Social media is fired up for today’s U.S. midterm elections — the stuff digital dreams are made of, and reminiscent of bygone days when people turned to television in prime time to see election results.

Political tweets are up, soaring past 23,000 mentions per hour this morning. For context, the iPhone4 release garnered 55,000 mentions per hour at peak according to Trendrr.

Mainstream news outlets, like NBC News, is leveraging social media to gauge the results, as social media director Ryan Osborn explains above. Even the venerable Washington Post is making history by buying the hashtag #election as a Promoted Trend on Twitter today.Continue reading...

Now that Facebook has entered the location-based services market, "places" – and the information generated by users about those places – is the next digital bonanza.

What to do with all that geo-data? Comedian Stephen Colbert has his ideas. Brand marketers, meanwhile, are eager to reward users for recommendations.

According to Gigaom's Mathew Ingram, the next digital leap forward is for first-generation services like Foursquare "to effectively make social decisions easier." As for which service to go with? Decisions, decisions...Continue reading...

• Conservative and pro-gun titles were the fastest-growing magazine categories in the U.S. for the first half of the year. The slowest-growing categories were news, auto and entertainment, with dollar sales down in the double digits. U.S. newsstand sales overall dipped 7% from January to June, with cover price increases and waning consumer interest partially to blame.

• The Economist's success in reaching savvy global readers is profiled in the NYT, which also raises an eyebrow at the New Scientist's "neuromarketing" cover experiment.

• Allbritton's first hyperlocal website — the Washington, D.C.-focused portal, TBD.com — from former Washington Post online editor Jim Brady goes live, draws predictable response by WaPo.

• Former BusinessWeek executive editor John A. Byrne also launched his new digital venture today: an MBA-focused website called Poets & Quants, the first in a series of websites from his new company.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tells analysts the company's "job one urgency" is developing a tablet to compete with the iPad.

The battle of Colgate vs Aquafresh is unfolding in a New York courtroom over the right to use a "nurdle" (toothpaste squirt) on their toothpaste packaging.

Disney is selling Miramax Films for $660 miilion to an investor group that didn't include founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein.

Citigroup will pay $75 million to the SEC to settle charges that it failed to disclose subprime exposure to investors in 2007.Continue reading...

Ahead of today's iPhone 4 announcement, Apple yesterday released a software update — but issues arose and it's not working for all. The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple engineers warned about the antenna flaw but were ignored by CEO Steve Jobs, who liked the design.

Verizon's Droid X from Motorola, meanwhile, sold out on its first day.

AT&T and AMC's owner Rainbow Media reached a carriage agreement ahead of Mad Men's season premiere.Continue reading...

How adorable is this two-year-old car buff, future auto exec and Ellen fan?

BP-erasing "black oil" Firefox plug-in is only successful combination of "BP" and "plug" this week.  

Designer of golden McDonald's coke spoon and other brand riffs Tobias Wong passes away.

Want to be hated by everyone with a song stuck in their heads? FreeCreditReport.com (now FreeCreditScore.com) is looking for a new mascot band.

New Zealand's Fresh Up "thirst is creepy" campaign delivers on its tagline.Continue reading...

When we reported last month that the iconic magazine brand, Newsweek, was up for sale, we lamented the fact that "The sale of the venerable brand is a harbinger of the generally besieged print media industry, as readers continue to jump ship to the web and mobile, and ad sales remain lethargic."

But several industry players must believe the Newsweek brand is worth something. The New York Times reports that at least three bids have been made on the magazine by its auction deadline yesterday.

The potential buyers include Newsmax Media, owner of a conservative magazine and website; OpenGate Capital, owner of TV Guide; and Thane Ritchie, a hedge fund manager who has tried to create a third political party in America.Continue reading...

Bumper Stickler: Comcast founder Ralph Roberts wants bumper stickers on its trucks that say "I love cable." His son, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, told the US cable show in Los Angeles this week he'd worry about the trucks being vandalized, adding "We need to learn from the content industry how to market." Roberts also demonstrated (above) the first iPad TV-remote-control application at the conference today, while an "international airline" will introduce the iPad for inflight entertainment in July.

Top Hat Curtails? BP prepares new cap for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, releases first photo and reveals site's "not satisfactory" pre-disaster test.

AndroidStar: GM is in talks to link OnStar with Google phones.

Welcome Home: Haim Saban bought back $5 billion Power Rangers franchise from Disney.Continue reading...