The Twitter effect, it has helped me pick my date night movie more than once. And the studios know it, so they're working it into their marketing plans (or in some cases, I'm sure, working around it). Lionsgate has come out of the gate strong by integrating "user comments, video streams and Twitter conversations (via a branded hashtag) under one platform, with real-time metrics to show isolated and combined traffic figures."

It's easier to understand once you see it. Check out the Stream section of their YouTube page (under the video).

The was something new in my Google search this morning, a social circle. Google moved Social Circle out of the Labs and into Beta a few weeks ago, but I came across it for the first time today.

Running into this as the average user might, gave me some insight, mainly because the Social Circle links were the first ones I clicked on. I felt comfortable and confident clicking on the links because I had already pre-approved these people/companies in other parts of my internet life. It also made me realize how important social media marketing is going to become — gaining Facebook friends is soon going to lead to gaining clicks on Google.

Yahoo! is getting deeper into the real-time search game, by adding Twitter to their search results. It's a bit behind the other major search engines, but it does mean that social media is even more embedded and integrated into basic search. With Facebook posts and Tweets now showing up in the top three search engines, social networks have cemented their place on the Internet and social media SEO might be the next buzz word.

From "Whip It" and "Watch Us Work It" to Pee Wee's Playhouse and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the men of Devo have always been good at marketing subversive ideas to impressionable young minds (even if the band itself hasn't risen to great commercial heights as a result). No wonder creative shop Mother took a page from W+K London's book and branched out with Mothersbaugh & Co. as its flagship client.

Conspiring with Warner Bros. Records under the guidance of Devo Inc. COO Greg Scholl, these neo-corporate monoliths have concocted De-Evolution 2010, a campaign designed to bend the collective will of consumers everywhere in service of the band's forthcoming CD release. Judging from the initial response to the Devo Color Study on Facebook and Twitter, this time the de-evolution will be internalized.

With so much traffic whizzing by on the info superhighway, it's easy for your social marketing initiatives to get trampled underfoot. That's why we liked this simple, effective post about the the rules of the road — it served a great reminder to look around before crossing the street.

Sysomos, a social media analytics company, examined nearly 600,000 Facebook Pages and came back with some interesting numbers.

The most interesting bits of info (for me) are:

• On average, a Facebook Page has 4,596 fans. Four percent of pages have more than 10,000 fans, 0.76% of pages have more than 100,000 fans, and 0.05% of pages (or 297 in total) have more than a million fans.
• Facebook Pages with more than one million fans generate significantly more content than the average Facebook page: three times more content created by owners/administrators, and 70 times more content created by fans themselves.
• The average page has 26.8 pieces of non-stream owner-generated content (photo albums, videos, links, notes and favorite pages). Among pages with more than one million fans, the average page had 70.4 pieces of owner-generated content.

This says two things to me: 1) having a significant amount of content on your Facebook page is very important, but some of that content should be created by fans 2) while the focus should probably remain on wall posts, other type of content creation (photos, videos, etc) should get some love too.

According to the Atlantic Monthly, the Grateful Dead as an organization was ahead of its time when it came to growing tightly knit fan communities, crowdsourcing solutions and mastering strategic improvisation. In a way, you could say Jerry Garcia and company were the forefathers of social marketing and commerce.

Tailor-made for the information economy, the Dead's business model is built around the correlation between familiarity and value. The ideas behind the band's model (which might as well have been ripped from the pages of Chris Anderson's latest book) can be summed up in a few core tenets:

• Engage and reward your most loyal fans
• Raise demand by giving some of your product away
• Make a profit through freemium goods and services

John Perry Barlow, Dead lyricist and internet guru, sums up the band's value prop nicely:

"Here’s the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced."

Makes sense to us. After all, if you want to get your friends and fans to follow you around (and buy your stuff), who better to look to for advice than the Dead?

Larry O'Donnell is willing to get his hands dirty in order to change the way we think about trash. The COO of Waste Management, Larry has become the face of a social media effort that includes more than just heavy promotion of the company's Facebook fan page. O'Donnell also stars in the premiere of Undercover Boss, a new primetime CBS series making its debut after Super Bowl XLIV tomorrow night where execs walk a mile in their employees' shoes. Is the dawn of a new era in corporate accountablility, an ultra-savvy green PR campaign or just more social marketing garbage? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Facebook is set to hit the 400 million user mark today (the platform is rolling out some major improvements, too, but that's another story). Funny, isn't it? A year ago, the world was still trying to choose between Facebook and Myspace. It seems the choice has clearly been made — for now, at least. :) Congrats to Mark and company!

What does the social landscape look like 2, 5 years from now? Check out some insightful predictions care of ebizQ.