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As part of the ongoing Mashable Awards, we’re taking a closer look at each of the nomination categories. This is “Must-Follow Personality.” Be sure to nominate your favorites and join us for the Gala in Las Vegas! Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.

In a world where social media and pop culture collide, 2009 might’ve been most remembered for a certain race to 1 million followers. While 2010 has had its share of popularity contests too, we’ve also seen a myriad of innovative uses of digital media that have both catapulted some previously unknowns to “must follow” status and re-invented the careers of others.

Whether it was playing a key role in shaping the news, creating online personas that went viral and became much more, or using the class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet to connect with fans in new ways, several personalities stood out in terms of leveraging social media in irresistibly catchy ways.

Below, we take a look at some of those people who have made a major splash in the online world in the past year.

1. Ben Folds

While it looks like Chatroulette’s 15 minutes of fame might be up, no one was a bigger part of that 15 minutes than musician Ben Folds.

Inspired by chatroulette improv piano guy “Merton,” the singer-songwriter began broadcasting improv piano tunes from his concerts onto the random video chat site, and quickly saw himself become a big part of one of the year’s top memes.

Because Merton rather closely resembled Folds, speculation ran rampant that the two were actually the same guy. Numerous YouTube videos — some of them originating here on Mashable — added fuel to the fire, though the fable was ultimately disproved once and for all (we think) in a video that the two created together last month.

What started as a clever play on a pop culture phenomenon ultimately became a blueprint for sustaining social media buzz.

2. Conan O’Brien

When Conan O’Brien took over as host of The Tonight Show in mid-2009, one of his first sketches poked fun at Twitter for its banality. Little did he know at the time that mere months later, he’d become the center of a massive user-created digital movement (“Team Coco”) as NBC pivoted to shift Tonight Show hosting responsibilities back to Jay Leno.

Following his ouster, Conan quickly moved to capitalize on his Internet momentum, establishing a Twitter account that would serve as his comedic outlet while he sorted out his next career move, which he ultimately decided would be a new show on TBS.

Whereas Conan’s Tonight Show played the traditional willfully ignorant-of-technology card, Conan’s new show has made social media the centerpiece of a campaign to try and get the masses to shift their late night viewing habits to cable. As a result, we’ll soon find out if digital loyalty translates to television ratings.

3. BPGlobalPR

This year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in recent times, and the company’s much-maligned handling of it had some speculating that bankruptcy might be imminent for the petroleum giant.

Providing comic relief through the whole ordeal, however, was @BPGlobalPR, a satirical Twitter account pretending to be BP’s public relations department. With updates like “Sadly we can no longer certify our oil as Dolphin Safe,” the account quickly amassed tens of thousands of followers.

As for his inspiration, the man behind the account, “Terry,” told Mashable in an interview that “They pay people like me a TON of money to make it look like they’re doing stuff, but really we don’t have to do much except talk. Our talking buys them time to figure out how they are going to sweep it all under the rug and go back to making lots of money.”

While BP eventually closed the oil leak and activity on the @BPGlobalPR account has slowed, the feed served the dual role of both entertaining and reminding the world that BP was not doing a very good job at either closing the leak or communicating effectively with the public.

4. Dan Savage

In recent months, one of the most prominent social issues in America has been the bullying of gay teenagers. In response, sex advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage launched the “Its Get Better” YouTube channel, where everyday people have uploaded hundreds of videos providing encouragement and inspiration to gay teens, telling them they have much to look forward to.

It didn’t take long for the channel to go viral with openly gay celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen DeGeneres contributing video messages. Within about a month of launching, the channel attracted a video from President Obama broadcasting the “It Gets Better” message.

The campaign has been nothing short of inspiring, and we will be following Savage to see how he uses his various social media channels –- which also include a popular blog, Twitter feed, and podcast –- to raise awareness for important LGBT issues going forward.

5. Darren Rovell

It’s been a spectacular year for stories about the business of sports, and sitting at the center of it has been CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell.

There was simply no better feed to follow on Twitter than Rovell’s as the world of Tiger Woods came crashing down following a car-accident-turned-sex-scandal turned tens of millions of dollars in lost endorsement deals.

Then, when LeBron James made the universally mocked decision of broadcasting “The Decision” on ESPN, Rovell again was the point man for assessing brand and consumer response as one of the world’s most highly paid and previously admired athletes suddenly became one of the sporting world’s biggest villains.

In between, Rovell’s Twitter feed and blog has broken news on everything from TV ratings to jersey sales to free agency moves. To an extent, he’s also made the business of reporting on sports sexy, as evidenced by some of the competitors he’s now attracting.

What’s Your Take?

Which personalities do you follow via social media? Let us know in the comments or nominate them for the Mashable Awards.

The Mashable Awards Gala at Cirque du Soleil Zumanity (Vegas)/>

In partnership with Cirque du Soleil, The Mashable Awards Gala event will bring together the winners and nominees, the class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable community, partners, media, the marketing community, consumer electronics and technology brands and attendees from the 2011 International CES Convention to Las Vegas on Thursday, January 6, 2011. Together, we will celebrate the winners and the community of the Mashable Awards at the Cirque du Soleil Zumanity stage in the beautiful New York New York Hotel. The event will include acts and performances from our partner Cirque du Soleil Zumanity. In addition, there will be special guest presenters and appearances.

Date: Thursday, January 6th, 2011 (during International CES Convention week)/> Time: 7:00 – 10:00 pm PT/> Location: Cirque du Soleil Zumanity, New York New York Hotel, Las Vegas/> Agenda: Networking, Open Bars, Acts, Surprises and the Mashable Awards Gala presentations/> Socialize: Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook, Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">Foursquare, Meetup, Plancast, Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter (Hashtag: #MashableAwards)

Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.

Thanks to our sponsors:

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From a group of 20 street performers at its beginnings in 1984, Cirque du Soleil is now a global entertainment organization providing high-quality artistic entertainment. The company has over 5,000 employees, including more than 1,200 artists from close to 50 different countries.

Cirque du Soleil has brought wonder and delight to nearly 100 million spectators in 300 cities on five continents. In 2010 Cirque du Soleil, will present 21 shows simultaneously throughout the world, including seven in Las Vegas.

For more information about Cirque du Soleil, visit www.cirquedusoleil.com

Mashable Awards Online Partner:

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About Research In Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, jgroup

For more Social Media coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Though social media has proved itself an effective tool in helping journalists gather news and connect with their communities, a pervading question among the skeptics still remains: Where’s the money?

As social sites like Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter and Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook build their empires and seek to remedy their own financial instability in the hope of turning profits, news organizations are experimenting with ways to monetize their social media presence and leverage the social web to complete an online revenue puzzle.

The revenue is there, but the social web won’t necessarily solve that puzzle. “There’s no silver bullet,” Jim Brady, the general manager at TBD.com, said at the Online News Association Conference last week. “There’s just shrapnel, pieces of revenue.” Brady, who launched TBD.com this summer, said display ads are certainly not the future in revenue for news and that it will come from multiple revenue streams. class='blippr-nobr'>Newsclass="blippr-nobr">news organizations have certainly been experimenting where they can to get revenue in pieces, from mobile applications to launching group buying sites. Here’s a closer look at some of these efforts.

Self-Serve “Real Time Ads”

Much of online advertising consists of static display ads that are sold based on a CPM ad model, a varying price per 1,000 impressions. An advertiser delivers an ad design that then rotates with others on the site. What if small business advertisers could change the message of that ad in real time?

