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"Pathbreaking research by a group of scholars including Eric A. von Hippel, a professor of technological innovation at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management, suggests that the traditional division of labor between innovators and customers is breaking down. Financed by the British government, Mr. von Hippel and his colleagues last year completed the first representative large-scale survey of consumer innovation ever conducted. What the team discovered, described in a paper that is under review for publication, was that the amount of money individual consumers spent making and improving products was more than twice as large as the amount spent by all British firms combined on product research and development over a three-year period. "We've been missing the dark matter of innovation," Mr. von Hippel said from his office in Cambridge, Mass. "This is a new pattern for how innovations come about." "

von Hippel and Baldwin also produced a related, intriguing paper in 2009 that can be found here http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6325.html entitled "Modeling a Paradigm Shift: From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation." The conclusion of the paper reads: "We conclude by observing again that we belive we are in the midst of a major paradigm shift: technological trends are causing a change in the way innovation gets done in advanced market economies. As design and communication costs exogenously decline, single user and open collaborative innovation models will be viable for a steadily wider range of design. They will present an increasing challenge to the traditional paradigm of producer-based design - but, when open, they are good for social welfare and should be encouraged."

An anonymous user created a Twitter account, @superinjunction, with the apparent purpose of posting six tweets about the subjects of various injunctions; including actors, a soccer player and a chef. Now, according to Forbes, the Twitter scoop is "forcing British lawmakers to think about whether such a thing is still feasible in the age of social media, and if it is, how to enforce it."

Suspended British journalist who criticised NBC's Olympics coverage is restored to Twitter, but the backlash shows the social network's growing pains

Centuries before Twitter, Facebook and the enthusiasm for hyperlocal journalism, social media was enjoying popularity in a British colony across the Atlantic. And the bearers of this media revolution were, of course, newspapers. Tom Standage, digital editor of The Economist, points out in a Medium post that one of the United States' founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, played a part in social media's history.

One could feel a tiny bit bad for the person at Microsoft's British PR team who tweeted "Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking Back to Black over at Zune." He or she must be having a terrible day. On one hand, it may have seemed like a sensible marketing move: The person was probably correct in thinking that people might want to remember the singer, who was found dead in London on Saturday, by listening to her music. On the other hand, it reads as an insensitive way for Microsoft to cash in on the tragedy surrounding the 27-year-old performer.