Editor’s note: this is a guest post penned by Richard Yu, who previously co-wrote an article for TechCrunch on the social networking landscape in China. Yu is a Seattle native working in Shanghai for Spil Games, where he manages online strategy & operations in Asia, including for www.game.com.cn.

Android seems ready to leapfrog competitors to grab dominance in China, the world's largest mobile market. A combination of drastic price drops on Android phones and custom Chinese mobile apps supported by the massive domestic market is bound to push Android past the entrenched leaders, setting the tone for how the mobile internet is built and interacted with around the world.

Factoids:

- Number of Mobile Internet Users in China (start of 2010): 233 million
- Number of Mobile Internet Users in China (projected for 2014): 957 million
- Population of USA + EU (2010): roughly 800 million

But what about the Chinese government's very public and damaging beef with Google? Last January, analysts and users alike hailed the death of Google in China after its search engine ran afoul of state censors. Later, the Android Marketplace and Gmail were both mysteriously blocked for two days in June. Android's rapidly improving UI aside, a major selling point is the native integration of Google's popular services like the Marketplace, Search, Maps, and Gmail. Without these essential services though, Android appears limp compared to iPhone and even Nokia, the market leader, with over 30% 'official' market share.

Yet, counter to China's apparent ambitions to kill Android and Google, officially sanctioned versions of Android are flourishing, starting with last year's Ophone OS from state-owned China Mobile. With the help of Lenovo, China's tech darling, Ophone devices are moving full steam ahead with more Chinese integrated services like an app store, where China Mobile takes 50% of sales revenue. Meanwhile, Motorola is developing a line of Chinese flavors for Android with Baidu as its default search engine in cooperation with the other state-owned mobile operator, China Unicom.

As Chinese developers and mobile carriers replace native Android services with their own email, app stores, search engines, and maps, they sidestep those pesky issues of information freedom while limiting Google's revenue from advertising and app store purchases. As a result, China's burgeoning mobile internet industry will boast new, officially sanctioned platforms with obvious preference to domestic services.

Of course in China, the gray market for smuggled and pirated phones drives most sales, blurring official statistics. Legitimate iPhones and Androids are smuggled from Hong Kong and sold at a premium in street markets around the country. Bootleg phones, running low-end versions of Windows Mobile or Symbian on Mediatek Chipsets are still easily the most common phones due to their low price. According to some estimates, Mediatek supplies chips for 85% of China's phones, and less than $60 can buy a 3.2in touchscreen phone with Wi-Fi/GPRS/Edge connectivity.

More factoids:

- Cost of an iPhone 4 in China: $1,285
- Cost of a Bootleg iPhone 4 "HiPhone": $100
- Cost of a Bootleg Nokia E71 with internet connectivity: $14

What will crack this nut wide open is Mediatek's new Android chipset, which is slated to hit the market later this year. As Moore's law applies itself to mobile devices, and sub-$100 Chinese-flavored Android 2.2+ phones are released, the over-$600 gray market iPhone will only occupy a niche of the market in China. Though the iPhone also has some nominal government approval, official versions are hobbled, with Wi-Fi capabilities shut off. Additionally, Android's compatibility with Flash provides an advantage as app developers can quickly adapt and create new ways for Chinese users to interact with the mobile internet.

Dominant Nokia or pirate Windows phones will also fall by the wayside, as Android's increasingly superior user experience and range of form factors from handsets to tablets are made available to the masses.

While overbearing government regulations and poor execution might still stymie the growth of Android in China, the implications of the platform's dominance are clear. When OEM's and carriers use the flexible and free Android platform to make cheap internet and Flash-ready phones for China's 739 million mobile users, lesser competitors will get crowded out.

As mobile 3G prices approaches $3/mo on some carriers, Chinese users and their powerful devices will redefine how they interact with games, music, pictures and information online. As the Chinese mobile internet reaches a critical mass of users, cross-cultural influence and pressures are inevitable, forcing Apple to rethink its own great walls, along with everyone else.

(Image via MobilePhones)

WeShop is hoping to shake up the online shopping space with its platform that allows consumers to share purchase information on a free and anonymous basis.

