Twitter drives traffic, sales: A case study
Sarah Milstein talks about how big and small companies alike are experimenting with Twitter and getting impressive results. “Back in December, Dell reported that offers from its Dell Outlet Twitter account had led to more than $1 million in revenue. A small percentage for a company that books $16B in revenue annually–but a nice number nonetheless, particularly in a dreary economy.”

Vint Cerf: Despite it’s age, the Internet is still filled with problems
ReadWriteWeb’s Lidija Davis interviews Internet godfather Vint Cerf. Up for discussion: cloud computing, IPTV, and more. “You build these clouds and they know about themselves and they know about their own resources, but they don’t know about any other cloud. So the question is: how do you say ’send this information to this cloud over here’ if there isn’t any way to call it.”

Social CRM: What’s working, what ain’t
In a TechNewsWorld article by Paul Korzeniowski, he talks about the difficulties companies encounter in utilizing social networks. “How beneficial are these moves? Unfortunately, at the moment, no one can say with certainty. Corporations have linked themselves to social networking sites, but in an ad hoc rather than a systematic manner. Social networking information is largely segregated from customer data stored in CRM systems. Consequently, more work is needed before it becomes clear what companies can and should do to take advantage of this new phenomenon.”

Survey of Insular Social Media Elite Says: Twitter is better than Facebook for Businesses
Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch touches on a study on what social media sites are worthy of subscription fees, according to the people who use them most. “But if you ask, which one would they recommend for businesses to pay for (if they had to), Twitter beats Facebook by more than two to one (39.6 percent vs. 15.3 percent). LinkedIn again comes in second. Why did Twitter come out on top? It is seen as an efficient way for companies to get their marketing messages out there.”

Why is change so hard for some people (especially older ones?)
Oliver Marks of Collaboration 2.0 ponders on behavior in relation to age, and shares a personal case study among his friends. “The fact is, even for those with generational change issues or a personality type that doesn’t take well to collaboration or openness, well organized hand holding sessions to introduce them to next generation collaboration technology with specific objectives demystifies and empowers them to participate.”

Kevin Mitnick Discusses Security for Digital Nomads
On Digital Nomads, Bruce Eric Anderson sits down with famous computer hacker Kevin Mitnick as they they about security for the mobile worker. “And while he can easily hack into a network, he tells me the preference for many hackers today is to use social engineering, essentially just calling someone and asking them to send you the information you’re looking for. Does it work, I asked him? His response, “99 percent of the time.” You can have the most robust security infrastructure but as he said in his talk, “There is no Windows update for stupidity.”

HOW TO: Make Firefox your productivity Machine
Elliot Kosmicki wrote a guest post on Mashable about little hacks that can make your favorite browser ten times more useful. “I know, there are too many programs to learn keyboard shortcuts for! I agree. But I’ll argue that if you’re going to learn shortcuts for just one thing – make it Firefox. If you’re mainly using web apps for mail, documents and the like – you’re spending most of your day staring at the curled orange fox anyway – you might as well get more done while you’re there.”

ReadWriteWeb France catches up with Matt Mullenweg
Rick Turoczy of ReadWriteWeb interviews the creator of WordPress who touches on open source, copyright, social media in politics, and various other topics. “As you know, social media is just tools, but it can increase transparency, on both sides. Now, that’s sort of the heart of democracy, right? When you have free access to information, equality in opportunity, where anyone can have their voice heard.”