• Measuring the real ROI of social media – slideshow
  An interesting presentation about measuring the real ROI of social media thats been doing the rounds this week

• A Look At All The Sites Owned By Rupert Murdoch That 'Steal' Content | Techdirt
  As Rupert Murdoch talks about how he wants to cut off Google, it seemed like a good time to examine at least some of the sites that are owned by Rupert Murdoch that appear to aggregate content from other sites and which rely on the very same fair use argument.
• Advertising – Online Ads Are Booming, if Theyre Attached to a Video – NYTimes.com
  News Web sites are starting to look a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like television.
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft disconnects Xbox gamers
  Online gamers cut off – Thousands of gamers may have been cut off from Microsoft's online gaming service Xbox Live for modifying their consoles to play pirated games.

  Online reports suggest that as many as 600,000 gamers may have been affected

• Exclusive: Playdom Raises A Huge Round At A Huge Valuation
  Playdom, has done its own massive deal: $43 million on a $260 million pre-money valuation. New Enterprise Associates, Rick Thompson, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Norwest Venture Partners invested in the round.

Welcome to the Social Media Report blog. In true social media style, this blog was acquired by a search engine giant and subsequently went quiet. But it’s now back and will hopefully soon be back to its best.

Thank you, readers for your patience. Stay tuned.

• Agency Clients Slash Budgets 20% or More, Digital Only Bright Spot – MarketingVOX
  "Digital marketing is among the few bright spots in the survey, with half the CEOs citing it as a growth area in 2009. Among North American CEOs, 62% said that they think digital will grow this year, while 39% of non-North American CEOs said the same."
  (tags: stats marketing PR)

• The North Face | The North Face Surge Rucksack at ASOS
  Online retailer ASOS.com does quite a nice integration with social networks and good spinny photos too
  (tags: retail bookmarking socialmedia)

• IMA Awards 2008 – Categories
  (tags: awards)
• The gadget tribes of technology – Boing Boing Gadgets
  (tags: gadget story tribes boingboing)
• Toyota iQ blog – News, videos and images | Toyota UK
  (tags: car blog toyota)

• Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Offline Gmail
  Offline Gmail has been launched.
  (tags: Gmail email offline)

• How Obama Will Use Web Technology
  A very Blist biased article on TechCrunch but it does say a fair bit about the web technology Obama's using
  (tags: Obama list)
• Future Banking Blog
  (tags: FS banking blog business)
• Digital Impact Conference
  (tags: speakeropp event ny may)
• iMedia Connection: Overview Page
  (tags: speakeropp march event florida)
• next09
  (tags: speakeropp event hamburg may)
• Home | Ad Age Digital Conference
  (tags: speakeropp event ny april)
• Overview: BRITE '09 conference on branding, innovation, and technology
  (tags: speakeropp event NY march)
• Why Are Bloggers Writing Shorter And Shorter Posts? – Web Development Blog
  Four reasons why shorter is better
  (tags: Twitter list)
• Micro Persuasion: Inside Obama's Social Media Toolkit
  What it takes to do social media and GTD, Obama style
  (tags: Obama gtd list marketing tactic)
• Twitter Power 150
  The global Twitter power list
  (tags: twitter league_table)
• Scoble at Davos
  On FriendFeed – this is what Robert Scoble will be covering, based on his audience's feedback
  (tags: scoble davos tactics)

• FT.com / UK – The new corporate firefighters
  Social media feature in the FT, featuring Motrin, Cisco and Dell case studies
• First Photo of President Obama using his BlackBerry
• Steve Ballmer’s Entire Memo to the Microsoft Troops About Layoffs and Weak Results | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD
  Here is the full memo to employees from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (pictured here) about the 5,000 layoffs and other cost cuts just announced, due to economic slowdown, which also resulted in weak financial results for the second quarter.
• A few Hotwires taking a break to watch Obama's presidential inaguration on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
• Hitwise: Twitter surpasses Digg's market share | Digital Media – CNET News
  Hitwise reported that as of Tuesday, Twitter, the popular microblogging service, had for the first time surpassed the market share of visits of the hit content aggregation site, Digg.
• Worst Twitter Post Ever: Ketchum Exec Insults Fedex Client on Mini-Blog | BNET Advertising Blog | BNET
  Much has been made of Ketchum vp James Andrews, who became an international embarrassment to Ketchum when he used his Twitter account to insult Memphis, the hometown of client Fedex, the morning before he was to meet with them there.

• Local Wikipedia Blocked by German MP – OhmyNews International
  "The county court of Luebeck (North Germany) has issued an order in the name of Lutz Heilmann, Member of Parliament (left party/post-communist) that the German Wikipedia (Wikimedia e.V.) must not allow linking its domain wikipedia.de to the Web site wikipedia.org, as long as the German language version of wikipedia.org makes certain statements."
• Digg Bans 20-30 Users for Hate Speech In Response to Fast Company's Women in Web 2.0 | An Itinerant Mind | Fast Company
  "After Fast Company's Women in Web 2.0 article and the subsequent blog post that followed both ended up on Digg, I talked to Beth Murphy, the site's Director of Marketing and Communications, about Digg's culture, its problems and policies."
• Facebook pulls Italian neo-Nazi pages after outcry | Technology | Reuters
  "Facebook said on Friday it had removed several pages from its site used by Italian neo-Nazis to incite violence after European politicians accused the Internet social networking site of allowing a platform to racists."
• Extract from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: Is there such a thing as pure genius? | Books | The Guardian
  "We look at outrageously talented and successful people – the Beatles, Mozart, Rockefeller, Bill Gates – and assume there is such a thing as pure genius"