That’s the idea of Minnpost.com’s Real Time Ads, which essentially use customized widgets that pull in messages from an advertiser’s Twitter, Facebook or YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube accounts. Local businesses can buy the widget space for a specified amount of time, instead of a CPM model, and are able to update the content whenever they’d like, making each message timely and perfect for a daily deal or promotion.

It is especially useful for local business. Even if they don’t have a social profile or an RSS feed to attach to the ad, they can update their ad by e-mailing a new message to their account, said Karl Pearson-Cater, director of operations at Minnpost.com — a non-profit news organization that relies largely on donations.

“Advertisers love real-time ads. The biggest benefit is how easy it is to get set up and how easy it is to maintain,” Pearson-Cater said.

If real-time ads work for Minnpost.com, Pearson-Cater said they can help adapt the platform for other publishers as well. In the past few months, he said they’ve begun to see a significant revenue stream. They now have approximately $15,000 in annual contracts using real-time ads.

At Yahoo! News, Anna Robertson, director of social media and original video, said they’re considering sponsorships around social widgets on pages as well, or another form of sponsored modules. It’s likely that this form of advertising will become more prevalent across news sites.

Revenue Share

At TBD.com, Brady and his team are leveraging a network of blogs to sell distributed ads. When they come to advertisers, they’re able to sell ads across a network of 196 blogs, which they share 35% of the revenue with. It’s a win-win for TBD and its partners that get revenue they may not have gotten otherwise.

Another approach, of course, is being on the receiving end of social partnerships or revenue sharing. YouTube, for example, shares revenue made through AdSense and publishers can have Promoted Videos run on their page. And as of late, YouTube has become even more sophisticated in making money off of copyright infringers, sharing revenue with the original publishers.

In-stream Advertising

On websites, display ads coexist beside content on a page. But more and more content is becoming part of the social news stream. Users are becoming more accustomed to receiving and digesting information in a stream format on Facebook, Twitter and other sites that display updates in real time. Because people often engage the content in the social space and may not even come directly to the site, monetizing social media off-site is just as important, said Mike Orren, president and founder of Pegasus News in Texas.

“The thing that hasn’t been figured out is how to do so without alienating the social media audience that seems generally trained to disdain ’sponsored’ postings,” Orren said. But of course, that could change.

It’s also important to set clear user expectations of what’s what. Robertson from Yahoo! News said if done effectively, while protecting “church and state,” it can be a good option. She said it’s up to the news organizations to be transparent about what is an ad and what’s content in order to protect journalistic integrity.

Twitter has begun releasing several products to monetize its service, including Promoted Tweets, which are sponsored messages that are featured within a user’s stream. However, news companies have experimented with selling in-stream messages to advertisers and sponsors. The Austin-American Statesman experimented with selling sponsored tweets for $300 per day for two tweets. And according to the paper’s social media editor Robert Quigley, who had to approve the tweets before they went out, followers found them non-intrusive.

In fact, sites like Ad.ly work with advertisers who buy sponsored messages that appear on their participating partners’ Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and mobile and site widgets. Its partners include a slew of celebrities like Kim Kardashian and publications like TIME.com.

Laura Heck, director of business development at TIME.com, said more publishers are starting to experiment with this format. At TIME.com, Heck said they’ve recently begun to offer advertisers access to its 2.2 million Twitter followers and 165,000+ Facebook fans for sponsored messages. Heck said they’ve put strict rules in place for the type of messages they will feature, frequency, etc., to make sure it doesn’t hinder the user experience.

Selling Traffic and Amplification

The ROI for news companies putting resources to build their social presence has often been a more “engaged” community of readers, a notion that is too often measured by a sheer increase in traffic referrals from social sites or more time spent on site. Many defend social investment by showcasing an increase in traffic, traffic that can then, hypothetically, sell more ads.

Ken Doctor, author of Newsonomics and news industry analyst at Outsell, said social networks have become the fastest growing source of traffic referrals for many news sites. For many, social sites like Facebook and Twitter account for 10% to 15% of their overall referrals, but are number one in growth. The results are even more heavy on social for news startups like CapitalNY, Doctor said, who get 40% or more of their traffic from social. And of course, the quality of these referrals is often better than those readers who come from search. They yield better conversation and are more likely to become regular users of the site, he said.

Though many news organizations have driven traffic organically, The Washington Post recently bought #Election as a “Promoted Trend” on Twitter, which then highlighted its tweet above others using the hashtag in Twitter conversation, likely resulting in a big increase in referrals from visitors who came across the Promoted Trend above all others in the Trends sidebar.

“When we talked with Twitter about the idea, we thought it was a great opportunity to be innovative, go to readers and highlight our content front and center with Twitter’s vast and engaged audience,” said Katharine Zaleski, executive producer and head of digital news products. “The idea wasn’t just to sponsor The Post, but rather, we chose a broad hashtag, probably the broadest for elections, to be able to aggregate the best election tweets from multiple sources and not just us.”

But perhaps more importantly, social amplification has become part of the sell. On top of the site metrics and reach, advertisers want to now know how the content will be amplified off the site with social media. Such is the case with content sponsorships. If an advertiser has its name on a piece of content that they sponsored, they also want to know how many times it was retweeted, shared on Facebook, dugg on class='blippr-nobr'>Diggclass="blippr-nobr">Digg, etc. For example, TIME worked with an advertiser on a “Stay class='blippr-nobr'>Connectedclass="blippr-nobr">Connected” package, which included leveraging social features on TIME.com and its social networks.

Making Ads More Social

Advertisers have begun trying to make ads more social by adding a Facebook “Like” button within the frame or a stream of tweets that make the ad something that readers can interact with. It’s a light-weight way to get users to engage with and even sometimes share advertisements with their social networks while helping advertisers increase their one-to-one relationship with readers by growing their own social following, said Heck from TIME.com.

“Ads are increasingly becoming more social as we’re giving users the ability to engage with and share the ad content,” Heck said.

The idea of course is that users are far more responsive to content recommended by their friends or personal connections rather than content from a branded account or page. At TIME.com, Heck said they’re working on identifying ways to include advertiser branding within shared content. But the details of that formula have yet to be worked out.

Sponsored Contests and Social Campaigns

On-site social media contests can often satisfy an advertiser’s need for amplification and offer a way to engage readers and users with their product in a unique way. There are several routes. Contests can be sold as a package –- on their own or as an up-sell to a sponsorship or ad on the site. Orren from Pegasus News said his organization will only run contests for paying advertisers.

“Part of the promise there is a push through all of our relevant social media,” Orren said. “This is still an added value, but increasingly, advertisers want to know about the reach and engagement of our social nets in making their buying decisions.”

Depending on the product readers are competing for, it may have enough value for the news site to simply use it as a tool to drive traffic and engagement among its audience. In such a case, the advertiser gets exposure to its product or company, while the news site has a community that perhaps feels more appreciated. Contests, however, take time and effort by the staff conducting them and the ROI should be strongly considered. It’s not just a display ad, but results in essentially being a campaign for the product. If a contest wasn’t sold, the amount of time and investment should be considered appropriately.

Leveraging Social Site Real Estate

Though display ads may not be the future, they can be simple to integrate on social sites. News organizations like TIME and more recently the Silicon Alley Insider have sold their Twitter backgrounds as a social display ad.

Similar to readers landing on TIME.com and being exposed to display ads on the site, Twitter users landing on @TIME on Twitter were also exposed to a display ad in the background. Thinking creatively and putting effort to sell those spaces can make them more valuable by adding another spot for display inventory.

