SOCIAL MEDIA  We seem to have collectively agreed that 2010 is the year of the social strategy. As we move away from the 'new shiny object' phase to practical implementation, what has not been addressed is how current media agencies will adapt to manage these strategies that are so different from the traditional media management norm. For example the process is far more labour intensive and cant as a result be grouped in with an agency standard commission model. There are also customer service skills and a culture needed that are not immediately compatible with your traditional planner buyer. So what's a media agency to do in this day and age to keep up, make money and not become irrelevant in this space? One thing it may have to do is watch its back and adapt fast to prevent PR becoming the go-to destination for social strategies? Read on

SOCIAL MEDIA  Although not living in the US, I drive a Toyota, and I am a fan. I was however interested to see how the recall was being managed online as this was a great opportunity to leverage social platforms. Alas to-date (and again its from outside the US) I can't see the leverage in action, at best its a half-hearted effort at worst its head in the sand stuff. Their Facebook fanpage with 70,000 fans (many more casual visitors), is busy with complaints but Toyotas responses are absent. While there are still a few loyal fans (i do hope they don't work for toyota as they haven't declared) they are in the minority- for instance one points out that 'its 'OK to drive your 'dangerous' Chrysler/Dodge that could have brake failures. [that] Recall hardly mentioned in the news'. But where is their Toyota backup? Where are the big guns like Chairman and CEO: Yoshimi Inaba? Read on

SOCIAL MEDIA  Brace yourself, but having a group on facebook of 40,000 members is not a social strategy, either is 30,000 followers on twitter. You may in fact be doing more damage to your brand than good, how would you know? Do you actually know how your current social networking is impacting your bottom line? Well you should and there are tools available to find out. Read on

TECHNOLOGY  Interview where Gartner ask the Eric Schmidt,CEO of Google, on what he thinks the web will look like in 5 years time! There is a lot of plain English here and some interesting points covered. When this guy talks about the future of the web you have to assume he well informed and we should listen. Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  85,000 apps now available and rising fast. These have been downloaded more than 1.8 billion times. So why all the fuss? Well its not an exaggeration to say that Apps are driving the next wave in communications and commerce. Mobile platforms have already opened the door to a rapid development of the mobile phone. It is evolving as a remote control for ever expanding types of real-time cloud-based services, including emerging category of location-based services, creating opportunities and empowering consumers in unprecedented and transformative ways. Read on

The outfit that has already revolutionised the way we watch television is about to do the same thing again. TiVo, the US company that invented the personal video recorder (PVR), has unveiled a service that for the first time marries the live broadcast of a TV show with the potentially huge amount of extras found for it on the internet. The technology will be available in Britain within months. Read on

Johns reaction: Broadband and broadcast are integrated,

As part of the BBC's SuperPower season - a special series on the internet - we will be teaming up with Global Voices, a non-profit blogging network of citizen journalists, to present a different range of perspectives and commentary from around the world. Read on

Johns reaction: "The idea that citizen journalism is somehow opposed to or in conflict with traditional journalism is now clearly past; it's evident that both exist in symbotic relationship to one another, with many opportunities to collaborate on the creation of news, storytelling and distribution of content."

It s official: Twitter has surpassed 10 billion tweets. While Gigatweet s counter is down due to over-traffic., you can tell by the actual tweet ID numbers that we have crossed the magical threshold. The milestone shows that Twitter s still growing at a rapid pace: it broke 1 billion tweets in November 2008 and 5 billion tweets just four months ago. Read on

Johns reaction: Tweet #10 billion wins a small island off Greece

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In 2009, McGarryBowen demonstrated an understanding of what many of its peers are fast forgetting: for all the ways the ad business is forever changing, certain fundamentals -- like sound account management -- never change. Read on

Johns reaction: AKQA Is No. 6 on Ad Age's Agency A-List for 2009, interesting

"Bunny," a 15-year-old cellphone novelist, tapped out a three-volume bestseller. The teen, shown at a Tokyo train station, does not want even friends to know of her publishing success, with 110,000 paperback copies of her novel sold since it was published in May. (Yuriko Nagano / For The Times) Read on

Johns reaction: interesting trend to watch