What new insights can we learn about the mercurial properties of influence from Hewlett-Packard, a company who’s chief influencer, Mark Hurd, is now out of a job for wining and dining a former B-movie actress on the company dime? Well, as Hurd now knows: don’t be seduced by fleeting fame. What really matters is who listens to you, respects your opinion and repeats what you have to say. That’s the true definition of influence. Yes, there’s a a Twitter angle here.

Our social networking addiction is growing. Add more time and more people and the implications are (not surprisingly) very clear: social networking has established itself as one of the fastest-growing and most used communication channels today. Combined with the explosion of our ‘always on’ mobile society this has cemented the Twitter’s and Facebook’s of the world as valuable customer service goldmines.

It’s never an easy decision to kill off a brand, particularly a geeky brand that was all the rage just a year ago. So, not surprisingly, Google’s announcement yesterday to pull the plug on Google Wave, a real-time communication/collaboration app, is not going over so well this morning with die-hards who’ve taken to Twitter, Facebook and blogs to voice their displeasure with Google. In real-time.

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.

Reuters’ Leslie Gevirtz kicked up a bit of a fuss earlier this week when she reported how French winemakers are still a bit too snobby when it comes to social media marketing, particularly when compared to more net-savvy New World producers. She based some of her reportage on a recent study conducted by My Social Winery that detailed just how anti-social French winemakers are. The results may surprise you.

Over the past few months, Old Spice has captured the hearts of millions through a viral video campaign that combined the reach of TV commercials and now the personalization of social media. Could the hunky …

Is Twitter adding a new pay-for-followers scheme to boost sagging brands and would-be celebs? What about a new real-time analytics tool to make sense of up-to-the-minute conversation streams?

Twitter sure picked the right partner in Disney-Pixar with which to debut its new “sponsored trends” advertising platform. Toy Story 3 appears to have blown away even the rosiest of forecasts, pulling in an estimated $158 million global box office take this weekend, Variety reports, a record for Disney-Pixar. This figure will no doubt add to the debate of whether Twitter’s new ad platform has the power to build instant buzz (and sales) for a brand, or whetherit’s just a nice-to-have add-on to an existing ad campaign.

Earlier this year, a survey of corporate social media strategy showed Twitter was undeniably the channel of choice among the world’s largest companies. And, as we’ve been seeing, the corporate Twitter strategy, for the most part, begins and ends with customer service/outreach. Twitter has become the front line customer service hub for companies to calm customers’ nerves, keep them informed and engaged. But, we wonder, can’t that also be achieved on Facebook and YouTube?

If you’re an avid Twitter user (wait, you’re not on Twitter yet!?), then you’ve certainly seen the dreaded “Twitter over capacity” whale a few times in the last week or so. Confronted with the fail whale many times this week ourselves we too have grumbled to the Twitter gods: WTF is going on? The Twitter gods, well, PR guy, has finally answered.