What’s Next? Personalized Social Ads

The start and glimmer of what’s possible with personalized and more socially targeted ads has been the result of news organizations like The New York Times and others selling advertising that specifically targets readers who came to the site through Facebook or Twitter. Twitter itself has targeted its Promoted Tweets in the stream based on relevancy, though it is sometimes tied to a Promoted Trend.

News organizations could take advantage of building structured data to better target their advertisements to readers, and perhaps even making advertisements more useful. Of course, this already takes place at a lot of organizations. At Pegasus News, Orren said its entire business model centers on using structured data to customize display ads with all of its content being tagged using a hierarchical taxonomy of more than 3,000 local topics and geography. But, he said, the company hasn’t yet figured out how to take that offsite or to open the flow of data between its sites and the social web, while at the same time respecting privacy.

Doctor said he sees social media optimization as a driver of audience and engagement, and that engagement getting monetized through targeting, rather than blasting social marketing pushes. Being able to get more sophisticated in targeting individuals and specific communities will make monetization efforts easier.

Social media, which effectively has infiltrated all corners of the web, has great potential in not only bringing in revenue but also making ads more useful to readers while also satisfying the needs of advertisers aiming to effectively reach the public. The social web can change the way we think about ads, by making them social and personalized to create utility for the user.

Robertson, from Yahoo! News, said we’re just at the beginning of this space. Yahoo acquired Citizen Sports close to a year ago and it’s done a good job of bringing in revenue attached to social media streams. Yahoo is working to scale some of the concepts to news, Robertson said.

“This is still a fairly new space with a lot of opportunity for news organizations and brands to experiment and innovate,” she said.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Most Engaged Brands in Social Media/> - 5 Winning Social Media Campaigns to Learn From/> - HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Your Business Facebook Page/> - 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now/> - A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places

For more Social Media coverage:

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eric seiger

Denver Broncos <b>News</b>: Horse Tracks - 11/13/10 - Mile High Report

Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .. Horse Tracks!

Peggle bounces onto PSP next week PSP <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PSP news of Peggle bounces onto PSP next week.

Forget AOL-Yahoo...It&#39;s <b>News</b> Corp-Yahoo That The Insiders Are <b>...</b>

One source close to News Corp says the company is monitoring the situation, and notes that Jon Miller and "Chief Yahoo" Jerry Yang have a good working relationship. Merger talk, says this source, is pre-mature. ...

eric seiger

As part of the ongoing Mashable Awards, we’re taking a closer look at each of the nomination categories. This is “Must-Follow Personality.” Be sure to nominate your favorites and join us for the Gala in Las Vegas! Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.

In a world where social media and pop culture collide, 2009 might’ve been most remembered for a certain race to 1 million followers. While 2010 has had its share of popularity contests too, we’ve also seen a myriad of innovative uses of digital media that have both catapulted some previously unknowns to “must follow” status and re-invented the careers of others.

Whether it was playing a key role in shaping the news, creating online personas that went viral and became much more, or using the class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet to connect with fans in new ways, several personalities stood out in terms of leveraging social media in irresistibly catchy ways.

Below, we take a look at some of those people who have made a major splash in the online world in the past year.

1. Ben Folds

While it looks like Chatroulette’s 15 minutes of fame might be up, no one was a bigger part of that 15 minutes than musician Ben Folds.

Inspired by chatroulette improv piano guy “Merton,” the singer-songwriter began broadcasting improv piano tunes from his concerts onto the random video chat site, and quickly saw himself become a big part of one of the year’s top memes.

Because Merton rather closely resembled Folds, speculation ran rampant that the two were actually the same guy. Numerous YouTube videos — some of them originating here on Mashable — added fuel to the fire, though the fable was ultimately disproved once and for all (we think) in a video that the two created together last month.

What started as a clever play on a pop culture phenomenon ultimately became a blueprint for sustaining social media buzz.

2. Conan O’Brien

When Conan O’Brien took over as host of The Tonight Show in mid-2009, one of his first sketches poked fun at Twitter for its banality. Little did he know at the time that mere months later, he’d become the center of a massive user-created digital movement (“Team Coco”) as NBC pivoted to shift Tonight Show hosting responsibilities back to Jay Leno.

Following his ouster, Conan quickly moved to capitalize on his Internet momentum, establishing a Twitter account that would serve as his comedic outlet while he sorted out his next career move, which he ultimately decided would be a new show on TBS.

Whereas Conan’s Tonight Show played the traditional willfully ignorant-of-technology card, Conan’s new show has made social media the centerpiece of a campaign to try and get the masses to shift their late night viewing habits to cable. As a result, we’ll soon find out if digital loyalty translates to television ratings.

3. BPGlobalPR

This year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in recent times, and the company’s much-maligned handling of it had some speculating that bankruptcy might be imminent for the petroleum giant.

Providing comic relief through the whole ordeal, however, was @BPGlobalPR, a satirical Twitter account pretending to be BP’s public relations department. With updates like “Sadly we can no longer certify our oil as Dolphin Safe,” the account quickly amassed tens of thousands of followers.

As for his inspiration, the man behind the account, “Terry,” told Mashable in an interview that “They pay people like me a TON of money to make it look like they’re doing stuff, but really we don’t have to do much except talk. Our talking buys them time to figure out how they are going to sweep it all under the rug and go back to making lots of money.”

While BP eventually closed the oil leak and activity on the @BPGlobalPR account has slowed, the feed served the dual role of both entertaining and reminding the world that BP was not doing a very good job at either closing the leak or communicating effectively with the public.

4. Dan Savage

In recent months, one of the most prominent social issues in America has been the bullying of gay teenagers. In response, sex advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage launched the “Its Get Better” YouTube channel, where everyday people have uploaded hundreds of videos providing encouragement and inspiration to gay teens, telling them they have much to look forward to.

It didn’t take long for the channel to go viral with openly gay celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen DeGeneres contributing video messages. Within about a month of launching, the channel attracted a video from President Obama broadcasting the “It Gets Better” message.

The campaign has been nothing short of inspiring, and we will be following Savage to see how he uses his various social media channels –- which also include a popular blog, Twitter feed, and podcast –- to raise awareness for important LGBT issues going forward.

5. Darren Rovell

It’s been a spectacular year for stories about the business of sports, and sitting at the center of it has been CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell.

There was simply no better feed to follow on Twitter than Rovell’s as the world of Tiger Woods came crashing down following a car-accident-turned-sex-scandal turned tens of millions of dollars in lost endorsement deals.

Then, when LeBron James made the universally mocked decision of broadcasting “The Decision” on ESPN, Rovell again was the point man for assessing brand and consumer response as one of the world’s most highly paid and previously admired athletes suddenly became one of the sporting world’s biggest villains.

In between, Rovell’s Twitter feed and blog has broken news on everything from TV ratings to jersey sales to free agency moves. To an extent, he’s also made the business of reporting on sports sexy, as evidenced by some of the competitors he’s now attracting.

What’s Your Take?

Which personalities do you follow via social media? Let us know in the comments or nominate them for the Mashable Awards.

The Mashable Awards Gala at Cirque du Soleil Zumanity (Vegas)/>

In partnership with Cirque du Soleil, The Mashable Awards Gala event will bring together the winners and nominees, the class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable community, partners, media, the marketing community, consumer electronics and technology brands and attendees from the 2011 International CES Convention to Las Vegas on Thursday, January 6, 2011. Together, we will celebrate the winners and the community of the Mashable Awards at the Cirque du Soleil Zumanity stage in the beautiful New York New York Hotel. The event will include acts and performances from our partner Cirque du Soleil Zumanity. In addition, there will be special guest presenters and appearances.

