It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and only one tweet to destroy it. That’s what Washington Post reporter Mike Wise is finding out after an ill-fated social experiment using social media. Wise thought he was going to pull a clever little ruse. He’d send out a tweet with falsified news – saying he [...]

At this point, it seems unlikely that Mark Zuckerberg will be supporting “The Social Network” by checking in to see the film at a theater on his new Facebook Places service any time soon. There are reports that he and his cohorts at Facebook are upset and that they “saw the movie a while ago, [...]

I set out to write a nice little news round-up piece to share some of the many interesting articles I’ve read lately. As I started digging through my notes, I noticed a trend among the pieces that caught my eye: they’re all from the same website. ReadWriteWeb.com is an intelligent, thoughtful blog dedicated primarily to [...]

This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com. See also Mike Keliher’s earlier take on the Old Spice campaign. Retailing tycoon John Wanamaker famously said that half the money he spent on advertising was wasted — he just couldn’t tell which half. A century later, a shirtless stud has once again prompted debate on [...]

Last week Facebook released its Questions feature to an estimated 3 to 5 million users. In the conversation that ensued, I’ve seen Questions referred to as everything from “a game changer” to a weak, watered-down version of Quora. No matter what your forecast, it’s giving individuals an unprecedented opportunity to engage with 500 million strangers, [...]

This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com. To view the original, go to http://bit.ly/9ENk03. The Shirley Sherrod saga highlights the vulnerability of a reputation in the Internet era — and the lessons apply to companies as well as individuals. For anyone who was asleep last week: Sherrod, a federal agriculture official, was vilified, [...]

Editor’s note: This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com. To view the original, go to http://bit.ly/azMH7e. Newsmakers have always tried to manipulate the media for the best possible coverage. But today, the game is more than ever stacked against the news outlets – and against news consumers hoping for more than self-serving sound [...]

In April, Facebook launched of a set of “social plug-ins” that let anyone put tools Facebook’s comment box and “Like” button on websites outside of Facebook. Just three weeks after these social plug-in tools were launched, more than 100,000 sites had installed the tools. It was huge news in the worlds of technology and marketing. [...]

  The Internet is now eating its own. News portals like AOL, Yahoo! and MSN, which helped devastate newspapers, magazines and local TV over the past decade, are themselves being damaged by social networks, notably Facebook. Facebook, the latest Web sensation, is becoming the preferred news source of tens of millions of Internet users. Facebookers [...]

  Excited for the NBA Finals? The Lakers - Celtics rematch starts today and should draw great ratings and be a damn good series (I got Boston in seven). In fact, Andrew Ungvari over at Bleacher Report thinks it could be the best Finals in 20 years and makes a solid argument. Yup, the match-up that pits [...]