Mashable spoke with Altimeter Group Industry Analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Intel Social Media Strategist Ekaterina Walter to get their thoughts on how businesses can save time, money and other valuable resources by creating more efficient social media processes. Here are five essential tips. 1. Utilize Your Existing Team "Leverage your front-line workers who already support customers in different me

Twitter's valuation has almost doubled in the last seven months, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The Journal says Twitter is busy raising hundreds of millions of dollars, at a valuation as high as $7 billion. In December, the same company was valued at just $3.7 billion in a $200 million round of funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Why the increase in valuation? Tw

Most people quit blogging -- and most companies do too, for that matter. Like healthy diet, frequent exercise, proper posture or any other New Year’s resolution, blogging results take time. A 2008 Technorati survey put the abandonment rate of blogs at about 95%. Part of the reason for low blog success rate is that most of us have a hard time predicting what kind of return blogging will achieve. "I

The hot -- but still indie -- social network for iPhoneographers has never publicly revealed its top 20 users. That changes today, as Instagram has exclusively shared its most-followed users list with Mashable. Instagram's top users, as seen below in a photo gallery that highlights their art, are a unique bunch who collectively love to edit their iPhone photos and share them with other photo afici

On this day in 1974, Clyde Dawson made history as the first consumer to buy a product that had been scanned into a till by its Universal Product Code. The product was a $0.67 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum purchased at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The UPC went on to become more commonly known as a "bar code." Now ubiquitous in the U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, the bar code

If you love Facebook so much that you'd like to see your content on your coffee table, then we've got seven superb solutions for getting your Facebook profile and photos made into real-life books. Whether you want your current profile preserved as a unique memento, a way to view your Facebook pics offline or a record of your last year in social media, there's a solution here to suit. Take a look t

How Social Media Is Changing Paid, Earned & Owned Media Paid: Buying a 30-second Super Bowl spot Earned: Coverage on Mashable Owned: Your company's website But social media has brought about a change. It not only affected how agencies themselves function on a day-to-day basis, but it also altered the definitions of paid, earned and owned media and blurred the lines between them. Now, the challenge

With the massive growth of its staff and userbase, the huge rounds of funding it has taken and its ever-rising valuation, and the company's increasing significance in the global sphere, the startup has clearly moved into the realm of enterprise. To quickly sum up the company's journey from dorm room to Silicon Valley, we have an infographic from real-time social media startup Namesake. Click image

What's happening in the world of social media? That's not a simple question to answer, as this space is quickly becoming one of the busiest, most interesting aspects of our digital lives. However, if we had to choose the best way to present the wealth of recent information on social media -- how companies are using it to improve their business, how individuals are interacting with its many facets

Looking for even more social media resources? This guide appears every weekend, and you can check out all the lists-gone-by here any time. Editors' Picks HOW TO: Land a Job at Google Advice on getting a job at Google, straight from the horse's mouth. HOW TO: Use Social Media for Recruiting Here are tips and innovative examples to help you find top talent on social networks like Twitter, Facebook a

A new version of Apple's MacBook Air is coming in late June, Taiwan's Economic Daily said, quoting sources familiar with the company's plans. The report does not bring any new specifics about the Air itself, but it says that Apple plans to sell 380,000 units of the new Air in the first shipment. This confirms (or recycles, if you will) an earlier report from Apple Insider that also claimed the new