On this first Monday of March, please welcome the Senate Republican Policy Committee to Twitter.

Also, checkout the newly redesigned www.conservatives.com.

Data Shows: "Twitter-Centric" Stories Are Not Heavily-Shared on Facebook

A couple of weeks ago, I started collecting a new dataset and I’m really excited about it because it’s the first time I’m collecting data from the mother-of-all social media sites: Facebook.

I’ve begun by capturing links posted to social media sites from 10 extremely popular news outlets. Some of the top blogs, both mainstream and geeky, as well as a handful of the most web-enabled newspapers of record. Then I’m counting the number of times those links are shared on Facebook (in three different ways) and on Twitter (through good old ReTweets). I then find the average number of “shares” for links posted to each site and compare the individual stories to the average in percent form and then combine those numbers to get a percent “effect” as a positive or negative number away from the average.

Cisco Study Finds Social Media is Key to Winning Over Gen Y

Banks can expect to achieve revenue gains of up to 10 percent over the long term by catering to the online and social media tastes of Generation Y, according to a survey report released today by Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group.

These younger consumers, over half of whom have Webcams and log on to YouTube five times a day, say they are eager to use banks' online tools for budgeting and savings. Though not yet high earners, Gen Y'ers are professing high levels of trust in financial institutions that deliver professional advice in areas like debt reduction and long-term savings, and do so through interactive or social media.

3 Tips for Managing a Social Media Community

Are you trying to build a community for your company or brand?  Are you looking to go beyond just big numbers of Facebook fans or Twitter followers?

This article reveals three important tips you need to know to help build and manage communities.

WOW: Facebook Adding Half a Million New Users Ever Day

It’s no secret that Facebook is humongous: 300 million users humongous. Yet it still shocks us that it keeps on finding new users to fuel its ascent into the social media stratosphere.

A little over a year ago (August 2008), Facebook (Facebook) reached 100 million users. And now according to AllFacebook, that number is now a staggering 325+ million users.

Cisco Invests Millions in Grassroots Ad Campaign for Flip Video

Cisco is unveiling Monday a multimillion-dollar grassroots advertising campaign made up solely of user-generated content. The effort is aimed at getting people talking about its Flip Video camera. The national online and television advertising campaign relies on crowdsourcing and video technology to create the buzz.

The campaign, "Do You Flip," relied on 10-, 15- and 30-second clips shot by everyday Joes and celebrities, such as Usher, Tony Hawk and Weezer, on Flip Video cameras. Cisco will turn the clips into TV commercials, as well as online social media, viral and rich banner ads.

Google Boosts Spending on Lobbying

Google spent more than $1 million on lobbying in Washington in the third quarter, according to a report by The Associated Press.

That's a 50 percent increase from the July-September period last year, according to a recent disclosure statement, the AP wrote.

Through the first nine months of this year, Google's lobbying costs came to $2.9 million, a 41 percent increase from the same time last year. That contrasts with a 2 percent decline in Google's companywide expenses during the same period.