In private beta, WeShop allows consumers to pool their purchasing information which is available to other WeShop members. WeShop then analyzes and sells this data for vendors. Here’s the catch-consumers have to give WeShop access to your e-mail account or your credit card number. That way, when you use your credit card for a purchase or if you buy something online and receive an email receipt, WeShop will flag it and insert it into your profile

The benefit for the consumer is the ability to access other’s data, which WeShop makes anonymous. For example, consumers can make available information about the fare they paid for a particular seat on a particular plane and where they bought the ticket from. Members can then find out from WeShop what is the lowest fare paid for that flight and where that ticket was purchased, so the member who is looking to buy a ticket can benefit from the "wisdom of the crowd" and buy his seat from the same place.

If it can scale, WeShop eventually wants to allows consumers to share with each other or search for information that isn’t necessarily published by retailers. For example, “What color dress is most popular this season?,” “What coffee maker are people like me buying?,” and “Where are most large men buying their big and tall apparel from?”

On the business side, WeShop sells the anonymous data of shopping habits and history to local businesses and retailers. The whole platform is opt-in on the consumer side, so consumers know that their history will be shared. Vendors can also approach them with targeted offers to meet those needs (though vendors are not given consumers’ email info; everything is communicated through WeShop).

WeShop members can also set their own terms on which they will do business with vendors (only free shipping offers, only discounts or more than 30 percent, etc.) WeShop also enables consumers with similar interests to accumulate into virtual, anonymous marketplaces (or networks) that aim to attract better offers from vendors given the number of potential buyers. In terms of monetization, WeShop takes a cut of a purchase that takes place through its leads for vendors and retailers.

WeShop says it already has more than 15,000 members providing data and making more than $20 million in purchases. The startup has also raised $2.8 million in funding from an impressive roster of investors including from Jonathan Miller, Chairman and CEO, Digital Media Group of News Corporation and former America Online CEO.

The idea of WeShop is similar in some ways to Blippy or Swipely, which both allow you to share your purchase data with others to gain new insight. One challenge for WeShop, besides convincing consumers to fork over their email account and credit card info, is to actually drive enough traction to WeShop’s site to make it worth it for both consumers and businesses. In exchange for essentially giving up their privacy, consumers need to see some benefit to joining the community. While the site is still in private beta, the 15K members don’t seem to be interacting on the Q&A part of the site. If WeShop can actually build a solid base of consumers who are willing to contribute and interact with the platform (similar to the interactions and conversations you see on a Q&A site like Quora), then the site could take off.

This post was written by guest contributor Leila Janah, the CEO of the nonprofit outsourced services firm Samasource. Leila continues to argue with me over whether or not pure capitalism can solve what ails us. I tend to take a Randian view of the world. Janah argues that capitalism can often lead to evil, and points to the massive Taiwanese firm Foxconn as an example of capitalism going wrong. That’s certainly a crowd pleaser, but I think most of the problems with capitalism stem from government regulation. You can watch my recent video interview with Janah here. In any event, Samasource is a fascinating experiment and is already helping the world become a more pleasant place to be.

Sixty-three percent of the Fortune 500, and more than half of all American businesses, are incorporated in Delaware. The state’s laws protect corporate directors and enable them to focus on the bottom line. Traditionally, that has meant maximizing profits and shareholder value.

But a new trend is emerging to counter Delaware’s influence on American corporate policy, and it’s pretty thrilling for those of us in the social enterprise sector. In April, Maryland became the first state to allow entrepreneurs to form Benefit Corporations. Also known as “triple-bottom line” businesses (so named for their consideration of people, planet, and profit), B Corps now include over 300 companies representing $1.1B in revenue, including Amazon competitor Better World Books and GoodGuide, a site that rates consumer products for safety, environmental impact, and social responsibility. B Corporation, the nonprofit behind the legislation, is growing in influence — in the organization’s hometown of Philadelphia, B Corps now receive tax incentives.

Benefit Corporations aren’t the only newfangled legal structures available to mission-driven entrepreneurs. Several years ago, Vermont created Low-Profit Limited Liability Corporations, or L3Cs (Vermont, bless those hippies, also approved Benefit Corporations in May). Michigan, Utah, Wyoming, Illinois, and New York followed suit.

