City will use Twitter to engage and entertain fans who tune into television broadcasts at City Square, a dedicated fan area near the club’s shop. It is also integrating real time fan Tweets on the Etihad’s video boards, on JumboTron large-screen televison, and other arena distribution channels. City is the first Premier League club to use Twitter as part of its in-game displays.

Manchester City has successfully trialled social media during games against Newcastle United and Norwich City. In a December match with the latter, the club teamed with Mass Relevance to deliver social content on screens throughout the stadium, and to create dialogue with and between fans, pundits and announcers before and after the game (hashtag #blueview). The strategy resulted in more than 1,500 #blueview Tweets in just six hours from more than 965 unique Twitter authors, providing the club with message and brand reach of nearly 400,000 Twitter users and nearly 2.5 million impressions.

“At City we have always believed that home games at the Etihad Stadium are not just exclusive to the 47,000 fans in the stands,” says Richard Ayers, digital laymaker for Manchester City. “They are an opportunity for City supporters from around the world to connect with one another and feel part of the match day experience. Mass Relevance enables us to empower our fans and add a new dimension to our pre-match build up by being able to broadcast their Tweets in real time around the stadium big screens.”

“Football fans are some of the most dedicated – and vocal – fans on the planet and real-time social content continues to play a key role in enhancing the experience whether you are at the match, watching on TV or following on your mobile device,” says Mass Relevance CEO Sam Decker.

And it’s clear Man City is really committed to social media. There’s the FanCam campaign, for one, the club’s Facebook drive for another, plus a spot of augmented reality, to name but a few.

That means ad execs may choose to divert budget from traditional advertising to social media to reflect changing audience profile,rather than request a dedicated budget to experiment with a new technology.

Also, based on the rather broad range of social media activities, coupled with low management buy-in and measurement, there is every indication that social networking still has a long way to go before it is accepted as a core business strategy.

“All of this serves to remind us that we are still really only in the early dawn of social media in business,” says KPMG. “We suspect in a couple of year’s time, the responses to these sorts of questions may be very different and that we will see social media moving far closer to the core of strategy considerations.”

KPMG finds that more than three-quarters of retail/wholesale and finance brands use social media, while just 67% of firms in the public sector do so.

The fashion issue is going to be chunky too. Think 264 pages of exclusive interviews, fashion shoots from around the world and enough hot buys to make that wardrobe doors burst open, we’re told.

“For the first time we’re throwing open the doors of Grazia HQ to show you exactly how the issue comes together – and asking you to have your say,” the mag says. “What items should make it into fashion charts? What should the team wear for London Fashion Week? Do you care more about Katy Perry or Carey Mulligan? You’ll be able to influence what goes into the issue – even down to the cover image.”

“The LG Mobile sponsored Grazia’s Fashion Issue… Live!’series gives our readers an additional level of exclusive content and demonstrates the depth of interaction advertisers can have with their audiences through Bauer’s influential brands,” says Abby Carvosso, md of Bauer Magazines lifestyle.

The brand and Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam have developed a catalogue of 640 different serenades for users who need to choose a recipient in the form of a Facebook friend, then tell them why they are so special, and where they would like to take them on a date.

The recipient will get see a performance the band – fronted by Paul ‘Kiss’ Kissaun – from The Date ad singing the serenade and get to say whether they accept the offer or not.

On 9 February, Heineken will host Serenade Live, an eight-hour YouTube event where people around the globe will get the oppurtunity to serenade the object of their desires live online.

In emerging markets, while consumers report greater customer satisfaction than their mature-market peers, they more often switched brands due to poor service, especially within the retail, ISP, mobile and banking categories.

The greatest frustration consumers cite is ‘having the company deliver something different than what they promise upfront’. The report says brands do not notice more subtle changes that matter in customers’ need for recognition, reward and special treatment.

Accenture says brands are “not attending to the things that help keep customers engaged, actions that can help the company sustain growth, such as delivering on promises made throughout all stages of the customer lifecycle and delivering a tailored experience.”

And Zuckerberg retains lofty hopes for his social media baby, which he compares to the invention of the printing press and the television. “Today, our society has reached another tipping point,” he says in a missive accompanying the IPO filing. “There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future.”

Facebook currently has close to 850 million active users and turned a $1 billion profit on revenues of $3.7 billion last year. And sovereignty over that social networking machine will be with Zucekerberg, who, the IPO prospectus says, will ‘control all matters submitted to stockholders for vote, as well as the overall management and direction of our company’.

OK, we know who’s in charge, but is Zuckerberg to Facebook as Jobs was to brand Apple? Our culture loves to love the individual creator myth and Steve Jobs certainly was the classic returning hero – with his departure, Apple may yet need to re-work its brand story. But Facebook’s prospective $100 billion valuation leans far more on those 850 million global citizens than it does in the worth of the CEO, and Facebook would certainly still very much be Facebook without him.

Perhaps Zuckerberg‘s simply not been around long enough. That he’s a very different personality from the Apple chief. Maybe it’s because he’s had one big idea to Jobs’ many. However, a creator myth most likely attaches itself more easily to tangible objects of desire, such as Apple’s. And one could argue that Facebook is actually being constantly, persistently re-created by its users rather than its initiators, so Zuckerberg’s role is much more that of a backroom boy than of a creative force.

*Sabine Stork is founding partner of Thinktank International Research