MASHABLE — What’s the first thing young women do when they wake up? Check Facebook. How do enterprise employees pass the time at work? With social media. With so many studies highlighting ever-accelerating social media usage rates, the conclusion is obvious -- social media is everywhere. What follows are five of the hottest social media trends right now. Each are influencing our social, online and mobile behaviors in significant ways...

STAY N' ALIVE — In the last few weeks Facebook has been slowly rolling out a feature that, while not exactly new in concept, I think gives businesses and brands another opportunity to think strategy surrounding their Facebook efforts. The feature is Facebook Questions. The feature is pretty much a re-release of Facebook Polls (see my previous article on InsideFacebook.com in 2008 where I discussed this as a business tool), with even greater viral potential. In fact, it makes even more sense today than ever, with the increased focus on Facebook Pages, something Facebook has chosen to focus on with the new Questions feature...

IGNITE SOCIAL MEDIA — Each time a significant new development hits the social media landscape, the Ignite team will pull together a short analysis of the impact it might have on our clients. "Significant" in this case is pretty simple to define - if it creates new opportunities, or headaches, for our clients then it's important that we take the time to explore the change and share what we think. From now on, we'll also share our thoughts with all of you. Facebook Questions, what we cover in this post, is a great example. While it's not earth-shattering - we're not talking F8 and Social Graph here - it does create, or at least frustratingly hint at, some interesting possibilities for brand-managed Facebook fan pages...

INSIDE FACEBOOK — Appbistro, an application that provides a marketplace for Pages, launched a new Q&A site yesterday to help admins get responses to their questions about managing Facebook Pages. Announced in a blog post, the product known as Answers lets users pose questions to be answered by fellow users or a member of Appbistro’s assembled team of social media consultants. The system is powered by the Qhub Q&A site generator and currently includes questions like, "How do you remove application tabs?" and "How can I change my Page type?" Answers helps remedy the lack of an existing interactive knowledge base for Page admins and others who work in the Facebook ecoysystem...

MYCUSTOMER.COM — After gaining steady attention in the business press over the past four years or so, crowdsourcing found itself catapulted onto frontpage news in May when the UK’s new Coalition government turned to the online community for ideas about its future programme for government. A term popularised by Jeff Howe in a 2006 Wired magazine article and subsequent book, crowdsourcing has of course been the subject of some interest for some time, particularly in light of successful initiatives from the likes of Dell and Boeing. But suddenly crowdsourcing seems to be reaching some kind of critical mass...