All this and more from the European Champions League infographic from ExactTarget.

“Many people are currently enjoying the VIP treatment from brands on social media,” says Eva Keogan, head of innovation at Fishburn Hedges. “As millions more catch on to this great route into traditional customer service channels, the challenge for brands will be maintaining the same level of service.

“Over the coming years, will Twitter become the next call centre? We are urging brands to think about this now, as there are some clear and simple ways to use these new customer service channels to great effect.”

They believe it will be making waves on the communications scene and will have been implemented in many new ways for education, health, work, and other aspects of human connection. It will also play a role in the everyday activities of many people who are actively using communications networks in their daily lives.

“Gamification may be the most important social and commercial development of the next 50 years,” says Ross Rader, general manager at Hover and board member of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. “Commercially, we may be seeing the end of the marketing orientation, possibly marking the beginning of the ‘game orientation.’”

Opportunistic Adventurers have impulsive social shopping tendencies and demand timely and relevant deals. To connect with Opportunistic Adventurers, brands should invest in tailored deals that are “too good to pass up.

Quality Devotees use social media to shape purchasing decisions, validate choice and to feel empowered when shopping. No matter the time or research involved, Quality Devotees will find the best available product. Brands should help them build knowledge through in-depth reviews and expert opinions via blogs, forums, review sites and YouTube.

Strategic Savers use social media to comparison shop and dig for their favourite brands. And brands should validate their choices by offering custom shopping tips and ways to save money by tapping into blogs, forums and review sites.

Efficient Sprinters use social media to select the most popular items to simplify their shopping process. To connect with Efficient Sprinters brands should provide a curated list of top-selling products on their social channels and retailer websites.

The Dollar Defaulter has a single social shopping goal: find the cheapest alternative. Brands need to broadcast special deals on retailer websites… and provide the ability to share those deals with friends.

“Our new study illuminates what brands need to do to reach shoppers in their own social worlds,” says Nick Jones, head of retail Marketing for Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide. “Understanding how and why people are using social media to shop is the first and most important step to designing a successful social media programme.”

All this and more from the A Case Study In Social Media Demographics from OnlineMBA.

But brands need to work out what social shopping behaviour is all about.

“People assign a different purpose and expectation to each social media channel they use,” says Masha Sajdeh, strategy sirector at Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide. “Once marketers understand how people use social to shop, they can hone their marketing strategies and cater to different shoppers’ needs to drive engagement now and in the future.”

For brands, using social media in the wrong way can have a negative impact – 44% of social shoppers say they have stopped interacting with brands on Facebook due to lack of relevant or valuable posts.

“It’s no secret that social media is top-of-mind among brands,” says Sajdeh. “What isn’t widely known is how brands should use social media to serve the needs of shoppers.”

“Fifty years ago marketers figured out that broadcast media drove awareness and print media added depth of communication,” says Nick Jones, head of retail Marketing for Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide. “Now we have all of these new social communication channels but no one has identified the optimal role of each.”

The town is now awash with types of QR codes, including ceramic or metal plaques for places exposed to the elements, labels for use inside buildings and glass stickers in shop windows. These QRpedia codes will take users straight to relevant Wikipedia articles via their smartphones.

The project is jointly funded by Monmouthshire County Council and Wikimedia UK, and the council aims to install free town-wide Wi-Fi as part of the initiative.

All this – and more – according to WordStream, which questions whether Facebook even wants to be a great advertising company. Remember the words of Mr Zuckerberg? “We don’t build services to make money, we make money to build better services,” he wrote in a letter to shareholders.

By the way, Facebook is worth more than $100 billion while Google is worth $40 billion, according to the markets. A good investment or simply money in the pockets of Silicon Valley types?