declare on Friday that Facebook is “one of the most powerful branding mechanisms in the world, but it’s not an advertising mechanism.” Fast-forward to this week and WPP’s Group M ad-buying unit has struck an extensive licensing deal with Buddy Media to “make it easier for clients to spend money there.” Confused?

The traffic-driving impact of The Big 3 social networks – today, let’s rank them as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest – is being constantly measured, calibrated, then re-measured and re-calibrated, it seems. This is important as marketers want to know on which networks it would be wisest to maintain a vibrant presence. The answer: all three. But it’s clear that one of these Big 3 is not just driving traffic, but big-ticket sales. Hint: it ends with “interest.”

Fitness label Reebok and social media measurement service PeerIndex have joined forces to reward Facebook and Twitter’s most influential sporty types.

As predicted, Pinterest has proved itself a formidable presence in the f-commerce arena following figures showing it’s the fastest growing social media traffic source for e-commerce websites in terms of revenue.

Social networking has been accused of many things, but degrading humanity? It seems that Skype has some strong feelings on the matter.

Last month, The Guardian delivered a “seismic” piece of news that got publishers everywhere to rethink the value of social traffic when it announced that Facebook had overtaken Google as its primary source of traffic. Today, we have another example of Facebook’s traffic-driving prowess, this time in the e-commerce sector.

We’ve taken up this question a few times now here at SMI: should the boss be Tweeting? And the answer always comes with the phrase “it depends…” as in, it depends, is the CEO a sociopath? or, it depends, is the CEO a fictional figure? If you check these boxes, it’s best to keep the boss far away from Twitter or any social media channel. But here’s fresh evidence that should serve as added incentive for organizations to groom the next boss from the ranks of lucid Tweeters.

Twitter notified us this evening it is gradually rolling out to small businesses – a huge force in the world of social commerce, it turns out – a “self-serve advertising product” called Promoted Products for Small Business that delivers potential sales leads to SMEs active in the mobile and social space.

Shaving is a necessary evil for most men, so they’ve little choice but to buy in to the multi-billion dollar industry. Until now, that is. Enter Dollar Shave Club, the company that’s done away with flash, aspirational advertising, and simply promises to provide high-quality razor blades every month – straight-to-your-door – for the low price of just $1 a month.

A few months ago we warned how Facebook users were beginning to turn on the brands they were following, clicking out of the relationship with increasing regularity. A new bit of research drills down deeper into the question of why consumers are breaking up with brands with such frequency. The number one reason: brands are too damn pushy.