MEDIAPOST — Technology has historically pushed people away from each other, isolated them, and allowed them to work independently. These are among the interesting insights from traditional advertising executive Laura Lang, chief executive officer for the Razorfish/Digitas Group, during the afternoon OMMA Global keynote on Wednesday in San Francisco. Today, technology gives us the ability to connect. So when you hear the words social and media, it's important to remember the pathway that creates an emotional connection from the brand to the consumer. Lang says marketers who think of social media as another channel for advertising are already out of the game. Think about this: 25% of the top links in a search query return user-generated content...

MEDIAPOST — Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn allow businesses to attract customers, recruit talent, develop leads and share information in real-time from anywhere in the world. Although much of the early success in social media campaigns is from B2C companies, those that sell goods or services directly to consumers, the adoption of social tactics has been uneven for B2B companies, businesses offering goods and services to other businesses. An Internet search for case studies of social media campaigns returns many examples from the B2C community, but very few from B2B companies. The dichotomy is striking, but one thing is clear: With the rapid growth and popularity of social media, B2B companies choosing to ignore this opportunity to connect with customers and prospects risk being overtaken by their competitors and losing market share...

MEDIAPOST — Paid and earned media are big buzzwords these days, and increasingly this terminology is used to categorize various digital media strategy components. The language has even captured the attention of industry analyst firm Forrester, which recently published definitions of paid, owned and earned media, and made the case for why an integrated strategy reflecting each of these elements is a winning approach for brand marketers. In a nutshell, Paid Media typically refers to bought advertising (or, in Forrester's words, "paying to leverage a channel") versus Earned Media, where "customers become the channel." Definitions are great, yet programs designed to support paid and earned media are often developed in silos, making a truly integrated approach difficult if not impossible. This issue gets especially tricky when it comes to social media advertising...

MEDIAPOST — Italian fashion brand Diesel is entering the social media space with a series of initiatives designed to build a foundation for the brand online. The new digital initiative includes branded programs with Twitter, FourSquare and Facebook. The company has tapped New York-based Iced Media as its agency of record. In addition to creating a digital extension to Diesel's national "Be Stupid" campaign, which broke earlier this year, the AOR will be responsible for a number of social media aspects for Diesel, including a mix of blogger relations...

MEDIAPOST — Mobile social networking is gaining ground. As of January, 17.1% of U.S. mobile subscribers went to a social networking site or blog compared to 13.8% in October, according to new data from comScore MobiLens. The Web measurement firm last week reported Facebook and Twitter have both seen triple-digit traffic growth on the mobile Web in the last year, reaching U.S. audiences of 25.1 million and 4.7 million, respectively. (MySpace's mobile site dropped 7% to 11.4 million.) Highlighting broader growth, Facebook recently announced cracking 100 million active mobile users worldwide...