Business Blog

WASHINGTON — Twitter is booming as a social media destination for teenagers who complain about too many adults and too much drama on Facebook, according to a new study published Tuesday about online behavior. It said teens are sharing more personal information about themselves even as they try to protect their online reputations. Teens told [...]

The NCAA has apparently weighed in on the use of Twitter hashtags on college athletic fields. The organization’s decision to ban the use of hashtags (ie: #NCAA) is a strike against social media, school pride and athletic departments everywhere from the University of Alabama to Southern Maine Community College (#SeaWolves). MBJ looked at this phenomenon last October [...]

From partnering with game developer Zynga to promote her bestselling album “Born this Way” to Tweeting “natural” pictures of herself sans makeup, pop superstar Lady Gaga apparently knows how to use social media to her advantage. The 26-year-old multiple Grammy and MTV award-winning artist (who’s real name is Stefani Germanotta) is a walking brand and admits [...]

Once belittled as an insubstantial electronic scrapbook with narrow appeal, the 2-year-old website Pinterest is maturing into a marketing monster. Visits to the site have increased more than 4,000 percent in less than a year, vaulting it to the No. 3 spot in social-media popularity behind only Facebook and Twitter. Some big-name retailers are taking [...]

Facebook may be king of the social media hill this week with their highly anticipated public offering, but here at MBJ we try to be well-versed in all the social media platforms.         Here are some favorite Twitter handles that we follow in no particular order. Chuck Jordan, Mayor of Greenville @GvillMayorChuck Volunteer Oxford @OxfordVolunteer [...]

I would, somewhat vainly perhaps, consider myself a social media savant. I was blogging on Xanga when WordPress was still in beta testing. I was on Facebook before it was cool. Way before. Twitter has finally grown on me and I’m up to about 200 Tweets since last fall. Skype has been a great way [...]

By Amy McCullough In light of Twitter’s role in the recent Egyptian political crisis, a friend recently wondered when and how news outlets would start citing social media “citizen journalists.” A new platform called Storify is one answer. News outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post and others have already used Storify “stories,” which [...]

By Amy McCullough For this week’s MBJ, I wrote “Get on the social media train or get left behind,” which addresses the importance of social media marketing for businesses. If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter and want to know what people might be “tweeting” about your business, check out this YouTube video, “Twitter Search in Plain [...]