Date: Thursday, January 6th, 2011 (during International CES Convention week)/> Time: 7:00 – 10:00 pm PT/> Location: Cirque du Soleil Zumanity, New York New York Hotel, Las Vegas/> Agenda: Networking, Open Bars, Acts, Surprises and the Mashable Awards Gala presentations/> Socialize: Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook, Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">Foursquare, Meetup, Plancast, Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter (Hashtag: #MashableAwards)

Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.

Thanks to our sponsors:

Mashable Awards Gala Partner:

From a group of 20 street performers at its beginnings in 1984, Cirque du Soleil is now a global entertainment organization providing high-quality artistic entertainment. The company has over 5,000 employees, including more than 1,200 artists from close to 50 different countries.

Cirque du Soleil has brought wonder and delight to nearly 100 million spectators in 300 cities on five continents. In 2010 Cirque du Soleil, will present 21 shows simultaneously throughout the world, including seven in Las Vegas.

For more information about Cirque du Soleil, visit www.cirquedusoleil.com

Mashable Awards Online Partner:

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The Fresh Diet is like having a Cordon Bleu chef prepare your meals in your own kitchen. There’s no cooking, cleaning, shopping – just fresh prepared delicious meals, hand delivered to your door daily! Whether you want to lose weight or just want to eat healthy, The Fresh Diet can help you meet your goals. The best news, we’re giving away a FREE week of The Fresh Diet every day on our Facebook page. Just click here to become a fan and you could be the next winner. Join now!

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Join us at the 2011 International CES®, the global platform for inspired ideas and innovation. With 2,500 exhibitors, CES continues to be the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow and always reflects the dynamic consumer electronics industry. The International CES is not open to the general public and all attendees must be in the CE industry to be eligible to attend the show. Register FREE for the 2011 CES with priority code MSHB, an exclusive promotion for Mashable Readers.

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About Research In Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.

Mashable Awards Gala Silver Sponsor:

Aro Mobile is an intelligent mobile experience that includes better email, connected contacts, smarter calendar and improved browsing.

The Aro system automatically learns what’s important in your life—the people, places, dates and organizations you care about most. In your communications, Aro automatically identifies people, places, events, dates,organizations and locations. From any recognized term, Aro offers quick action menus to speed up your day.

The unique Aro experience is powered by advanced web services: next generation natural language processing and semantic data analytics services. Aro gives you the power to see through the clutter and focus your mobile life.

About Research In Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.

Mashable Awards Gala VIP Lounge sponsor:

Influxis specializes in the deployment of creative streaming solutions. Services include large scale deployment, mobile streaming, turn-key applications, and enterprise support with custom network options. With the unique combination of a worldwide network, knowledgeable developer support and nearly a decade of streaming media experience, Influxis is an essential partner to businesses, advertisers, developers, educators, and others who seek expertise in innovative streaming.

Mashable Awards After Party Sponsor:

About Research In Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, jgroup

For more Social Media coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Though social media has proved itself an effective tool in helping journalists gather news and connect with their communities, a pervading question among the skeptics still remains: Where’s the money?

As social sites like Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter and Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook build their empires and seek to remedy their own financial instability in the hope of turning profits, news organizations are experimenting with ways to monetize their social media presence and leverage the social web to complete an online revenue puzzle.

The revenue is there, but the social web won’t necessarily solve that puzzle. “There’s no silver bullet,” Jim Brady, the general manager at TBD.com, said at the Online News Association Conference last week. “There’s just shrapnel, pieces of revenue.” Brady, who launched TBD.com this summer, said display ads are certainly not the future in revenue for news and that it will come from multiple revenue streams. class='blippr-nobr'>Newsclass="blippr-nobr">news organizations have certainly been experimenting where they can to get revenue in pieces, from mobile applications to launching group buying sites. Here’s a closer look at some of these efforts.

Self-Serve “Real Time Ads”

Much of online advertising consists of static display ads that are sold based on a CPM ad model, a varying price per 1,000 impressions. An advertiser delivers an ad design that then rotates with others on the site. What if small business advertisers could change the message of that ad in real time?

That’s the idea of Minnpost.com’s Real Time Ads, which essentially use customized widgets that pull in messages from an advertiser’s Twitter, Facebook or YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube accounts. Local businesses can buy the widget space for a specified amount of time, instead of a CPM model, and are able to update the content whenever they’d like, making each message timely and perfect for a daily deal or promotion.

It is especially useful for local business. Even if they don’t have a social profile or an RSS feed to attach to the ad, they can update their ad by e-mailing a new message to their account, said Karl Pearson-Cater, director of operations at Minnpost.com — a non-profit news organization that relies largely on donations.

“Advertisers love real-time ads. The biggest benefit is how easy it is to get set up and how easy it is to maintain,” Pearson-Cater said.

If real-time ads work for Minnpost.com, Pearson-Cater said they can help adapt the platform for other publishers as well. In the past few months, he said they’ve begun to see a significant revenue stream. They now have approximately $15,000 in annual contracts using real-time ads.

At Yahoo! News, Anna Robertson, director of social media and original video, said they’re considering sponsorships around social widgets on pages as well, or another form of sponsored modules. It’s likely that this form of advertising will become more prevalent across news sites.

Revenue Share

At TBD.com, Brady and his team are leveraging a network of blogs to sell distributed ads. When they come to advertisers, they’re able to sell ads across a network of 196 blogs, which they share 35% of the revenue with. It’s a win-win for TBD and its partners that get revenue they may not have gotten otherwise.

Another approach, of course, is being on the receiving end of social partnerships or revenue sharing. YouTube, for example, shares revenue made through AdSense and publishers can have Promoted Videos run on their page. And as of late, YouTube has become even more sophisticated in making money off of copyright infringers, sharing revenue with the original publishers.

In-stream Advertising

On websites, display ads coexist beside content on a page. But more and more content is becoming part of the social news stream. Users are becoming more accustomed to receiving and digesting information in a stream format on Facebook, Twitter and other sites that display updates in real time. Because people often engage the content in the social space and may not even come directly to the site, monetizing social media off-site is just as important, said Mike Orren, president and founder of Pegasus News in Texas.

“The thing that hasn’t been figured out is how to do so without alienating the social media audience that seems generally trained to disdain ’sponsored’ postings,” Orren said. But of course, that could change.

It’s also important to set clear user expectations of what’s what. Robertson from Yahoo! News said if done effectively, while protecting “church and state,” it can be a good option. She said it’s up to the news organizations to be transparent about what is an ad and what’s content in order to protect journalistic integrity.

Twitter has begun releasing several products to monetize its service, including Promoted Tweets, which are sponsored messages that are featured within a user’s stream. However, news companies have experimented with selling in-stream messages to advertisers and sponsors. The Austin-American Statesman experimented with selling sponsored tweets for $300 per day for two tweets. And according to the paper’s social media editor Robert Quigley, who had to approve the tweets before they went out, followers found them non-intrusive.

In fact, sites like Ad.ly work with advertisers who buy sponsored messages that appear on their participating partners’ Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and mobile and site widgets. Its partners include a slew of celebrities like Kim Kardashian and publications like TIME.com.

Laura Heck, director of business development at TIME.com, said more publishers are starting to experiment with this format. At TIME.com, Heck said they’ve recently begun to offer advertisers access to its 2.2 million Twitter followers and 165,000+ Facebook fans for sponsored messages. Heck said they’ve put strict rules in place for the type of messages they will feature, frequency, etc., to make sure it doesn’t hinder the user experience.