I can hear some of you scoffing. How can a business optimize across multiple types of return? How can one measure social and environmental impact consistently across the full range of businesses? Is Adam Smith turning in his grave?

The notion of multiple bottom lines emerged in the 1980s, after major environmental catastrophes like Exxon Valdez and the Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal made it clear that some firms were not counting the true environmental costs of doing business on their balance sheets. Negative environmental externalities went largely unregulated, and activists realized that business leaders were a more likely source of change than government. The first crop of these companies included Ben and Jerry’s, whose founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield famously donated 7.5% of pre-tax profit to community projects, and Dame Anita Roddick’s The Body Shop, whose “Trade Not Aid” and Greenpeace campaigns built her a reputation for business ethics.

Today, there are at least 25 different approaches to measuring social and environmental impact at the firm level, ranging from Fair Trade labeling systems that focus on living and working conditions for suppliers to Jed Emerson’s popular Social Return on Investment method, and the companies that use them have access to new pools of capital. Led by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Global Impact Investing Network includes 30 socially conscious investors including funds like Jeff Skoll’s Capricorn Investment Group and TIAA-CREF.

This activity around social business, and social capital markets more broadly, is encouraging, but highlights a central problem: in the absence of a single standard for measuring social and environmental returns, regulatory agencies can’t build effective incentives to encourage companies to adopt them. Optimizing for multiple variables is notoriously challenging; even when leaders unambiguously express their commitment to social and environmental goals by, for example, modifying their corporate mission statements, they face major tradeoffs. Prior to the advent of Benefit Corporations, people and planet took a back seat to profits. Ten years ago, Ben & Jerry’s sold to Unilever — according to Will Patten, a former executive there, Cohen and Greenfield wanted to retain control of the company but could have been sued by shareholders for not selling to an entity willing to pay well above the company’s stock price.

Under Maryland’s new law, the Bens and Jerrys of the future are free to compromise profits for the pursuit of vaguely defined “public benefit,” which includes things like preserving the environment and improving human health. The directors of Benefit Corporations are required to file a “Benefit Report” to shareholders each year, and are required to consider the effects of their actions not only on shareholders, but also on employees, customers, and, notably, suppliers.

In the wake of worker suicides at FoxConn and the recent discovery of $1 trillion worth of lithium, copper and iron in Afghanistan, is the tech world ready for B Corps?

If Apple really wanted to silence critics, they have a place to do so. I’ve now seen it with my own eyes.

Inside Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, CA, there are a collection of rooms that house 17 giant anechoic chambers. Basically, they’re rooms where no waves (sound or electromagnetic) can reflect off of anything, so there is absolutely no interference when it comes to wireless testing. Apple places their devices from iPhones to iPads in these chambers to ensure the performance is up to their standards.

Yesterday after their press event, Apple gave myself and a handful of other journalists the chance to take a tour of these facilities. It was the first time anyone outside of Apple has ever seen them. In fact, most people who work at Apple have never seen them, we were told. The tour was led by Ruben Caballero, Apple’s senior antenna expert (and, incidentally, the man in the news recently thanks to a BusinessWeek story — a story which Apple says is a “crock” and “total bullshit”). Also there to answer questions were Apple executives Phil Schiller, Bob Mansfield, and Greg Joswiak.

Right off the bat, it was made very clear to us that we were not allowed to take pictures or record video inside of these rooms. (The pictures in this post are the ones Apple provided.) It’s pretty clear why. While the chambers themselves are custom-made for Apple by various third party industrial manufacturers, the areas these chambers are in also contain a ton of other testing equipment. And yes, there were several things hidden under black cloaks on tables in these rooms.

“This lab used to be secret. Most people don’t know it exists,” Caballero told us. Dubbed the “Black Labs,” when I asked about the black cloaks, Caballero said that “we have a lot of other projects going on.”

At one point we were told that the iPad had been in testing in this facility “for years.” Even more interesting may be that the iPhone 4 specifically had been in testing in these chambers for 2 years. You know that means. Not only was the iPhone 5 likely in the same room that we were in. But the iPhone 6 may have been around as well.

Sadly, we weren’t allowed to lift up the cloaks.

