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Late last year Groupon stunned and excited many by announcing $30 million in funding. Today “social commerce” site LivingSocial announced a series B round of $25 million: LivingSocial , the social commerce leader behind LivingSocial Deals and top Facebook applications Visual Bookshelf and Pick Your Five, today announced that it has completed a $25 million Series B round of venture funding led by U.S. Venture Partners, with Grotech Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution, LLC participating. With this round of funding, LivingSocial Deals is launching in four additional cities: Chicago, Denver, Raleigh Durham and San Diego, making the program live in 13 markets across the country, growing to dozens of cities by year-end. By signing up for LivingSocial’s free daily online service people are saving an average of 50-70% at their favorite places . . . The company, which was a social networking effort of sorts, has now reinvented itself effectively with its group-buying effort: LivingSocial Deals . However these group buying sites are now springing up every other day. All you need is a wordpress blog (essentally) and a telepone to start dialing for dollars. Often the discounts, as the PR copy above indicates, are very steep. What that means in the most extreme cases is that the SMB may break even or even take a loss in exchange for new customers and the hope of lifetime value, depending. In many cases the merchant does make a profit and is able to book revenue ahead of fulfillment. These channels work very effectively and consumers love them for obvious reasons

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Group Buying Hot, LivingSocial Gets $25M More

Twitter, the latest social networking craze, is a micro-blogging platform where participants post tweets which are short comments limited to 140 characters or less. Getting setup on Twitter is not terribly difficult. There is a slight learning curve in regard to Twitters culture and tweeting practices, so it is a good idea to monitor the posts for a few days before you jump in and begin tweeting, just to get a feel for the community. How to Twitter

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How to Twitter

Milwaukee LIVE On Twitter : Local News , Sports, People, Live News .

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» Milwaukee LIVE On Twitter: Local News, Sports, People

The Springfield Museums are using the online social networking sites of Facebook and Twitter to reach new audiences. Facebook fans and Twitter followers can.

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Springfield Museums reaching out with Facebook, Twitter – Union …

This is our weekly Twitter Design News Round-Up, a collection of fresh design related resources that we have shared via Twitter in the past week. Just in case.

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This Weeks Twitter Design News Roundup N.27 | Most Popular Gadget Blog

Panthers’ news breaks on Twitter . You gotta love the Twitter . It gives anybody with an internet connection a megaphone to the world. And in my line of work, we very rarely get mad at people for blurting their honest, …

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@Charlotte: Panthers’ news breaks on Twitter

I’ve been thinking a lot about how organizations extend the use of social networking beyond the marketing department. You’ve probably thought about this too or are even implementing it at your company. It seems there are three phases of development as an organization matures its social business: 1) Fear and distrust of social networking and a culture of saying “no” to tools like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. I’d say this is where 25% of companies are right now. 2) Putting a few people in the marketing department “in charge of that social stuff.” This is where more than half of companies are today. 3) Developing a social culture throughout the organization, including social business in each department. Less than 25% of companies have matured to this stage. IBM is there. The U.S. Department of Defense is too. Many others have written on this theme. Just this weekend, I found these posts: Jeff Bulla’s post asks: Who Is Winning At Social Media Marketing: Ford or General Motors? Jeff talks about how Christopher Barger at GM and Scott Monty at Ford are leading the way in social media. I’ve travelled to Detroit to meet with both and have video interviews with Christopher and Scott . I can say with certainty that both of GM and Ford are pushing social business down into the organization. Also writing on this theme is Peter Kane who asks: Why You Don’t Need Your Communications Team? Peter asks who’s important on the communication front

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Social business beyond just the marketing department

Something peculiar happened yesterday. I was sitting in a coffee shop near work as I often do between sessions when one of the baristas sheepishly approached me. I go in there all the time, so most of them know me by face, if not by name. She said, “Are you Jeff?” I answered in the affirmative and she goes, “There’s someone on the phone for you.” My first thought was that it must be work calling to tell me that there’s been a schedule change. AT&T has spectacularly terrible coverage and this cafe could be a dead zone. One look at my phone confirmed that I was five-bars strong and I had no missed calls. She looked as quizzical as I felt. I took the cordless phone from her and the conversation went something like this: Me: Hello? Stranger: Is this Jeff? The voice sounded hesitant and I definitely did not recognize it. I was slightly discombobulated that someone was calling me at this location, but curious and attentive. Me: Yeah, who is this? Stranger: This is your neighbor. Did you just check in on Foursquare? Now before I go any further, let me just explain what Foursquare is in case you don’t know. It’s a GPS-enabled Web application that allows users to “check in” wherever they have cell phone coverage. It’s an extension of social networking media and really the only point to it seems to be showing other users the lame places you go. Depending on how you have your account set up, the app will post your global position on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare or all three. My check-ins typically show up in the latter two. I once explained Foursquare to someone, her response was: “Why would you want do this?” I thought for a second and said, “Because all my other friends are doing it?” We both laughed, but I realized that I didn’t have a real answer to that question.

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Private Eyes Are Watching You: Twitter Oversharing and Its Bizarre Real-World Consequences

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo : Another YouTube Revenue Guess: $1 Billion in 2011

From Facebook to Twitter to You Tube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking sites that can be leveraged to interact with customers and prospects, and build positive brand awareness. LinkedIn , however, stands apart from the crowd. The roots of popular sites like YouTube and Facebook are founded on the entertainment side of things.

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5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix