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There may be new apps and new gadgets to facilitate our engagement with one another and with retailers and other companies, but surely social media will only become a bigger part of our daily lives this year. It will be interesting to watch how companies push new ways of interacting, and what trends develop. At Harvard Business Review , David Armano makes his predictions. Armano is executive vice president of the interactive arm of global communications for Edelman Digital, and he predicts that some social media activities that started in 2010 or 2011 will take off in 2012. Namely: Convergence Emergence. The Cult of Influence. Gamification Nation. Social Sharing. Social Television. The Micro Economy. Read Armano's descriptions for these trends here . And then weigh in, either by offering up your comments , or in discussions with your peers/classmates. What has to happen for these activities to become meaningful trends? What social media trends do you anticipate being a big part of commerce in 2012?

Mark Thoma tackles the question of why--and how--the field of economics retreated from what he calls its "public mission," in an essay for the Institute for Public Knowledge . While once a discipline that engaged routinely with citizens and leaders in the public sector, Economics spent much of the latter half of the twentieth century exploring issues that, while important, were not part of the general discourse. Thoma calls this "The Great Disconnect," and he examines several reasons for it: Mathematics and the Desire to be a Scientific Discipline ...Michael Bernstein makes this point as well, as the discipline became more and more mathematical – the language we speak is increasingly symbolic rather than verbal – it became less accessible to outsiders. Positive and Normative Economics ...economists have become less willing to take sides in public debates, and more importantly unwilling to wade into public debates when doing so can be perceived as supporting one side over the other. Sociological Factors ...As economics has become increasingly mathematical and theoretical, it has also become more cliquish. Interest in Different Questions ...The fact that those inside and outside of academics are interested in different questions may have also play a role in severing the ties of academics to the outside world. The result, Thoma argues, is bad for the field, for economists, and for society in general: For all of these reasons, economics lost communication with policymakers and practitioners leaving room for all sorts of “charlatans and cranks” to fill the void. In doing so, academics ceded important ground to think tanks aligned with one party or the other, to self-appointed economic experts, to business economists maximizing profit rather than public knowledge, and to a media that doesn’t always comprehend the economics that underlie a particular issue. Even in cases where there actually was fairly wide agreement among academic economists about a particular policy proposal, the public debate in the media did not convey that economists were largely united on the issue. But there is good news. The last five years have brought about a lot of positive change. Thanks to social media and blogging, more and more economists are writing for a public audience. Thoma has seen the benefits of engaging with the public through his own blog, Economist's View (one of many daily reads for The Watch). He extols the virtues of blogging and writing for the public at large in the second half of his essay. Read New Forms of Communication and the Public Mission of Economics: Overcoming the Great Disconnect here .

With the rise of social media and the increasing use of Facebook as a primary gathering spot online, many small companies are considering shifting to Facebook as their primary virtual storefront. Eric Packer , entrepreneur and founder of Small Business Search , says that may work out as the best bang for the buck for small businesses, as long as you think strategically. At Small Business CEO , Packer shares four tips for those business owners and marketing managers looking to focus on Facebook. The first tip: "Don't Be Boring!": With a standard website, it is okay to post relatively dry, informative content. If people come across this site, it’s likely because they were already searching for something that you were selling. However, people don’t go on Facebook when they want to purchase things. They go on Facebook when they want to be entertained by links and posts from their friends. In order to use your Facebook site effectively, you need to update it at least several times a week with entertaining content. What is entertaining content? Being told what to do in the form of a blatant advertisement is not entertaining. An informative article about things that your product does might entertain. A comedy video based on your product is definitely entertainment. Behind-the-scenes footage of popular events might be intriguing. Weird, unexpected happenings are fun to share. Automated posts are not entertaining. Completely random posts might entertain a few people. A variety of unique posts and content types centered on a similar theme, style or brand of writing and content sharing is definitely entertaining. On your small business Facebook site, people see your content next to their friends’ content. You have to be at least as worthy of attention as interpersonal relationships if you want to be successful. Read Packer's other tips here .

We are always happy to highlight tips and posts on how businesses can better leverage social media for marketing success. But today we want to share a list of what businesses should avoid doing. At Entrepreneur , social media consultant Starr Hall lists the top mistakes she sees businesses making with social media. Here they are: 1. Talking One-Way; 2. Not Knowing When to Ask for Business; 3. Shiny Object Syndrome; 4. Poor Messaging; and 5. Sales Faux Pas. Click here to read Hall's descriptions of these mistakes, and for tips on how to avoid making them.

A lot of marketers and brand managers are trying to figure out how Google+ fits into their social media outreach strategies, as consumers try to figure out whether they need to migrate from Facebook to Google + . We confess, we haven't quite figured the whole Google+ thing out ourselves, but we found this video from Epipheo Studios helpful. It is very bullish on Google+, but still quite a good explainer: We also recommend Epipheo's video on How the Internet is Changing Advertising . It is a couple of years old now, but still largely relevant.

Knowledge@Wharton has an interesting interview with Ethan Beard , director of Facebook's Developer Network . Beard responds to questions about privacy and Facebook's growth potential. But what we found compelling in this interview is Beard's belief in "social design" as the driving force for Facebook. Beard sees social design as a user-centered disruptive force that extends far beyond the Facebook platform. Take a look:

Chris Brogan . Gary Vaynerchuck . Liz Strauss . They may not be names you see on the front page of the New York Times (or in US Weekly), but by at least one measure these are three of the most popular people in the country. For small business owners who have tapped into social media, Twitter is now an a virtual meeting space with some top business minds. And according to a new study by Dun & Bradstreet , Brogan, Vaynerchuck, and Strauss are among the top ten influential small business voices on Twitter. The Wall Street Journal 's Sarah Needleman discusses the new ranking in this digits interview: Read Needleman's article on the Dun & Bradstreet ranking here .