The point of our visit to these labs was clear: Apple wants it to be known just how much testing goes into devices such as the iPhone. More specifically, Apple wants to the world to know just how much testing the iPhone 4 went through before they deemed it ready to go. Again, it was in these various chambers for 2 years. This is obviously a direct response to allegations made recently that perhaps Apple didn’t test the device enough before they shipped it.

So how do they test it? There are four stages. The first is a passive test to study the form factor of the device they want to create. The second stage is what Caballero calls the “junk in the trunk” stage. Apple puts the wireless components inside of the form factor and puts them in these chambers. The third part involves studying the device in one of these chambers but with human or dummy subjects. And the fourth part is a field test, done in vans that drive around various cities monitoring the device’s signal the entire time (both with real people and with dummies).

We were shown three different anechoic chambers, each used for slightly different purposes. Some were used to test the devices by themselves, some were meant for testing with humans and the devices.

The most interesting of these rooms was one that Caballero called “Stargate.” Why? Because well, it looks like it belongs in the movie/TV series Stargate. Inside this room, there’s a giant ring that a human sits on a raised chair in the center of. This chair slowly rotates around as signals are passed around the entire outer circle. This creates a 360 degree test area. I was told this room is completely safe for humans. And people typically spend 40 minutes in there at a time for testing. By comparison, devices can stay in the other anechoic chambers for up to 24 hours at a time.

Speaking of movies, one chamber we didn’t get to see was a giant one that looks exactly like Cerebo from the X-Men films. I mean, just look at the picture Apple provided (bottom). It’s the same thing. Of course, in Apple’s Cerebo, I assume the subject standing in the center can’t read every human beings’ mind. But I can only assume that as we didn’t get to see this room.

Each of these chambers is also a bit frightening because each is covered from floor to ceiling with giant blue spikes. Sure, these spikes are made of foam and simply used to absorb and dampen any waves, but still, these chambers look like they belong in a nightmare. Again, if Apple needs a place to silence critics, they have the rooms.

These chambers vary in cost, but each of the ones we saw cost over $1 million. All told, Apple said it has spent over $100 million on these testing facilities.

We then went into a room that contained fake heads. Obviously, these are used to test the various devices without having to use real humans. And Apple goes so far as to fill these heads with liquid mixtures of sugar, water, salt, and other components to replicate the make-up of the human brain. There were also replicas of the human hands and feet (that latter for Nike+ testing). If the tour started out as a bunch of people going to see the inside of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for the first time, I was starting to grow concerned that it was turning into that scene where they enter the strange psychedelic tunnel.

But that feeling quickly subsided as we headed outside to see the vans Apple uses to test their devices in the real world. These are giant white vans with antennas on the top of them to pull in both cellular and GPS signals. The back of these vans contain various computer equipment to collect all the data and send it back to the labs at the headquarters.

Mansfield closed the tour by noting that they had hoped it was now a bit more clear the amount of time and energy Apple puts into testing these wireless products. “We hope to give you a sense of the real engineering going on here,” Mansfield said. It’s not just testing, it’s re-testing — and this goes on for months, he said.

No matter what your take is on the iPhone 4 antenna — my take is here: it’s real, but not a big deal — there is no question that Apple spends a huge amount of time and money testing these devices. And the fact that the thing people will care most about in this whole 1,200-word post is the passing mention that the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 may have been in one of these rooms, says just about all you need to say about the state of the iPhone.

For those interesting in learning more, Apple has also posted the following page (and video) about the antenna labs.

Email overload is a problem that’s as common as it is difficult to solve. Fortunately, everyone know it’s a problem, and there are plenty of startups (and webmail providers themselves) looking to fix it. One recent entry to the space is AwayFind. The service, which opened to the public earlier this year, allows you to set up filters identifying the most important messages that hit your inbox— emails from coworkers, family members, or perhaps those that have “IMPORTANT!” in the subject line. When one of these urgent messages comes in, AwayFind can alert you with a text message, phone call (that actually reads the message aloud) or IM.

All of the site’s alert settings are customizable: you can choose to receive an alert every time your boss emails you, or only when you get a new message in an especially important email thread. You can also choose time limits for each alert, and there’s also an auto-responder feature that you can use to direct people to a personal contact page (Awayfind lets you make one, or you can link to your own website).

