SOCIAL MEDIA  Nielsen posted these mobile social stats from December 2009 about the gender differences when accessing social networks via mobile devices. You may be surprised to discover women were found do use their phones to 'tweet' and 'friend' 10% more than men. Nielsen research also showed the 35-54 age group had more active mobile social networkers than any other group. Read on

SOCIAL MEDIA  Earlier this week, Pepsi Australia's Hit Refresh social media and heavyweight outdoor campaign started it's promotions activation phase, via a Twitter treasure hunt and the engagement so far has been extremely high. This is a campaign I've been working on since late 2009, and I've really enjoyed seeing social brand advocacy in action at a grass roots level in the Gen Y and Gen Z demographic. Particularly on Facebook, Fans of the page are spontaneously sharing their love of Pepsi, requesting the treasure hunt come to their city, and enjoying the MTV TV spots. There are a few points about this campaign that makes it distinctive in both the social media and advertising landscape in Australia: Read on

SOCIAL MEDIA  It was in June that HabitatUK learnt the power of social media when they jumped on Twitter and used trending topic hashtags (the most tasteless was the Iran Election) to push signups to their marketing database and furniture discounts . As the blogger who broke the news, and then watched it break all records on Social Media Today, I am very relieved to see them back on Twitter. The case has been used as a benchmark of the cynical use of hashtag spam, been written up on countless posts, news stories and talked about on Twitter. Even though HabitatUK apologised through me via another blog post, and then promptly blamed their intern as the cause of the hashtag spam, they didn't respond back on Twitter. Until now. Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  Facebook signup continues to grow at exponential rates across the globe. In three months since April 2009, they've added another 50 million users If you're looking for stats on Facebook's infiltration into individual countries, the CheckFacebook site provides these revealing stats about Australia: * More than 6 million users * 36.65% of Australian internet users are on Facebook * Slightly more females to males * 18-24 year olds still the largest demographic * 25-34 year olds second largest demographic Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  Habitat is a trendy furniture store, set up by Terence Conran in the 1970s, for those who've never been to the UK its like a slightly more upmarket version of Ikea. @HabitatUK turned up on Twitter a couple of days ago, and decided to use trending topic #hashtags at the start of their tweets to get noticed. They used ones that had absolutely nothing to do with furniture, decorating, or shopping, but obviously the top hashtags for Thursday evening AEST such as #iPhone #mms #Apple and even Australia's Masterchef contestant who got voted off #Poh. I found these on Twitter Search: Read on