Selling Traffic and Amplification

The ROI for news companies putting resources to build their social presence has often been a more “engaged” community of readers, a notion that is too often measured by a sheer increase in traffic referrals from social sites or more time spent on site. Many defend social investment by showcasing an increase in traffic, traffic that can then, hypothetically, sell more ads.

Ken Doctor, author of Newsonomics and news industry analyst at Outsell, said social networks have become the fastest growing source of traffic referrals for many news sites. For many, social sites like Facebook and Twitter account for 10% to 15% of their overall referrals, but are number one in growth. The results are even more heavy on social for news startups like CapitalNY, Doctor said, who get 40% or more of their traffic from social. And of course, the quality of these referrals is often better than those readers who come from search. They yield better conversation and are more likely to become regular users of the site, he said.

Though many news organizations have driven traffic organically, The Washington Post recently bought #Election as a “Promoted Trend” on Twitter, which then highlighted its tweet above others using the hashtag in Twitter conversation, likely resulting in a big increase in referrals from visitors who came across the Promoted Trend above all others in the Trends sidebar.

“When we talked with Twitter about the idea, we thought it was a great opportunity to be innovative, go to readers and highlight our content front and center with Twitter’s vast and engaged audience,” said Katharine Zaleski, executive producer and head of digital news products. “The idea wasn’t just to sponsor The Post, but rather, we chose a broad hashtag, probably the broadest for elections, to be able to aggregate the best election tweets from multiple sources and not just us.”

But perhaps more importantly, social amplification has become part of the sell. On top of the site metrics and reach, advertisers want to now know how the content will be amplified off the site with social media. Such is the case with content sponsorships. If an advertiser has its name on a piece of content that they sponsored, they also want to know how many times it was retweeted, shared on Facebook, dugg on class='blippr-nobr'>Diggclass="blippr-nobr">Digg, etc. For example, TIME worked with an advertiser on a “Stay class='blippr-nobr'>Connectedclass="blippr-nobr">Connected” package, which included leveraging social features on TIME.com and its social networks.

Making Ads More Social

Advertisers have begun trying to make ads more social by adding a Facebook “Like” button within the frame or a stream of tweets that make the ad something that readers can interact with. It’s a light-weight way to get users to engage with and even sometimes share advertisements with their social networks while helping advertisers increase their one-to-one relationship with readers by growing their own social following, said Heck from TIME.com.

“Ads are increasingly becoming more social as we’re giving users the ability to engage with and share the ad content,” Heck said.

The idea of course is that users are far more responsive to content recommended by their friends or personal connections rather than content from a branded account or page. At TIME.com, Heck said they’re working on identifying ways to include advertiser branding within shared content. But the details of that formula have yet to be worked out.

Sponsored Contests and Social Campaigns

On-site social media contests can often satisfy an advertiser’s need for amplification and offer a way to engage readers and users with their product in a unique way. There are several routes. Contests can be sold as a package –- on their own or as an up-sell to a sponsorship or ad on the site. Orren from Pegasus News said his organization will only run contests for paying advertisers.

“Part of the promise there is a push through all of our relevant social media,” Orren said. “This is still an added value, but increasingly, advertisers want to know about the reach and engagement of our social nets in making their buying decisions.”

Depending on the product readers are competing for, it may have enough value for the news site to simply use it as a tool to drive traffic and engagement among its audience. In such a case, the advertiser gets exposure to its product or company, while the news site has a community that perhaps feels more appreciated. Contests, however, take time and effort by the staff conducting them and the ROI should be strongly considered. It’s not just a display ad, but results in essentially being a campaign for the product. If a contest wasn’t sold, the amount of time and investment should be considered appropriately.

Leveraging Social Site Real Estate

Though display ads may not be the future, they can be simple to integrate on social sites. News organizations like TIME and more recently the Silicon Alley Insider have sold their Twitter backgrounds as a social display ad.

Similar to readers landing on TIME.com and being exposed to display ads on the site, Twitter users landing on @TIME on Twitter were also exposed to a display ad in the background. Thinking creatively and putting effort to sell those spaces can make them more valuable by adding another spot for display inventory.

What’s Next? Personalized Social Ads

The start and glimmer of what’s possible with personalized and more socially targeted ads has been the result of news organizations like The New York Times and others selling advertising that specifically targets readers who came to the site through Facebook or Twitter. Twitter itself has targeted its Promoted Tweets in the stream based on relevancy, though it is sometimes tied to a Promoted Trend.

News organizations could take advantage of building structured data to better target their advertisements to readers, and perhaps even making advertisements more useful. Of course, this already takes place at a lot of organizations. At Pegasus News, Orren said its entire business model centers on using structured data to customize display ads with all of its content being tagged using a hierarchical taxonomy of more than 3,000 local topics and geography. But, he said, the company hasn’t yet figured out how to take that offsite or to open the flow of data between its sites and the social web, while at the same time respecting privacy.

Doctor said he sees social media optimization as a driver of audience and engagement, and that engagement getting monetized through targeting, rather than blasting social marketing pushes. Being able to get more sophisticated in targeting individuals and specific communities will make monetization efforts easier.

Social media, which effectively has infiltrated all corners of the web, has great potential in not only bringing in revenue but also making ads more useful to readers while also satisfying the needs of advertisers aiming to effectively reach the public. The social web can change the way we think about ads, by making them social and personalized to create utility for the user.

Robertson, from Yahoo! News, said we’re just at the beginning of this space. Yahoo acquired Citizen Sports close to a year ago and it’s done a good job of bringing in revenue attached to social media streams. Yahoo is working to scale some of the concepts to news, Robertson said.

“This is still a fairly new space with a lot of opportunity for news organizations and brands to experiment and innovate,” she said.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Most Engaged Brands in Social Media/> - 5 Winning Social Media Campaigns to Learn From/> - HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Your Business Facebook Page/> - 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now/> - A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places

For more Social Media coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

eric seiger

Denver Broncos <b>News</b>: Horse Tracks - 11/13/10 - Mile High Report

Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .. Horse Tracks!

Peggle bounces onto PSP next week PSP <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PSP news of Peggle bounces onto PSP next week.

Forget AOL-Yahoo...It&#39;s <b>News</b> Corp-Yahoo That The Insiders Are <b>...</b>

One source close to News Corp says the company is monitoring the situation, and notes that Jon Miller and "Chief Yahoo" Jerry Yang have a good working relationship. Merger talk, says this source, is pre-mature. ...

eric seiger

eric seiger

eric seiger

Denver Broncos <b>News</b>: Horse Tracks - 11/13/10 - Mile High Report

Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .. Horse Tracks!

Peggle bounces onto PSP next week PSP <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PSP news of Peggle bounces onto PSP next week.

Forget AOL-Yahoo...It&#39;s <b>News</b> Corp-Yahoo That The Insiders Are <b>...</b>

One source close to News Corp says the company is monitoring the situation, and notes that Jon Miller and "Chief Yahoo" Jerry Yang have a good working relationship. Merger talk, says this source, is pre-mature. ...

eric seiger

As part of the ongoing Mashable Awards, we’re taking a closer look at each of the nomination categories. This is “Must-Follow Personality.” Be sure to nominate your favorites and join us for the Gala in Las Vegas! Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.

In a world where social media and pop culture collide, 2009 might’ve been most remembered for a certain race to 1 million followers. While 2010 has had its share of popularity contests too, we’ve also seen a myriad of innovative uses of digital media that have both catapulted some previously unknowns to “must follow” status and re-invented the careers of others.

Whether it was playing a key role in shaping the news, creating online personas that went viral and became much more, or using the class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet to connect with fans in new ways, several personalities stood out in terms of leveraging social media in irresistibly catchy ways.

Below, we take a look at some of those people who have made a major splash in the online world in the past year.

1. Ben Folds

While it looks like Chatroulette’s 15 minutes of fame might be up, no one was a bigger part of that 15 minutes than musician Ben Folds.

Inspired by chatroulette improv piano guy “Merton,” the singer-songwriter began broadcasting improv piano tunes from his concerts onto the random video chat site, and quickly saw himself become a big part of one of the year’s top memes.

Because Merton rather closely resembled Folds, speculation ran rampant that the two were actually the same guy. Numerous YouTube videos — some of them originating here on Mashable — added fuel to the fire, though the fable was ultimately disproved once and for all (we think) in a video that the two created together last month.

What started as a clever play on a pop culture phenomenon ultimately became a blueprint for sustaining social media buzz.

2. Conan O’Brien

When Conan O’Brien took over as host of The Tonight Show in mid-2009, one of his first sketches poked fun at Twitter for its banality. Little did he know at the time that mere months later, he’d become the center of a massive user-created digital movement (“Team Coco”) as NBC pivoted to shift Tonight Show hosting responsibilities back to Jay Leno.

Following his ouster, Conan quickly moved to capitalize on his Internet momentum, establishing a Twitter account that would serve as his comedic outlet while he sorted out his next career move, which he ultimately decided would be a new show on TBS.

Whereas Conan’s Tonight Show played the traditional willfully ignorant-of-technology card, Conan’s new show has made social media the centerpiece of a campaign to try and get the masses to shift their late night viewing habits to cable. As a result, we’ll soon find out if digital loyalty translates to television ratings.

3. BPGlobalPR

This year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in recent times, and the company’s much-maligned handling of it had some speculating that bankruptcy might be imminent for the petroleum giant.

Providing comic relief through the whole ordeal, however, was @BPGlobalPR, a satirical Twitter account pretending to be BP’s public relations department. With updates like “Sadly we can no longer certify our oil as Dolphin Safe,” the account quickly amassed tens of thousands of followers.

As for his inspiration, the man behind the account, “Terry,” told Mashable in an interview that “They pay people like me a TON of money to make it look like they’re doing stuff, but really we don’t have to do much except talk. Our talking buys them time to figure out how they are going to sweep it all under the rug and go back to making lots of money.”

While BP eventually closed the oil leak and activity on the @BPGlobalPR account has slowed, the feed served the dual role of both entertaining and reminding the world that BP was not doing a very good job at either closing the leak or communicating effectively with the public.

4. Dan Savage

In recent months, one of the most prominent social issues in America has been the bullying of gay teenagers. In response, sex advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage launched the “Its Get Better” YouTube channel, where everyday people have uploaded hundreds of videos providing encouragement and inspiration to gay teens, telling them they have much to look forward to.

It didn’t take long for the channel to go viral with openly gay celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen DeGeneres contributing video messages. Within about a month of launching, the channel attracted a video from President Obama broadcasting the “It Gets Better” message.

The campaign has been nothing short of inspiring, and we will be following Savage to see how he uses his various social media channels –- which also include a popular blog, Twitter feed, and podcast –- to raise awareness for important LGBT issues going forward.

5. Darren Rovell

It’s been a spectacular year for stories about the business of sports, and sitting at the center of it has been CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell.

There was simply no better feed to follow on Twitter than Rovell’s as the world of Tiger Woods came crashing down following a car-accident-turned-sex-scandal turned tens of millions of dollars in lost endorsement deals.

Then, when LeBron James made the universally mocked decision of broadcasting “The Decision” on ESPN, Rovell again was the point man for assessing brand and consumer response as one of the world’s most highly paid and previously admired athletes suddenly became one of the sporting world’s biggest villains.

In between, Rovell’s Twitter feed and blog has broken news on everything from TV ratings to jersey sales to free agency moves. To an extent, he’s also made the business of reporting on sports sexy, as evidenced by some of the competitors he’s now attracting.

What’s Your Take?

Which personalities do you follow via social media? Let us know in the comments or nominate them for the Mashable Awards.

The Mashable Awards Gala at Cirque du Soleil Zumanity (Vegas)/>

In partnership with Cirque du Soleil, The Mashable Awards Gala event will bring together the winners and nominees, the class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable community, partners, media, the marketing community, consumer electronics and technology brands and attendees from the 2011 International CES Convention to Las Vegas on Thursday, January 6, 2011. Together, we will celebrate the winners and the community of the Mashable Awards at the Cirque du Soleil Zumanity stage in the beautiful New York New York Hotel. The event will include acts and performances from our partner Cirque du Soleil Zumanity. In addition, there will be special guest presenters and appearances.

Date: Thursday, January 6th, 2011 (during International CES Convention week)/> Time: 7:00 – 10:00 pm PT/> Location: Cirque du Soleil Zumanity, New York New York Hotel, Las Vegas/> Agenda: Networking, Open Bars, Acts, Surprises and the Mashable Awards Gala presentations/> Socialize: Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook, Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">Foursquare, Meetup, Plancast, Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter (Hashtag: #MashableAwards)

Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.

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From a group of 20 street performers at its beginnings in 1984, Cirque du Soleil is now a global entertainment organization providing high-quality artistic entertainment. The company has over 5,000 employees, including more than 1,200 artists from close to 50 different countries.

Cirque du Soleil has brought wonder and delight to nearly 100 million spectators in 300 cities on five continents. In 2010 Cirque du Soleil, will present 21 shows simultaneously throughout the world, including seven in Las Vegas.

For more information about Cirque du Soleil, visit www.cirquedusoleil.com

Mashable Awards Online Partner:

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Mashable Awards Partner:

Join us at the 2011 International CES®, the global platform for inspired ideas and innovation. With 2,500 exhibitors, CES continues to be the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow and always reflects the dynamic consumer electronics industry. The International CES is not open to the general public and all attendees must be in the CE industry to be eligible to attend the show. Register FREE for the 2011 CES with priority code MSHB, an exclusive promotion for Mashable Readers.

Mashable Awards Category Sponsor:

About Research In Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.

Mashable Awards Gala Silver Sponsor:

Aro Mobile is an intelligent mobile experience that includes better email, connected contacts, smarter calendar and improved browsing.

The Aro system automatically learns what’s important in your life—the people, places, dates and organizations you care about most. In your communications, Aro automatically identifies people, places, events, dates,organizations and locations. From any recognized term, Aro offers quick action menus to speed up your day.

The unique Aro experience is powered by advanced web services: next generation natural language processing and semantic data analytics services. Aro gives you the power to see through the clutter and focus your mobile life.

About Research In Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.

Mashable Awards Gala VIP Lounge sponsor:

Influxis specializes in the deployment of creative streaming solutions. Services include large scale deployment, mobile streaming, turn-key applications, and enterprise support with custom network options. With the unique combination of a worldwide network, knowledgeable developer support and nearly a decade of streaming media experience, Influxis is an essential partner to businesses, advertisers, developers, educators, and others who seek expertise in innovative streaming.

Mashable Awards After Party Sponsor:

About Research In Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, jgroup

For more Social Media coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Though social media has proved itself an effective tool in helping journalists gather news and connect with their communities, a pervading question among the skeptics still remains: Where’s the money?

