Mining Data to Remove the Suck from Social Marketing

I read a great article recently at Wired.com discussing the challenges of marketing in social media.  It was a follow up to one they published the previous month bemoaning “the way some marketers offer cash or other rewards in return for lying to one’s friends, while other dodgy companies sell bundles of 10,000 Twitter followers to help a particular brand look well loved, among other funny business.”

Wired’s follow up takes a different slant.  Instead of focusing on the lies and deception some brands use to build a social media presence, this latest piece looks at how companies are mining data to generate real social media buzz.