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"This year, the Girl Scouts also has a program that encourages girls to collect donations for the "I Care" program, which sends Girl Scout Cookies to troops overseas. In the past, girls in Girl Scout troops have typically sold cookies and exchange currency face-to-face. Now, with the mainstream adoption of social media and technology, girls like 11-year-old Emma Vermaak have turned to social media and PayPal to help market and sell cookies, as well as collect these donations. When the Girl Scouts discovered Emma was using PayPal to collect donations for the "I Care" program, the organization initially tweeted her support for doing what "Girl Scouts is all about!" Shortly afterwards, Emma's mom, Kimberly Reynolds, was contacted by Emma's troop's leader, who was told Emma could only take cash. The Girl Scouts then tweeted at Emma the next day (while she was at school), clarifying that they didn't mean to cause confusion by supporting her efforts, explaining "But girls cannot transact the sale (take payment) online. That must happen in person to build oh-so-important people skills.""

To get its employees on board with social media, FedEx's team "realized we needed to go a lot deeper" than just one hourlong workshop. So team members ended up developing an online curriculum with 17 courses. In about 18 months, more than 500 employees had completed the coursework, Horne said. "This is probably one of the best investments we could have ever made," she said. To convince leaders that investments in social media platforms made sense, Horne said she and her IT partners discovered some of the "hidden dollars" that departments were spending to build their own, ad-hoc technology to connect and seek out experts.

The Baltimore City Fire Department plans to implement new social media guidelines after Chief James S. Clack said he found that firefighters and officers were "crossing the line" by posting inappropriate or sensitive information online. The social media website Twitter has become a forum for griping about City Hall policies in 140 characters or fewer - the maximum allowed in postings. The new policy comes after fire personnel have written a number of heated, politically charged barbs aimed at the department, Clack, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and the City Council over a recent budgetary decision to close three fire companies in the city

IBM has a vested interest in all organizations using digital technologies to "become social," but they are also an interesting case study in using these technologies (and practices) themselves. 

Gartner's predictions include a very interesting statement, that "by 2013, 15% of BI deployments will combine BI, collaboration and social software into decision-making environments." What this means is that social media is starting to be integrated tightly with hard-core business intelligence functions in support of decision making. 

"GIVEN the widespread adoption of smartphones, text messaging, video calling and social media, today's professionals mean it when they brag about staying connected to work 24/7." Too much connectivity can damage the quality of one's work, says Robert Sutton, author of "Good Boss, Bad Boss" and a professor at Stanford. Because of devices, he says, 'nobody seems to actually pay full attention; everybody is doing a worse job because they are doing more things." Mobile devices and social media, he says, "make us a little more oblivious, a little more incompetent." Just recall those pilots who overshot their destination two years ago because they were using computers, he adds.

Strapped for time and cash, small local businesses are increasingly turning to free and low-cost social media tools for their marketing efforts. Not surprisingly, the world's biggest social networking site tops of the list of preferred tools. Seventy percent of local businesses use Facebook for marketing, according to a new report from Merchant Circle, a network of U.S. local business owners. This represents a 20% increase over the previous year. The report notes that for the first time, Facebook is being used more than Google by local businesses for online marketing.

ChompOn has released some interesting findings (pdf) related to social media sharing and its value to e-commerce. Specifically, the firm sought out to answer the question: "What is the value of a social action in online commerce?"  What they came up with is that a Facebook Share was worth $14, a Facebook "like" was worth $8, a tweet was worth $5, and a Twitter follow was worth $2.

Mindtouch Executive Vice President of Sales Mark Fidelman, writing for Cloudave, identifies Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phillip W. Schiller as the top social Chief Marketing Officer of the Fortune 100.

It's easy for early adopters and social media enthusiasts to get caught up in the latest and greatest tool available but many companies are still seeking a basic foundation. According to Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, only 12 percent of companies surveyed felt their organizations were using social media effectively.

As social media manager for the University of Wisconsin-Madison (@UWMadison), I frequently try out new platforms to see if our students are using them and if they might become useful tools for my campus. For the past 18 months, I've channeled my inner mayor on Foursquare, a location-based social network.

Social media websites, such as Facebook and MySpace, may reveal information that could identify underage college students who may be at risk for problem drinking, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Social software helped TEVA Pharmaceuticals shrink its manufacturing cycle time by 40% between January and April -- when the company's Oracle ERP apps couldn't keep up with unpredictable market conditions.

But if they persist in lagging far behind the general population in social media participation and not delivering value to the shareholders that is there for the taking, they may not be CEOs for much longer.

Social business and enterprise usage: The lessons