As social sites like Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter and Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook build their empires and seek to remedy their own financial instability in the hope of turning profits, news organizations are experimenting with ways to monetize their social media presence and leverage the social web to complete an online revenue puzzle.

The revenue is there, but the social web won’t necessarily solve that puzzle. “There’s no silver bullet,” Jim Brady, the general manager at TBD.com, said at the Online News Association Conference last week. “There’s just shrapnel, pieces of revenue.” Brady, who launched TBD.com this summer, said display ads are certainly not the future in revenue for news and that it will come from multiple revenue streams. class='blippr-nobr'>Newsclass="blippr-nobr">news organizations have certainly been experimenting where they can to get revenue in pieces, from mobile applications to launching group buying sites. Here’s a closer look at some of these efforts.

Self-Serve “Real Time Ads”

Much of online advertising consists of static display ads that are sold based on a CPM ad model, a varying price per 1,000 impressions. An advertiser delivers an ad design that then rotates with others on the site. What if small business advertisers could change the message of that ad in real time?

That’s the idea of Minnpost.com’s Real Time Ads, which essentially use customized widgets that pull in messages from an advertiser’s Twitter, Facebook or YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube accounts. Local businesses can buy the widget space for a specified amount of time, instead of a CPM model, and are able to update the content whenever they’d like, making each message timely and perfect for a daily deal or promotion.

It is especially useful for local business. Even if they don’t have a social profile or an RSS feed to attach to the ad, they can update their ad by e-mailing a new message to their account, said Karl Pearson-Cater, director of operations at Minnpost.com — a non-profit news organization that relies largely on donations.

“Advertisers love real-time ads. The biggest benefit is how easy it is to get set up and how easy it is to maintain,” Pearson-Cater said.

If real-time ads work for Minnpost.com, Pearson-Cater said they can help adapt the platform for other publishers as well. In the past few months, he said they’ve begun to see a significant revenue stream. They now have approximately $15,000 in annual contracts using real-time ads.

At Yahoo! News, Anna Robertson, director of social media and original video, said they’re considering sponsorships around social widgets on pages as well, or another form of sponsored modules. It’s likely that this form of advertising will become more prevalent across news sites.

Revenue Share

At TBD.com, Brady and his team are leveraging a network of blogs to sell distributed ads. When they come to advertisers, they’re able to sell ads across a network of 196 blogs, which they share 35% of the revenue with. It’s a win-win for TBD and its partners that get revenue they may not have gotten otherwise.

Another approach, of course, is being on the receiving end of social partnerships or revenue sharing. YouTube, for example, shares revenue made through AdSense and publishers can have Promoted Videos run on their page. And as of late, YouTube has become even more sophisticated in making money off of copyright infringers, sharing revenue with the original publishers.

In-stream Advertising

On websites, display ads coexist beside content on a page. But more and more content is becoming part of the social news stream. Users are becoming more accustomed to receiving and digesting information in a stream format on Facebook, Twitter and other sites that display updates in real time. Because people often engage the content in the social space and may not even come directly to the site, monetizing social media off-site is just as important, said Mike Orren, president and founder of Pegasus News in Texas.

“The thing that hasn’t been figured out is how to do so without alienating the social media audience that seems generally trained to disdain ’sponsored’ postings,” Orren said. But of course, that could change.

It’s also important to set clear user expectations of what’s what. Robertson from Yahoo! News said if done effectively, while protecting “church and state,” it can be a good option. She said it’s up to the news organizations to be transparent about what is an ad and what’s content in order to protect journalistic integrity.

Twitter has begun releasing several products to monetize its service, including Promoted Tweets, which are sponsored messages that are featured within a user’s stream. However, news companies have experimented with selling in-stream messages to advertisers and sponsors. The Austin-American Statesman experimented with selling sponsored tweets for $300 per day for two tweets. And according to the paper’s social media editor Robert Quigley, who had to approve the tweets before they went out, followers found them non-intrusive.

In fact, sites like Ad.ly work with advertisers who buy sponsored messages that appear on their participating partners’ Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and mobile and site widgets. Its partners include a slew of celebrities like Kim Kardashian and publications like TIME.com.

Laura Heck, director of business development at TIME.com, said more publishers are starting to experiment with this format. At TIME.com, Heck said they’ve recently begun to offer advertisers access to its 2.2 million Twitter followers and 165,000+ Facebook fans for sponsored messages. Heck said they’ve put strict rules in place for the type of messages they will feature, frequency, etc., to make sure it doesn’t hinder the user experience.

Selling Traffic and Amplification

The ROI for news companies putting resources to build their social presence has often been a more “engaged” community of readers, a notion that is too often measured by a sheer increase in traffic referrals from social sites or more time spent on site. Many defend social investment by showcasing an increase in traffic, traffic that can then, hypothetically, sell more ads.

Ken Doctor, author of Newsonomics and news industry analyst at Outsell, said social networks have become the fastest growing source of traffic referrals for many news sites. For many, social sites like Facebook and Twitter account for 10% to 15% of their overall referrals, but are number one in growth. The results are even more heavy on social for news startups like CapitalNY, Doctor said, who get 40% or more of their traffic from social. And of course, the quality of these referrals is often better than those readers who come from search. They yield better conversation and are more likely to become regular users of the site, he said.

Though many news organizations have driven traffic organically, The Washington Post recently bought #Election as a “Promoted Trend” on Twitter, which then highlighted its tweet above others using the hashtag in Twitter conversation, likely resulting in a big increase in referrals from visitors who came across the Promoted Trend above all others in the Trends sidebar.

“When we talked with Twitter about the idea, we thought it was a great opportunity to be innovative, go to readers and highlight our content front and center with Twitter’s vast and engaged audience,” said Katharine Zaleski, executive producer and head of digital news products. “The idea wasn’t just to sponsor The Post, but rather, we chose a broad hashtag, probably the broadest for elections, to be able to aggregate the best election tweets from multiple sources and not just us.”

But perhaps more importantly, social amplification has become part of the sell. On top of the site metrics and reach, advertisers want to now know how the content will be amplified off the site with social media. Such is the case with content sponsorships. If an advertiser has its name on a piece of content that they sponsored, they also want to know how many times it was retweeted, shared on Facebook, dugg on class='blippr-nobr'>Diggclass="blippr-nobr">Digg, etc. For example, TIME worked with an advertiser on a “Stay class='blippr-nobr'>Connectedclass="blippr-nobr">Connected” package, which included leveraging social features on TIME.com and its social networks.

Making Ads More Social

Advertisers have begun trying to make ads more social by adding a Facebook “Like” button within the frame or a stream of tweets that make the ad something that readers can interact with. It’s a light-weight way to get users to engage with and even sometimes share advertisements with their social networks while helping advertisers increase their one-to-one relationship with readers by growing their own social following, said Heck from TIME.com.

“Ads are increasingly becoming more social as we’re giving users the ability to engage with and share the ad content,” Heck said.

The idea of course is that users are far more responsive to content recommended by their friends or personal connections rather than content from a branded account or page. At TIME.com, Heck said they’re working on identifying ways to include advertiser branding within shared content. But the details of that formula have yet to be worked out.

Sponsored Contests and Social Campaigns

On-site social media contests can often satisfy an advertiser’s need for amplification and offer a way to engage readers and users with their product in a unique way. There are several routes. Contests can be sold as a package –- on their own or as an up-sell to a sponsorship or ad on the site. Orren from Pegasus News said his organization will only run contests for paying advertisers.

