CMO.com

A survey conducted by BIGresearch for the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association (RAMA) found that in-person communication was social media users’ top impetus to start an online search for a specific item.

Employees at Hachette Filipacchi Media may soon be sharing status updates, links to amusing articles and photos as they work from their cubicles. HFM, parent company of Elle magazine, informed staff of an imminent new companywide social media network in hopes to better facilitate communication.

Claims from marketers on their own Web sites and third-party sites like social networks will be subject to Advertising Standards Authority scrutiny, as they are in TV, print, and other forms of online advertising.

While, 58% of marketers in North America are already engaged in social media marketing, only 34% of Europeans can say the same. That’s likely to change in the next 12 months

The Retail Advertising and Marketing Association survey, “Social Media: An Inside Look at the People Who Use It,” compares U.S. social media users to the average American adult.

In general, the popularity of mobile social networking is increasing. In January 2010, 11.1% of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via mobile browser, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from the previous year.

The TV campaign will run solidly for a month and then in two-week bursts until mid-June. It will be backed by a digital campaign across Microsoft’s network and on media including social networking Websites.

Online spending from wealthy Internet users has been higher than average, and retailers are responding by increasingly turning to social networks to attract customers. But will affluents be as receptive to social marketing as other Web users?

Facebook is worth almost 10 times as much as Twitter, according to an index by SharesPost, a marketplace for trading in private companies, which pegged the No. 1 social networking site's worth at $11.5 billion.