AMC’s Breaking Bad, arguably the greatest show on television and one of the best TV series of all time, returned this past Sunday to considerable fanfare and much anticipation.

So how did Twitter react?

Read more

L2 Think Tank’s Social Platforms 2013 study, covering 247 brands across 15 different social platforms, offers a deep dive into the current moment in social media.

Insights include the ROI of social media vs. more traditional marketing tactics like paid search and email; the performance difference of Instagram video and Vine; and engagement levels on Twitter vs. Instagram vs. Facebook and more.

Read more

Social media is more prevalent than you might think in Africa – it is, after all, the world’s second-largest continent.

New research by strategic communication agency Cerebra examines the social media and social business practices of Africa’s top 200 companies, ranked according to revenue.

Read more

When you’re on the beach this summer, you might want to know which social networks the various people around you are most active on.

With the handy infographic below, created by Italy’s GrimmSolutions, you can do just that.

Read more

What do you do when you have a problem with a brand’s product or service?

You go online, right?

You’re not alone. Close to six in ten (57 percent) of customers search for a solution online before taking any further action, and they’re increasingly reaching for a brand’s social media outposts. Almost half of social media users (47 percent) have received customer care on a channel such as Twitter or Facebook, and 37 percent now prefer customer service through social media rather than by telephone.

Read more

Not so long ago, department stores were the chic shopping destination of any American city, the first to stock high-end clothing lines from Paris and guaranteed to match luxe goods with exceptional customer service.

Now embattled department stores (looking at you, J.C. Penney) find their customer bases crumbling as they struggle to prove their social savvy.

Read more

Web developers and content publishers alike rely increasingly on content management systems to streamline online content.

Pittsburgh-based web design and development firm Yellow Bridge Interactive created the infographic below to summarize the most popular CMS of 2013, and provide a breakdown of the top widgets and social media buttons incorporated into the CMS of top web pages.

Read more

When you Like or follow a brand on a social media channel such as Facebook and Twitter, what is the thing that they do that you hate the most?

Disruptive Communications asked more than 1,000 UK consumers what was most likely to damage their opinion of a brand that uses social media, and discovered that poor spelling and lousy grammar was the worse offence, with 42.5 percent citing this as their biggest turn-off.

“Salesy” updates (24.9 percent) and posting too frequently (12.8 percent) were also negatives for some customers.

Read more

Popular stationery web shop and blog Wedding Paper Divas conducted a survey to determine how prevalent sharing wedding details has become on social media.

Survey says: very prevalent.

From checking into venues on Foursquare to live-tweeting and posting real-time Instagrams, modern wedding guests take an active part in documenting the wedding experience online.

Read more

On his popular site Vincos Blog, Italian social media expert Vincenzo Cosenza tracks the popularity of social networks across the globe.

One of his projects includes a fascinating infographic that examines the rate at which different people adopt different social media networks, from Twitter to LinkedIn.

Read more