Comedian Louis CK has announced the initial figures from his experimental $5 download scheme for his new DVD special. By skipping the traditional distributor model and offering the DVD directly to fans for a $5 download, sales within the first few days have topped $500,000.

Since 10 December, the comedian announced that over 100,000 $5 downloads of Live at the Beacon Theater had been purchased by fans—covering the initial production costs and earning the comedian a tidy profit.

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As Little Mix beat out Marcus Collins in Sunday’s night’s X Factor finale, predicted by social media, viewers turned towards Twitter in equal measure with the show’s judges when they decided how to vote.

A new study by digital agency Carat reveals an interesting trend with X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing viewers—specifically, that their trust has shifted away from traditional media influencers towards non-traditional media, such as Twitter and Facebook.

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How you do claim a piece of some of the web’s most valuable real estate for your very own? Being famous helps (a little). Famous and suddenly dead helps (a lot). Having your own reality TV programme is almost a sure thing, even more so if you happen to kick the bucket.

But for the rest of us, how do we, er, influence Twitter’s trending topic list?

Here’s a great piece about Twitter’s shrewd trends algorithm by NPR, which, frustratingly enough, gives us a reasonable answer to the almighty question: Read more »

Just 14% of senior marketers in the UK indicate that their company has a fully integrated social media strategy, according to new data, while a majority of companies are either in their infancy or have no integration strategy at all.

The InSites Consulting study shows that in spite of low integration, social media adoption is high among UK companies, as about 70% have a Facebook page and 62% use Twitter. Read more »

We’ve all seen examples of how huge companies with huge digital budgets are winning customers through social media, here’s a few examples of some “lesser-knowns” finding success online in their own way.

The infographic, put together for Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford (one of the huge companies mentioned above) brings to light some interesting one-off and ongoing social media campaigns from the likes of Dell, Unisys, KLM, ABC and Morton’s. Read more »

Three Facebook users die every minute. That’s 1.78m deceased Facebook accounts in 2011 alone. What happens to your Facebook account after you die? Is Facebook slowly turning into a digital graveyard?

It’s a strange question, and one that, perhaps, only raises more questions, not in the least: Who cares? I’m dead.

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If you’re anything like me, you’ve let a bit of dust accumulate on your once proud and shiny LinkedIn account. Outdated information, neglected networks, a CV that could use some spiffing up—it’s a classic case of LinkedIn lethargy.

Well, the website has been doing some interesting things lately, like its job application button, and is really beginning to stake its claim as the anti-Facebook.

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You won’t need your wallet to go shopping on UK high streets in 2016, according to a new report by PayPal.

Yup, in four year’s time, UK shoppers will be able to use their mobile phones to pay for things with digital money rather than cash or cards.

If fact, it’s already being done. The report follows the launch of Pizza Express’s iPhone app, which allows diners in the UK to pay their bill at their table using their smartphone. Read more »

Everyone’s got an opinion; some are just more vocal than others. As it turns out, UK consumers are far more opinionated than their US counterparts—online, at least.

Nearly half of UK consumers (47%) have reviewed products online compared to the US, where only a third (33%) go online to air their views on products, according to new research.

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For those keeping track at home, the value of a Facebook fan can vary wildly— depending on who you’re asking. It has been put as high as $136 a head, to $3.60 (as I blogged last year) or well according to some it is zilch.

I like Jim Edwards from Business Insider’s take on it. He said calculating the ‘value’ of a Facebook fan to an advertiser has become the social media equivalent of asking “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

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