"An Early Look at Super Bowl XLVIII's First Confirmed Buyers"

"What do you think were the biggest stories of the year? Were you horrified by the carnage in Syria but fascinated by its global implications? Shaking your head over a former Disney star's over-the-top performance at an awards show? Select up to 10 of your top stories of the year by clicking on the choices below. The final results will be revealed later this month on CNN.com and CNN TV. Voting closes on December 27."

"We saw, once again, how quickly Twitter can spread news, both accurate and damaging. We saw the power a tweet can exert when a brand uses it right (Oreo's "Dunk in the Dark" during the Super Bowl), and the anguish it can cause when a brand uses it wrong (we're looking at you, Epicurious). From the laudable to the laughable, here's a look at the tweets, story lines, and business decisions that made 2013 Twitter's biggest year yet."

"Initially there were only a few viral hoaxes. Now, with the immense popularity of social media, they are happening almost daily."

"With 20 years' experience as an investigative reporter, Brian Ross of ABC News knows a good story when he hears one. He is also not stupid. He knew the story he heard last spring might raise difficulties because it involved ABC's parent, the Walt Disney Company, but he thought he had enough solid information to pursue it. The story involved accounts of pedophilia and lax security at theme-park resorts, including Walt Disney World, and once Mr. Ross and his longtime producer-partner, Rhonda Schwartz, had finished their reporting, they thought they had a solid investigative piece for ''20/20,'' ABC's news magazine program. But the report was killed last week, or at least shelved. ABC News executives refuse to discuss the reasons in detail and have urged those involved not to discuss the matter publicly. Disney issued a statement saying that its executives had nothing to do with the decision. The saga of the Ross-Schwartz report -- and how ABC dealt with it -- illustrate the thorny problems reporters have in examining their own companies, especially in this age of conglomerates, when many parent companies of media outlets are also involved in many other businesses. Can reporters investigate them the way they would any other subject? If not, where must a line be drawn?"

"It happened last year for the first time: bot traffic eclipsed human traffic, according to the bot-trackers at Incapsula. This year, Incapsula says 61.5 percent of traffic on the web is non-human.  Now, you might think this portends the arrival of "The Internet of Things"-that ever-promised network that will connect your fridge and car to your smartphone. But it does not. This non-human traffic is search bots, scrapers, hacking tools, and other human impersonators, little pieces of code skittering across the web. You might describe this phenomenon as The Internet of Thingies. "

"How much of our local news is propaganda? Stations are slipping sponsored "video news releases" - promotional segments designed to look like objective news reports - into their regular programming. And increasingly they're using these VNRs without identifying them as such. This deception is illegal under federal law and Federal Communications Commission rules. Presenting VNRs as actual news breaches the trust between local stations and their communities. By disguising advertisements as news, stations violate both the spirit and the letter of their broadcast licenses, which obligate them to use the airwaves to serve the public."

"n Thursday, Twitter released a look back at 2013 and the news that hashtagged its way around the world. Gabriel Stricker, Twitter's vice president of marketing and communications, writes that this year, people used Twitter "to add an extra and distinctive element to global news stories." Here's a quick look at several moments from the last year."

"Ladies, Special K wants you to stop with the fat talk. According to the cereal company's new 2-minute spot, 93% of women engage in some form of social media self-shaming. To help put an end to the negativity, online and in real life, Special K created a nondescript clothing store and posted real, fat-talking tweets around the store and on price tags."

"Facebook proper is trying to make itself the home of the real-time Internet, seizing that mantle (implicitly) from Twitter. It's doing this partly by adjusting the algorithm which controls what content makes it to users's News Feeds, serving more "high-quality" news articles than it has in a long time. And news publishers, in turn, have seen a surge of traffic from Facebook. But can such a strategy work? I think it might. These two graphs helped me understand why. Both come from a report from the Pew Research Journalism Project on social networks and news."

"True fact: Almost 100% of the images you see of models and celebrities are altered."

"Instagram has announced a new private messaging feature called Instagram Direct, which will allow users to send a photo or video privately to up to fifteen followers."

"For some 150 million users around the world, Instagram is an indispensable tool for broadcasting the tiny slices of life you deem most sharable, whether it's your cat curling into a fluffball or a pretty plate of Eggs Benedict. A new study, however, claims that signal comes at a price. Researcher Linda Henkel at Fairfield University found that Instagram and similar photo applications may be making it harder for us to, well, remember stuff."

"n a widely-read study, business school students were given a case assignment on Heidi, a real-life successful entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. But there was a catch. Half of the class randomly received their case with one teensy tiny change made: The name "Heidi" was changed to "Howard." Afterward, the students were surveyed, and though Heidi and Howard were found equally competent (as they should have been because they are the same person), the students found Howard much more likeable. The following ad pretty much sums up why."

"Truth has never been an essential ingredient of viral content on the Internet. But in the stepped-up competition for readers, digital news sites are increasingly blurring the line between fact and fiction, and saying that it is all part of doing business in the rough-and-tumble world of online journalism."

"You just can't not click ... right? And millions of other people are clicking, too, making Upworthy one of the most popular sites of 2013 - and allowing its newer imitators to get really popular really fast."

"To celebrate 2013, we invited some YouTubers to star in a mashup of popular moments this year. Can you spot all the references? WATCH THE TOP VIDEOS OF 2013:"

"Have you got the cojones to sing carols in front of tens of thousands? Heineken challenged people to find out, with "Carol Karaoke," a campaign that invited karaoke crooners to a private event, then pulled the rug out from under them by challenging them to continue singing in front of thousands of people. Developed by Wieden & Kennedy New York, Carol Karaoke is a continuation of Heineken's "Open Your World" brand positioning, which the agency has tried to bring to the real world by showing people that life can be more fun when you take the unexpected route. Colin Westcott-Pitt, VP-marketing for Heineken, said that the concept is a "good fit" with the brand, which began as a "small beer brewed in Amsterdam that wanted to open our world.""

" You've seen our picks for the 10 Best Ads of 2013, but can you name all the ads that made it to our shortlist of 48 spots? Check out the compilation here, and see how many you recognize. "

"They make an emotional promise. They usually have two phrases. They paint their political proposition as obvious, as beyond debate. They're headlines in the Upworthy style, and they seem to have colonized every news source. Upworthy the company has done well by them, too: On Thursday, it announced it had 87 million unique visitors in November. (For context: That's more than the New York Times. A lot more.)"