THE SOCIAL TIMES — To be known as a "social game," games need to have a number of elements that encourage player engagement amongst friends.   Players need to be able to interact with their real world friends in many ways: they want to compete, cooperate, show off to and taunt friends. To better understand the ’social’ in social games, we put together a list of the 7 elements that should be included in every social game...

EMARKETER — US marketing executives were much more optimistic about the economic outlook in February 2010 than they were the year before, when the recession was in full swing, and many were planning to increase budgets, according to the “Marketing Trends Report 2010” from Anderson Analytics and the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG). But they have become even more focused on getting a good return on their marketing investments. Anderson and MENG found that “marketing ROI” had jumped to become the most important trend to marketing executives. Social media cracked the top 10 this year, when 72% of respondents were planning a social strategy...

MARKETINGPROFS — Unprecedented change brought on by a volatile economy and the rise of new marketing channels is creating opportunities for marketers—and leading the way for widespread adoption of emerging tactics such as social media, rich media, and mobile marketing, according to a survey of online and direct marketers by Unica and Salloway & Associates. Over eight in ten marketers (84%) use or plan to use at least one emerging marketing tactic (social media, rich media, or mobile marketing) in the next year. Among marketers, 47% now use social media for marketing, and 23% plan to use it in the next 12 months...

PR SQUARED — I dove into my "Big Thinking" folder recently and emerged with a slide from the "Social Media Trends for 2010" deck created by Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group, discussing organizational models for corporate adoption of Social Media. Who is in control of this Social Media stuff?  What are the best practices? These questions come up a lot, particularly amongst large brands...

MARKETINGSHERPA — Summary: We wanted to find out the effectiveness of social media in terms of achieving various target business objectives, such as increasing brand or product awareness and increasing sales revenue. See the responses we received from more than 2,000 marketers in this week’s chart...

Rating the Effectiveness of Social Media in Terms of Objectives Achieved