While GM may be disappointed with Facebook, plenty of other advertisers are still interested in social media, judging by the latest forecast from BIA/Kelsey, which predicts total social media advertising revenues will more than double over the next four years, jumping from $4.8 billion in 2012 to $9.8 billion this year. This includes both display advertising, which is predicted to grow from $4.6 billion to $9.2 billion, and non-display, on track to increase from $230 million to $630 million over the same period.

With timing that can only be described as "bad" for Facebook, General Motors has decided to pull its paid advertising from the social network, according to the Wall Street Journal. The move comes just a couple days before Facebook's initial public offering, scheduled for Friday, May 18. The question now is, how will Facebook respond? And will other advertisers follow GM out the door?

Sometimes you read a piece of news that just deflates your ego for the rest of the day. Today Mark Zuckerberg, whom you may recall founded a popular social network known as the Facebook, is turning 28 years old. This comes just a couple weeks after my own birthday, when I turned a somewhat larger number. Mark Zuckerberg is about to lead his company into an IPO valuing it at $100 billion; I received an ice cream maker which I am very pleased with. But I don't want Mark to get the idea that his age and accomplishments make him …

While advertisers look to social media to spread positive word-of-mouth about their brands and products, it's no secret that social media is also a veritable cauldron of consumer complaint -- a forum for jilted customers to voice dissatisfaction with crappy products, bad service, or just general dislike of a company. And the consequences for brands are real and serious, according to a new survey published by American Express. The survey was conducted by Echo Research in U.S., Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, the U.K., the Netherlands, Australia, Japan and India, from February 22-29; 1,000 adults ages 18+ were polled in …

Location-based social networks are an acquired taste, since not everyone necessarily feels like sharing their whereabouts with friends. But the location-based model just got a bit tastier with the advent of Slingr, a mobile app that lets friends buy each other food and drinks in distant locales.

The reason social media is so compelling probably goes back to a simple, eternal truth: human beings like to think and talk about themselves. That judgment is based on new research conducted by psychologists at Harvard, which suggests that disclosing information about oneself activates the same neural rewards center associated with other basic desires like food and sex.

KitKat's advertising message has always centered around the idea of giving the hapless, stressed-out worker a "break" in the form of delicious, chocolate-covered wafers. Now KitKat maker Nestle is extending the concept to providing social network users with a "social" break, wherein KitKat shoulders the burden of staying constantly connected with everyone in your social network by posting random, spurious updates to social networks at random.

By this point pretty much every big brand marketing organization has a presence on social media, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily "doing" social media right. In that vein, a new survey of consumer attitudes and marketer practices conducted by Lithium Technologies in April reveals that big brands are often falling short of consumer expectations when it comes to social media engagement.

Facebook has revealed the target price per share for its initial public offering, in the range of $28-$35 per share, which would give the company a value of $96 billion. The lead underwriters are Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs, with additional participants including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Allen & Co., Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group AG and Deutsche Bank. While only a relatively small portion of shares are actually going up for sale -- totaling perhaps $13.6 billion -- the IPO will gauge whether the market agrees with the overall valuation.

While it might sound like a Maoist reeducation camp, the "Social Victory Center" app on Facebook is actually a force for conservatism, or at least, the Republican Party as it is now constituted. According to the Los Angeles Times, the SVC is a "first-of-its-kind" social hub for political activism online, created by the Republican National Committee in the hopes of unseating Barack Obama and helping local and state GOP candidates fight the good fight in any number of lesser electoral contests.