Images via Mashable’s Evan Wexler

Social media is and always has been driven by technological innovation. And though every toy, gadget or device that hits the market might not be as important as, say, the printing press – these technologies are pushing the industry forward at a rapid clip, creating an environment where creativity and ingenuity flourish.

Here at 360i we’ve created our own testing ground of sorts – the 360i Emerging Media Lab – for exploring the most up-and-coming technologies. In addition to serving as home base for David Berkowitz, our Senior Director of Emerging Media & Innovation, this glorified workspace is a tech-head’s dream. That’s why Mashable featured the Lab today as part of its brand new Cubicle Spy series, which takes a look inside the neatest, quirkiest, and most gadget-laden offices of people who work in social media.

You can check out Mashable’s coverage to see their gallery of awesome 360-degree photos taken last week at the Lab (talk about cool tech). Beyond that, here’s a look at some of our favorite toys – and why we’re so crazy about them.

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We’re thrilled to announce today that Dentsu – one of the world’s most renowned advertising companies – has acquired 360i along with its sister companies,  SearchIgnite and Netmining.

Dentsu presented us with a wonderful opportunity to increase the value we provide to our clients by granting an increased global presence, enhanced technology investments and expanded, integrated capabilities. At the same time, Dentsu has partnered with us to maintain the management style, culture of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit that have defined our company to date. We will continue to run our agency in this way within the Dentsu family. You can read the official announcement here.

As we embark on this new and exciting chapter in our company’s just-over ten year history, we will continue to offer forward-thinking solutions to our clients and retain and recruit more great people for our growing team along the way. While we look forward to exploring each of the far-reaching benefits this new synergy has to offer, our chief objective and focus at 360i remains unchanged – to best serve our clients and to relentlessly pursue innovation and the emerging opportunities that will meet their business objectives. We are confident that this move makes us better equipped than ever to deliver on that promise.

As always, you can follow our journey and thoughts here on Digital Connections and of course on Twitter @360i.

Warm regards,
Bryan Wiener
CEO, 360i

This message from FollowFormation congratulates those who mass-follow “top people” in preferred categories — but should tools like this replace thoughtful strategy (and a little elbow grease)?

Remember the first time you signed up for Twitter, full of excitement and ready to tell the world what you were doing, only to see the very bare “0 following, 0 followers” count on your empty profile page?

Without question, the lack of an immediate audience is one of the reasons so many Twitter Tombstones (dead profiles) litter the site. Maybe it’s an ego thing, not starting out with any followers (isn’t Tom from MySpace available?), but it’s likely that new users don’t know where to look. After all, the best way to get followers is to be proactive and follow people first.

But how? One of the most daunting tasks for any new Twitter user (and there are a more and more of them every day) is finding the right feeds to follow. Twitter starts out by recommending some interesting people to follow. Yet few, if any, of these people actually interested me when I signed up. Twitter also helps new users find friends by letting them use their email lists to search Twitter, but there are still a lot of people out there who are reluctant to post an email password on a third-party site. Plus, and let’s be honest here, most of our friends are pretty boring.

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You can now download and own a Kindle or iPhone-friendly version of 360i’s Social Marketing Playbook (image via Flickr).

Last week, Amazon decided to cut the price of its popular e-book reader, the Kindle, by $60 (from $359 to $299). InformationWeek reports that the company is rather tight-lipped about specific sales figures, but claims the Kindle accounts for 35 percent of book sales for those editions in which Kindle versions are available. We recognize that a good number of our readers are not only social marketing enthusiasts – but gadget-lovers, too. For that reason, we’ve made the Social Marketing Playbook available for purchase on Amazon.com.

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O.A.R. used Twitter to engage fans by inviting them to submit lyrics to @ofarevolution (image by Neek11 via Flickr).

Contests and giveaways are becoming a popular way for many marketers to help create buzz for their presence on Twitter. Depending on your company’s goals, these promotions can be extremely effective ways to add followers or encourage deeper engagement. While there have been quite a few Twitter contests that have received attention lately, there have been two in particular that captured my interest: Orbitz’s free ticket giveaway and O.A.R.’s songwriting contest.

If you viewed the Orbitz Twitter page on June 24, you would have been come across the following tweet: “We’re giving away a free airline ticket today! FOLLOW @Orbitz & RT this msg to be eligible to win.” By encouraging people to retweet the message and offering a significant prize, the travel Web site created quite a bit of viral spread for the one day promotion. The promotion spiked the number of Orbitz followers by over 10,000 in a single day (according to Twitter Counter).

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We published the Social Marketing Playbook with the hope that it would be widely read and shared among people with a genuine interest in and passion for social marketing.

To date, nearly 15,000 50,000 of you have downloaded the Playbook! Whether you came across the Playbook from our blog, from Twitter — or perhaps in an email from a friend or colleague, we’re grateful for the broad readership and positive feedback we’ve received thus far.

That said, the Playbook was not intended to be a one-and-done document (why not continue with the sports metaphor). Instead, we hope you will download a copy of the Playbook and revisit it as needed. It’s yours to keep, and we invite you to treat it as such. If you have not downloaded the Playbook already, you can do so here: http://360i.com/playbook.

The brief quiz below will test your knowledge of some of the key points outlined in the Social Marketing Playbook. You can also download a PDF version of the quiz — complete with answers — here. At the end of both versions of the quiz you can review the correct answers and explanations.

CONTEST: 360i is giving away 10 hard-bound copies of the Social Marketing Playbook during the month of July. To enter the drawing, take the quiz below and enter your email into the “Your Name” field at the beginning of the quiz (your email will only be used to contact you if you win). Good luck!

The contest is now closed. But you can still test your social marketing prowess below:

Having a social media blueprint can help mitigate a crisis should one arise — and ensure you make the most of future opportunities (Image via Flickr).

One of the best lessons you can learn while engaging with social media is that you can never plan too early, as it’s hard to tell when you’ll really reap the fruits of your labor. If you’re actively building a brand through social media and you’re doing it right, you will be incredibly grateful down the road.

I’ll share an example of this from a company I rarely talk about here directly – my agency, 360i. It’s where I’ve worked as Director of Emerging Media (or related roles) for over three years, so I’ve been able to witness the agency’s evolution firsthand. Earlier this month we released our first Social Marketing Playbook, a freely available 56-page guide for marketers on developing and executing social marketing programs.

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