Social Butterfly

Social networks are captivating – there’s no doubt. The minds behind building the popular social media platforms of today knew exactly what they were doing and they saw it before any of us ever did.

Investors are giving up on Groupon (GRPN) and they're scrambling for the exits on Facebook (FB) too. Since Twitter is not publicly traded, they can't get out of that one as quickly.

DesignCrowd, the Australia-headquartered crowdsourcing service for designers, has kicked into the next gear of its international expansion after it entered Asia via launches in India, ...

Facebook content curation: Use these 8 tips to quickly find awesome content to share on Facebook that your audience will love.

Are you wondering how the new LinkedIn design will impact your personal profile and business page? While you might be waiting for the launch of the new Linke

It's called aquaponics- a gardening system that combines hydroponics (water-based planting) and aquaculture (fish farming). It's been hailed as the future of farming: it uses less water (up to 90% less than traditional gardening), doesn't attract soil-based bugs and produces two types of produce (both plants and fish).

Aquaponics has become popular in recent years among urban gardeners and DIY tinkerers, but Maundu- who is trained in industrial robotics- has taken the agricultural craft one step further and made his gardens smart. Using sensors (to detect water level, pH and temperature), microprocessors (mostly the open-source Arduino microcontroller), relay cards, clouds and social media networks (Twitter and Facebook), Maundu has programmed his gardens to tweet when there's a problem (i.e. not enough water) or when there's news (i.e. an over-abundance of food to share).
Maundu himself ran from agriculture in his native Kenya- where he saw it as a struggle for land, water and resources. This changed when he realized he could farm without soil and with little water via aquaponics and that he could apply his robotics background to farming.

Today he runs Kijani Grows ("Kijani" is Swahili for green), a small startup that designs and sells custom aquaponics systems for growing food and attempts to explore new frontiers of computer-controlled gardening. Maundu believes that by putting gardens online, especially in places like West Oakland (where his solar-powered gardens are totally off the grid), it's the only way to make sure that farming remains viable to the next generation of urban youth.

Wondering which social network is most effective at generating b2b leads? What marketing technique generates leads with the highest close ratio? What the best day of the week is for Facebook posting? Which U.S. city produces the largest share of “pins”on Pinterest?

Find the answers to those questions and many, many more in this collection of 72 fascinating social media marketing facts and stats for 2012.

Social media-savvy degree holders enjoy a lush buffet of options when it comes to finding information about navigating the scary new adulthood graduation dumps them into. Twitter users benefit from soaking up tips and tricks in 140-characters-or-less chunks, requiring far less mental bandwidth and time than a clunky ol’ article.

Participating in regularly scheduled chats might very well prove especially useful as well, as sessions cover essential topics like job hunting, healthy living, grad school, and productivity, and allow for exchanging information in real time versus waiting on a response.