“Part of the promise there is a push through all of our relevant social media,” Orren said. “This is still an added value, but increasingly, advertisers want to know about the reach and engagement of our social nets in making their buying decisions.”

Depending on the product readers are competing for, it may have enough value for the news site to simply use it as a tool to drive traffic and engagement among its audience. In such a case, the advertiser gets exposure to its product or company, while the news site has a community that perhaps feels more appreciated. Contests, however, take time and effort by the staff conducting them and the ROI should be strongly considered. It’s not just a display ad, but results in essentially being a campaign for the product. If a contest wasn’t sold, the amount of time and investment should be considered appropriately.

Leveraging Social Site Real Estate

Though display ads may not be the future, they can be simple to integrate on social sites. News organizations like TIME and more recently the Silicon Alley Insider have sold their Twitter backgrounds as a social display ad.

Similar to readers landing on TIME.com and being exposed to display ads on the site, Twitter users landing on @TIME on Twitter were also exposed to a display ad in the background. Thinking creatively and putting effort to sell those spaces can make them more valuable by adding another spot for display inventory.

What’s Next? Personalized Social Ads

The start and glimmer of what’s possible with personalized and more socially targeted ads has been the result of news organizations like The New York Times and others selling advertising that specifically targets readers who came to the site through Facebook or Twitter. Twitter itself has targeted its Promoted Tweets in the stream based on relevancy, though it is sometimes tied to a Promoted Trend.

News organizations could take advantage of building structured data to better target their advertisements to readers, and perhaps even making advertisements more useful. Of course, this already takes place at a lot of organizations. At Pegasus News, Orren said its entire business model centers on using structured data to customize display ads with all of its content being tagged using a hierarchical taxonomy of more than 3,000 local topics and geography. But, he said, the company hasn’t yet figured out how to take that offsite or to open the flow of data between its sites and the social web, while at the same time respecting privacy.

Doctor said he sees social media optimization as a driver of audience and engagement, and that engagement getting monetized through targeting, rather than blasting social marketing pushes. Being able to get more sophisticated in targeting individuals and specific communities will make monetization efforts easier.

Social media, which effectively has infiltrated all corners of the web, has great potential in not only bringing in revenue but also making ads more useful to readers while also satisfying the needs of advertisers aiming to effectively reach the public. The social web can change the way we think about ads, by making them social and personalized to create utility for the user.

Robertson, from Yahoo! News, said we’re just at the beginning of this space. Yahoo acquired Citizen Sports close to a year ago and it’s done a good job of bringing in revenue attached to social media streams. Yahoo is working to scale some of the concepts to news, Robertson said.

“This is still a fairly new space with a lot of opportunity for news organizations and brands to experiment and innovate,” she said.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Most Engaged Brands in Social Media/> - 5 Winning Social Media Campaigns to Learn From/> - HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Your Business Facebook Page/> - 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now/> - A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places

For more Social Media coverage:

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Squidoo is a website that lets anybody create a page (lens) on any topic. A Squidoo lens is a bit like a web page (or mini blog) that you can fill any way you like. The great thing about Squidoo, is that it has Adsense already set up, so any lens you create will make you earn money. You can also use affiliate programs such as Amazon or Ebay, and easily display the products you like on your lens: people who buy those products will help you earn more money from your lens. The income generated by those ads is split between Squidoo, you and charities as follows: 45%, 50% and 5% (well, you didn't think they would let you make money that easily for nothing, did you?). I think this is a pretty good deal, as we all know how difficult it is to make a name for yourself in the big web world and being on the Squidoo website will give you and your lens a boost, as other user lenses get promoted on your lens (which means that your own lens gets promoted on other people's lenses as well).

One thing I like about Squidoo lenses is the layout: you can add different modules on your lens and each module can be used for a different purpose. Module are a bit like paragraphs; you can use one module to write some text, another one to add your blog's or your articles' RSS feed, one to promote Amazon products and anything else you can think about. You can add, change the order of or delete modules as you like, and Squidoo's advice is to update a lens at least once a week; any lenses that are not being updated regularly risk being deleted out of the system, meaning any money accumulated on those accounts will be lost forever by the lensmasters.

When I first started to use the Internet to make money, I suffered from information overload: so many money-making ideas being thrown at me but no real plan on how to use most of these in my advantage. I started too many projects without really knowing where I was going; I read a lot of articles saying that Squidoo was a good way to make money online so I created a Squidoo lens. I didn't really know how to use it until a few weeks ago, when another Associated Content producer sent me a message asking me if she could use the RSS feed of my articles to put on her Squidoo lens. Naturally I was very curious so I went and took a good look at it: it is called Know It All Moms and contains a lot of advice on children, parenting, homeschooling, women's health and money (that's where I come in).

The interesting thing about this Squidoo lens is that it doesn't require much maintenance; there is an introduction followed by the RSS feed of Lisa Carey's own articles, plus a few other RSS feeds, so the updating of her lens is being done automatically. One very positive thing about Lisa's lens is that it helps not only her own articles, but also other people's articles to get more page views, which means more money for her friends as well as for herself. She also uses Adsense and Amazon in order to earn money from her Squidoo lens.

Since most Associated Content producers write on a lot of different topics, I wouldn't really recommend using their RSS feeds, as this means you could get an article on the American election thrown in the middle of parenting articles, so selecting individual articles would be a safer bet. Another option would be to add the RSS feeds of different blogs, always with prior owner's consent of course, and this is what I have done with my own lens: How to Make and Save Money. Using RSS feeds is different from copying whole articles, so there is no risk of being penalized by Google for using duplicate content.

On top of the money you earn from programs such as Adsense, Amazon and and a few others that can be integrated in Squidoo lenses, you can use your own imagination to fill those modules with anything you fancy and that you can make money with (or not). The text modules let you include html so if you know a little about html, you can promote your affiliate links: the best example I can think of is Clickbank. I already wrote an article on how to write Clickbank reviews that sell, so I won't explain here how this affiliate programme works, all I will say is that if your lens is mostly about pets, you can write an article about pets and include a few pet related affiliate links in there.

You can use your Squidoo lens to advertise your freelance services, Ebay auctions, books you wrote and whatever else can be promoted on the Internet. There is no limit on the number of Squidoo lenses you can create (as long as they are not duplicates) and it doesn't cost a cent, so you can create your own Squidoo money-making empire, but if making money is not on your list of priorities, you can just talk about anything you like, use your lens like a small personal blog, and even set up your lens so that the money earned by it is sent to charities.

If you have a little bit of imagination, there has never been an easier way to make money online than this, and the main thing to remember if you want to make money with Squidoo, is to have fun doing it!

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank fellow Associated Content producer Lisa Carey for giving me the idea for this article and also for helping me understand a little bit more about how to make money online with Squidoo. You can find a link to her lens, Know It All Moms, in this article's resources box.



eric seiger

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Forget AOL-Yahoo...It&#39;s <b>News</b> Corp-Yahoo That The Insiders Are <b>...</b>

One source close to News Corp says the company is monitoring the situation, and notes that Jon Miller and "Chief Yahoo" Jerry Yang have a good working relationship. Merger talk, says this source, is pre-mature. ...

eric seiger

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Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .. Horse Tracks!

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Read our PSP news of Peggle bounces onto PSP next week.

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One source close to News Corp says the company is monitoring the situation, and notes that Jon Miller and "Chief Yahoo" Jerry Yang have a good working relationship. Merger talk, says this source, is pre-mature. ...

eric seiger