The last seven days have been quite busy in social media. Twitter announced their first advertising play, the UK had its first live election debate which was covered furiously online and all aircraft have been grounded for two days over Britain thanks to Icelandic Volcanic ash. Here are six posts with only one mention of one of those stories!

1. 12 Social Media Marketing Myths – Pamela H Dyer

The ‘social media penny’ is dropping for more and more brands and while in many cases, the executive suite are getting to grips with it, there are still a multitude of naysayers and social media myths flying around. This post looks to addess some of the more popular ones such as, ‘social media is free’, ‘is a fad’ and ‘can’t be measured.

2. TV Viewing’s Shift to the Web [STATS]- Jolie O’Dell

This one from from Jolie O’Dell at Mashable looks at a study of 1,000 US consumers and their TV viewing habits. There is a shift in motion away from the TV and towards watching the same content online. The most telling stat is that 43% had considered cancelling or had cancelled their cable service as a result of the availablilty of online TV content.

3. The Key to Social Media Success is Just 2 Letters – Jay Baer

Probably the winner this week is this one by Jay Baer, an excellent post on how social media programs should focus on being useful to the audience first and not chase the sale. As he points out, there is only two letters difference between ‘helping’ and ‘selling’ but in reality they are a world apart. Good stuff, check it out.

4. 10 Essential Rules for Brands in Social Media – Taddy Hall

We are going for numbers based posts this week! This is a nice checklist of best practices for any brands about to get stuck in to social media. Not exhaustive or necessarily right for every brand, but a useful set of rules to start the planning process.

5. How Companies Should Approach the New Twitter Advertising Model – Dallas Lawrence

Couldn’t really leave this one out, even though everyone is probably aware by now! This week Twitter moved into the paid advertising space with select brands now able to pay for their sponsored tweet to appear at the top of the Twitter search results. This post looks at how brands should approach the new opportunities…which is very different to display, paid or push marketing.

6. Don’t Make Social Media Another Silo – Daan Jansonius

Social Media is most successful when it permeates through an entire organization and isn’t lumped in the marketing, PR or communication departments as a silo. This post looks at how social media needs to be integrated into departments, employees and internal communications to provide the most value.

OK, that’s it for this week. Have a good weekend and whatever you do, do it safely!

The winners this week, in no particular order, are…

1. Andreessen’s Advice To Old Media: “Burn The Boats” – Erick Schonfeld

Mark Andreesen (Co-Founder of Netscape and prolific investor) likens the development of the web and new media consumption to the discovery of the New World and offers the same advice to old media luddites today,  that was given to the Mexican’s over 500 years ago…”Burn the boats”. In other words, shut down your printing business and focus online. Unlikely we will see them abandoning a multi billion pound industry overnight…but I like the thinking!

2. SuperPower: Visualising the internet – BBC

Not much use to man or beast but a lovely visualization of the growth of web access from 1998 to 2008 around the World. Did you know that Congo only had 200 registered internet users in 1998…and Africa still lags way behind the rest of the globe ten years later. Check it out…we like the slider below the image.

3. Does Sports Need Social Media? – Lewis Howes

Yes! Without going over old ground too much, it is no secret that we think there is a huge amount Sports teams aren’t doing with social media and a huge amount that their fans wish they were. Lewis Howes looks at what is going on Stateside…and there is even less going on in the UK with a few notable exceptions. A big growth area for 2010 we think.

4. How Will The End of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers? – The Onion

We aren’t on a crusade against print media this week, but thought the below video was too funny to not make the cut. Enjoy!

How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?

5. VIDEO GETS SOCIAL ON FACEBOOK – Murray Newlands

Spotted this one on Murray Newlands’ blog about Vypype, who are launching social video in Facebook. This is different and arguably better than the current video experiences, YouTube or streaming. This lets individuals or fan page owners create private video chat with their friends and fans on their terms, whenever they want. There are too many brand applications for this to talk about here but expect to see this type of technology play a bigger and bigger role in customer engagement programs.

6. How To Use Video SEO To Jump To The Top Of Google Search Results – Benjamin Wayne

Its getting harder and harder to get onto page 1 of Google’s search results. Google are (apparently) tweaking their algorithm to reward social interaction and ‘blended’ search results which include images…and video. This post looks at how by creating videos and uploading them to YouTube (who Google own) will help your SEO, and has some useful pointers.

Right, that’s it for another week. Whatever you do over the weekend…do it safely!

Entertainment, news and education. Yes, it has some of the capabilities of a laptop and a giant iPhone… and there may be some that want to use it like that but what it is absolutely going to dominate at, is watching movies, sports games, music events and providing a new, rich reading experience.

Erik Qualman writes an excellent post here about the possibilities for enhanced knowledge transfer for educational books through the iPad. Imagine no more scribbling in text books or getting a second hand Economics book with the notes of a D- student masquerading as useful insights (I am still bitter about that one!). Instead, you will get the best notes from the smartest brains, even the authors themselves and be able to search for complimentary information all in the same place – very cool.

The latest industries to be disrupted by emerging technology, music and print, can start to tip toe their way back in by utilizing these platforms. Will people (micro) pay to have their chosen sections of the Times, Sun, NYT, FT downloaded to their tablet each day so they can read it on the train without attacking the person sitting next to them with a load of paper – yeah I reckon they might. How about the latest blockbuster while they are on a 4 hour train or plane journey? Definitely. The highlights from their team’s win in the Cup the day before as they lie in bed on Sunday morning…yes please!

Don’t expect it to do something that already exists. If Apple are good at one thing then its leading innovation and I think the entertainment industry as a whole is the most obvious application for the ipad and it should present a wealth of opportunities for the producers and gatekeepers of the content.

The iPhone or HTC (in my case) are too small to watch anything longer than 15-20mins worth of footage and people don’t want to hump their heavy laptops around everywhere they go. The iPad (I should point out that I am yet to touch one!) looks the perfect size to consume entertainment and that means new business models can start to appear – micro payments, freemium, sponsorship, content marketing etc.

What say you?