As the population continues to become more online savvy, spammers need to get even more creative to get past filters and moderators. My personal favorite approach lately has been the flattering spam. It’s a psychologically potent tack – they’re going straight for the blog writer’s ego, saying things kind enough to make the moderator pause [...]

Findings from a new report from Forrester Research and GSI Commerce are somewhat surprising, in that the study suggests that social media has very little impact on purchasing behavior. The results seem contrary to other reports with headlines such as Social Media Marketing Spend to Hit $3.1 Billion by 2014 and 5 Ways Facebook’s Open [...]

In a recent post on Useit.com, Jakob Nielsen disparages social media outlet Digg as nothing more than an inflation of your bounce rate as its users show up and disappear without delving any deeper into your site. Stan Schroeder of Mashable, social-media’s stalwart defender, quickly rebutted Nielsen’s argument rightly saying that sites like Digg, StumbleUpon [...]

A study released last week by The E-Tailing Group has found that a surprising amount of online shoppers not only rely on customer reviews, but use them more so than traditional modes of product information such as retailers, sales associates, advertising, etc. I’ll link you to the article at the end, but what it basically [...]