In the best of all worlds, everybody would be invited to Best of All Worlds, the site set to launch August 28 from Swedish count Erik Wachtmeister and his wife, countess Louise Wachtmeister, former Swedish national champion in the 400-meter and 800-meter relay.

But as reality has it, it’s a “social navigator” for the 1% with five modes of operation: private, professional, family, social or party -- each with a unique set of photos, links and recommendations.

Wachtmeister sent out 5,000 invitations in May to a hand-picked “seed” group built around the assumption that people prefer to digitally mingle with those most like themselves, joining “worlds” focused on business, food and wine, health or a better world – for those with charitable or philanthropic interests. Continue reading...

Dust off those blue suede shoes and get ready to join Elvis Week 2012, the annual celebration at Graceland in Memphis commemorates Elvis Presley's life and career and the anniversary of his death on August 16, 1977, at age 42.

It’s a testament to the enduring power of the King of Rock and Roll, and a best use of technological evolution that future generations can engage with the legacy of Elvis Aaron Presley, considered one of the most important icons of 20th century pop culture.

Elvis Week 2012, running August 10-18, embraces all things digital and social with an official Elvis Week app for both iPhone and Android, featuring a customizable event schedule, complete list of Elvis Week guests, a map of the Graceland grounds and Memphis area, a news feed with video recaps, Memphis area weather conditions and a virtual candle for the annual Candlelight Vigil on August 15.Continue reading...

The Curiosity Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) captured the rover's descent to the surface of the Red Planet, as it survived a potentially perilous landing dubbed the 'seven minutes of terror,' capping a decade of work by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (more commonly known as JPL) in California.

The world was watching as Curiosity, NASA's latest contribution to the Martian landscape, landed at 10:32 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 near the foot of a three-mile tall mountain inside Gale Crater, which is 96 miles in diameter.

First-person updates on NASA's official @MarsCuriosity Twitter account include the historic touchdown tweet — "I'm safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!! #MSL” — which has been retweeted to date more than 71,000 times.Continue reading...

The Australian Advertising Standards Board (an arm of the country's Advertising Standards Bureau) has ruled that Facebook is an advertising medium, and as such, company pages must comply with pertinent codes and laws, vetting all public posts to ensure they are not sexist, racist or factually inaccurate.

“In a move that could change the nature of the social networking site forever, companies could be fined or publicly shamed for the comments that appear on their Facebook ''brand'' pages,” writes the Sydney Morning Herald.

The case involved a complaint to the ASB about Smirnoff vodka's Australian Facebook page, “accused of violating standards with sexist, obscene Facebook content that also promoted underage drinking." The ruling is tantamount to, in the words of Web Pro News, “If you can’t say it on TV or the radio, Facebook users can’t say it on your brand page.”  

The ruling "rocked" Foster's and Smirnoff's parent company Diageo, according to Beverage Daily. Diageo reportedly “argued that Smirnoff's Facebook page is a networking tool for communication between company and customer rather than a medium for advertising.”Continue reading...

It's official: Facebook has replaced a person's memory. The social network's new video promo released today features the following tale: "In 2010, Mayank Sharma of New Delhi, India contracted tubercular meningitis, a serious inflammation of the central nervous system. After a week in the hospital, he emerged without any memory of ever getting sick—or of the first twenty-seven years of his life. He began messaging the people who came up in Facebook's People You May Know feature to start piecing his life back together."

As the Summer Olympics gets underway in London, Twitter — rebounding for a pre-Olympics wobble on Thursday — has launched its London 2012 Olympics hub, driving its user base to jump on the #Olympics hashtag. 

NBC has partnered with Twitter to produce the Olympics Hub, highlighting noteworthy tweets from across the Games and beyond NBC's wall-to-wall Olympics coverage, without U.S. bias, even though a U.S.-based team in Boulder, CO, will curate tweets 20 hours a day for the hub. 

The goal is to centralize and surface tweets and conversations around the Games in a service for users and companies alike, with brands such as GE and P&G already promoting their Olympian marketing efforts via the hub.Continue reading...

Social-media marketing success is about more than just numbers of followers a brand has on Facebook, Twitter and the like — it's about engagement. What do fans do or not do, say or not say as a result of a brand's prompting via some social medium?

And measured that way, argues the social-marketing company Socialbakers, some brands rise surprisingly to the top. They include Audi, the German luxury-car marque that blew away nine other major brands selected by Socialbakers in a comparison of social-engagement rates. The also-rans included not only Audi rival Mercedes-Benz — which did finish second among the 10 — but also BMW, Taco Bell, Disney, McDonald's, Samsung Mobile USA, Walt Disney World, Skol and Starbucks Frappucino.

"We put a premium on engagement," Joe Quattrone, vice president of M80, Audi's social-marketing agency, confirmed to brandchannel. "We've developed the idea of what kind of content really resonates with fans. We understand what fans and followers want to talk about and we give that to them time and time again."Continue reading...

While more than 70% of marketers are using new media platforms, 62% are increasingly concerned with the inability to prove ROI across these channels according to the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) 2012 Digital and Social Media Survey, conducted in April and May 2012 with 224 client-side marketers.

Use of online video (e.g., YouTube) increased from 64% last year to 80% in 2012, and since 2007, overall usage of social media and mobile marketing has grown significantly, with 90% and 74% of marketers using them, respectively.

Respondents' preferred social/digital channels for consumer outreach:Continue reading...