Business Insider recently reported comments made by Buddy Media CEO, Mike Lazerow, whose prediction for 2012 is all about the quick and easy microblogging platform Tumblr.

One of the reasons he cited for that growth is that the Obama campaign has recently launched a very nice Tumblr blog as an additional to all of its other social media activity as part of the 2012 presidential campaign. Read more »

The Associated Press has released new social media guidelines on how staffers should handle re-tweets (tips/guidelines from the Guardian and the BBC are also worth checking). Basically for the AP it comes down to not retweeting anything with an opinion. Doesn’t this slightly defeat the point of retweets or is that just me?

When someone says something that is interesting or controversial you want to share that with your followers. That’s the nature of social media and Twitter particularly. Read more »

Yesterday, I blogged on how The New York Times paywall was working as its digital subscriber numbers grow.

Today the Financial Times has issued an update on how its paywall is going from strength to strength and has broken through a significant barrier. Read more »

An interesting little addition to the Twitterverse here from Blether Labs. It has launched the beta of its real time Twitter private group chat application, !blether.

It means that you can cht to several Twitter users, but ensure no one else sees your conversation. Read more »

The New York Times put out a press release yesterday, the big headline of which was that it has recorded a slight rise in the print circulation of the paper’s Sunday edition, but the real story was that its total digital subscriptions are on the up. Read more »

Twitter has launched the first in a series of what it is calling Twitter stories – okay they are testimonials, but they are very nicely done and highlight some great uses of Twitter that will no doubt provide ideas and inspiration to others.

It has posted nice little videos of great uses of Twitter both large and small. From the Portland bookstore saved by a tweet, to the man saved in Tunisia during the Arab Spring by a tweet, to the athlete who took a hundred of his followers out to a crab dinner and to the Japanese fishermen who use Twitter to sell their catch before returning to shore. Read more »

24/7 Wall St has published its list of the 25 most valuable blogs in the US. It is an interesting list with interesting price tags attached showing that blogs continue to be huge business. Combined they are worth almost $1 billion.

While the Huffington Post is no longer represented, it is so much bigger than that these days and seeems to have ascended to become a news organisation in its own right, the list shows how these well funded and increasingly well resourced sites compete with traditional media. Read more »

Interesting to see who is taking up and trying out Twitter’s Promoted Products. As well as agencies using it for clients they are also starting to use it to promote themselves.

Here’s an example of PR agency Ketchum using Promoted Accounts to promote itself. Is it a good move? Should more PR agencies be following suit?  Read more »

Big changes at the Independent today, which last week celebrated the first birthday of its ‘i’ newspaper, as it unveils a new website with an international paywall, which we recently reported was under consideration, as well as a paid for iPad app.

The Independent’s UK site remains free, but users accesing from the US and Canada will have to pay. Read more »

Amusing viral video looking at how different media outlets come up with their Occupy Wall Street headlines.

I particularly like the Huffington Post one: “what did the New York Times go with? Just repost that but in a bigger font.”

The Fox News one is also good  “Obama ruins economy, inspires shanty towns”. That’s Fox telling it like it is. Read more »