Social Media Marketing

Hermes is breaking its normal interaction with Facebook fans by posting photos of nude paintings. Compared to other post types, these receive a much higher number of likes and comments, suggesting that shock tactics can be an effective way to promote engagement.

These are the boom years for social media and mobile apps, which continue to grow at a torrid pace. Wal-Mart’s Facebook fans doubled to more than 6 million since February, Victoria’s Secret’s Twitter followers nearly tripled to 126,335 in the same period, and Sears has upped its mobile ante to 21. 

Heinz is eyeing potential e-commerce campaigns for future tomato ketchup products following the success of its first Facebook shop. The company became the first fast-moving consumer goods brand to sell a product via the social network earlier this year when it made a limited-edition flavor of tomato ketchup available exclusively through Facebook.

After shutting down the Google+ invitation process late last week because of "insane demand" from people eager to try out its new social network, Google once again began to allow new members.

British apparel and accessories designer Burberry is tapping YouTube to uniquely display the features of its new Brights eyewear collection. Burberry displayed a video on its branded video channel that shows how the glasses fold into itself. The brand promoted the glasses and the video via Facebook and Twitter.

Someone — unbeknownst to the Ralph Laurn camp — had claimed the Twitter handle @RalphLaurenUSA and started to tweet on behalf of the brand. The feed mostly has retweets and replies thanking followers for their support. One post even talks about Ralph Lauren's partnership with Wimbledon. The big question we have is why?

Google stopped inviting users to join its new social network less than 48 hours after beginning a limited release of the service. Google Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra said the company had shut down the invite mechanism for the Google+ service for the night, in a note he posted on Google+.

Grammy-winning singer Justin Timberlake holds a stake in Specific Media, which just shelled out $35 million to acquire MySpace, a site for which Timberlake will provide strategic direction.

At the ripe old age of seven, could Facebook be overtaken by a new competitor? Google has unleashed its own social platform, Google+. A spokeswoman said the company began the project "to see what a Google approach to sharing would look like, and to see if we could come up with a better way of connecting with the different people in our lives."

Foursquare has surpassed the 10-million user mark, and the check-in site collected a number of facts about itself to complement the announcement. Target, Wal-Mart and Macy's have been noted as the most popular retail chains on the site.