QR codes are popping up on everything from magazine ads to bus shelters and slowly but surely, Americans are learning to point and click. comScore has just posted the results of their June 2011 survey regarding the funky, black and white squares and here's what they found. 14 million mobile users in the US have scanned a QR code. That sound like a nice number until you put it in perspective. It represents only 6.2% of all mobile users. 60.5% of the code scanners were men,

As you travel around the internet on your daily quest for knowledge, you'll see a lot of ads and the majority of them will come from the retail industry. According to numbers from eMarketer, retail will spend an additional $1.3 billion on online ads this year bringing them up to an estimated $6.78 billion. The trend is expected to continue with retail claiming the top spot through with $11.08 billion by 2015. The up and comer is the consumer packaged good industry,

Zippy, the Zip Code Man has been helping the post office route letters since the 1960′s and now Facebook has joined the party. As of yesterday, advertisers on Facebook can now chose to target their ads by state, city or zip code. It may seem like city goes hand-in-hand with zip, but for a local business on a budget, it can make a big difference. Take a large city such as Los Angeles. People from one side of the city,

Millennial Media released their 50th Mobile Intelligence Report today which covers Q2 2011 and includes a look back at where we were in 2009. One of the biggest changes is Apple's rise to dominate the top of the mobile device charts. In 2009, they were number 3 with 11.35% of the market, but in 2011, they're number one with 30.76%. Samsung dropped down to number two, but 2009′s second place LG has dropped all the way to 6th place.

Check Twitter later today and you should find another new upgrade designed to keep you from using those third-party encroachers. First, they're adding more data to the @YOURNAME tab so you can easily see who is reTweeting you along with messages directed at you. It also lists Tweets that were favorited but does anyone really use that function? I'm a big Twitter user and don't think I've ever favorited a Tweet.

Sometimes I feel like one of those kitchen gadgets they sell on late night TV. It slices, it dices, it makes perfect julienne fries, diapers the baby and writes your blog for you while you sleep. The irony is, that the computer age was supposed to help us get things done faster so we could have more leisure time, but in reality, it's given us even more to do. Yesterday, Zen Habits delivered a refreshing post on living the minimalist lifestyle .

A year ago, most people would have no idea what you were talking about if you asked who retweeted them. My, my how times have changed. Today, retweeting is the equivalent of coins dropping out of a slot machine. Bing, bang, ching " each one represents a boost for your business and depending on who retweeted, your reach can grow to 100 times more than your original message. Because the care and feeding of RTers is so important,

Haven, Maine may look like a typical, small New England town but strange things happen here " on a regular basis. People turn to stone. Shadows run off on their own and a giant, killer ball rolling down the street is perfectly normal. In Haven , they call it The Troubles. In TV circles, they call it a hit. This Friday, the folks behind the Syfy series will launch an unprecedented social media effort, a storyline that flows back and forth between the series and Twitter.

The State of California wants to stop prisoners from using Facebook and has asked the social media network to shut down the accounts of anyone who updates while incarcerated. Is this constitutional? Forget that whole number about "free speech." I'm thinking more about cruel and unusual punishment! Department of Corrections officials believe that prisoners are using Facebook for nefarious means. NBC news investigated and found that one prisoner posted,

A new Yahoo! study states that there has been a 54% increase in the time spent on the mobile web and a 29% increase in time spent watching video on a mobile device. Are you tired of hearing it yet? Your customers are going mobile " sort of. The study, called "Mobile Modes: How to Connect with Mobile Consumers," also found that one third of the total time spent on mobile devices is spent at home. That's right. Mobile, isn't always mobile and we often forget that.

Do you remember your first laptop computer? Your first smartphone? Are you still waiting to experience the joy of the tablet? Most of us have been around long enough to see this massive change in portable technology but there's a new generation that has never known anything else. They're the iGeneration and they were born, almost literally, with a mobile phone in their hands. According to a new survey by BlogHer and Parenting,

When Apple created the slogan, "there's an app for that," they weren't kidding. When you look at all the mobile phone options then add in apps for Twitter and Facebook and browsers like Firefox and Chrome, you're talking millions of options. The downside of that many options is that it can be hard to find what you're looking for if you don't know the name of the app. Enter Quixey , the all app search engine backed by Eric Schmidt's Innovations Endeavors.

Researchers at Cambridge University in Britain are working on a social media friend prediction system that creates more meaningful connections between people online. I guess we can't all be working on a cure for cancer and there's probably more fame and fortune in developing a new kind of social media network so. . . Their theory is that people often bond over a common love of the same location.

There's a saying that goes, "if Google can't find you, then your customers can't find you" and it's very true. Google finds your site through a process called indexing. The simplified version is this: Google sends smart cyber-spiders out to crawl all over the web and these spiders bring back news of all the new sites and site changes. Google updates its database to include all these news bits and voila, you're indexed. Now,

From devastating disasters to celebrity slips, a single mention on Twitter can turn into a trend in a matter of minutes. That's why the micro-blogging site has been credited as the source for major breaking news stories and hundreds of high-profile rumors . Like it or love it, Twitter is a force to be reckoned with, so how is Google going to provide real-time news without it? Last month,

For marketers, the news is too good to be true. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook is thinking about removing the filters on user news feeds. So, instead of Facebook deciding what information a user sees, the user will decide. How radical is that? This change would mean an open line of communication between a brand or business and every person who "liked" their page.

Measuring success is one of those social media marketing sticking points that still has most people baffled. Traditional online metrics such as measuring click-throughs doesn't really give you the full picture because a lot of social media campaigns are about awareness, not action. In other words, they function more like TV commercials than banner ads. This is why TV ratings leader Nielsen is working on bringing "Gross Ratings Points" to Facebook.

On July 24, Google+ had 25 million unique visitors making it the fastest growing website ever. As Reuters reports, they're pulling in an average of one million visitors a day with no end in sight. Facebook took three years to get to that point, but as Reuters also points out, MySpace took only two years to reach that number and look where they are now. Faster isn't always better.

They say that all publicity is good publicity so making friends with a journalist who covers your industry is worth the time and effort. )So says this journalist.( Where can you find such an individual? If you have a good social media presence, they'll find you. According to the 2011 Arketi Web Watch Survey, 64% of B2B journalists said they spent more than 20 hours a week online and 21% spent over 40.

Congratulations, you're pregnant! Step one: tell the father. Step two: update your Facebook profile. Come to think of it, for some people, it might just be the other way around. . . Facebook has added a new option to the family drop-down. It's called Expected: Child and that colon makes me wonder if they're planning on adding other options. Expected: Dog, Expected: Ex-Husband? On the surface, it's a charming addition.