The site’s signup flow is a little too involved (you’ll have to verify each SMS/voice account you want to send messages to, decide if you want to use the signature feature, and so on). But once you’re set up it’s pretty straightforward, with tabs listing your filters, signatures, and an inbox of messages that your filters have flagged as especially important.

The service works best if you’re using Gmail in tandem with AwayFind’s browser extensions, which are available in Firefox and Chrome, and lets you set up filters directly from your inbox (AwayFind also has an email gadget on the Google Apps Marketplace, which is the company’s fastest growing segment of user acquisition). If you aren’t on Gmail, AwayFind also supports other email accounts through IMAP and Exchange; you just won’t be able to use the browser extension and will have to manage your filters from the AwayFind site.

As with similar services, AwayFind can potentially access your email messages, which may turn off security-conscious users. That said, it uses oAuth to access your Gmail account which is safer than if you were actually handing over your password (which you’ll have to do if you want to use an IMAP account). And AwayFind says it only stores content from your email when you tell it to archive messages.

The service is free for now, with plans to eventually change to a freemium setup — the company is still deciding which features will be free and which will only be available to premium users.

Also see Etacts, a Y Combinator-funded company that helps you keep in touch with the contacts that are most important to you (see our past coverage here).

Okay, admittedly, this doesn’t have a lot to do with tech other than the fact that it’s on YouTube. But it’s awesome. And happens to mashup two of our favorite memes in recently memory: Double Rainbow and Hitler Is Upset.

Mike loves the Double Rainbow thing so much that he made a mashup with me, the iPhone, and the two glorious rainbows. Meanwhile, the Hitler thing never gets old. It would just be great if the filmmakers would loosen up and stop taking them down from YouTube.

For now, we may have to enjoy it this way. Behold: Hitler Sees A Double Rainbow. “Don’t tell me what to do, I’m looking at a double rainbow! It’s soooo beautiful!“

I wrote about ShirtsMyWay, the design-your-own dress shirt service, last month. I've since learned about a variety of other sites providing customized products, and I'll be writing a wrap-up post about the trend toward custominzation in general some time soon. But for now, please enjoy this brief review of the shirts created by ShirtsMyWay, and learn how one lucky reader can get a chance to win $500 to spend at ShirtsMyWay.com!

Businesses both big and small are flocking to social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Foursquare. The fact is that a presence on these platforms not only allows companies to engage in conversations with consumers, but also serves as an outlet to drive sales through deals and coupons.

And while major brands like Starbucks, Virgin, and Levi’s have been participating in the social web for some time now, the rate of adoption among small businesses is increasing too. According to a recent University of Maryland study, social media adoption by small businesses has doubled from 12% to 24% in the last year. But as these businesses look to Facebook and Twitter to connect with customers, many are finding that some strategies work and some do not produce results. We’ll be exploring these questions at a panel on Social Media and Businesses at our Social Currency CrunchUp on July 30. We’ve found some local and national businesses using social media effectively, ranging from Levi’s to a creme brulee cart, whose case studies are below.  Some of these businesses will be sharing their experiences at the CrunchUp (You can buy tickets to the CrunchUp here).

The Creme Brulee Man: Food from street carts have become a foodie favorite for San Franciscans. Food carts travel from neighborhood to neighborhood, offering their delicacies to a range of local foodies. But without a set location, how do these carts let consumers know where they will be? Well, through Twitter of course. Curtis Kimball, the man behind the enormously popular Creme Brulee Cart in San Francisco, has quickly amassed over 12,000 followers in a little over a year. He knows that most of his business comes from people who follow him on Twitter because Twitter is the only way you can find the cart’s location for the day, says Kimball, a former construction worker turned creme brulee expert. “It gives people a valid reason to follow me,” he says.

The other use of Twitter for Kimball is to tell people what flavor of creme brulee he is serving in a given day. And Kimball says that Twitter gives him the ability to develop a personal relationship with his followers and others. He says he tries to engage his followers by asking for suggestions of what type of custard to serve or where he should park his cart, and he always tries to keep things humorous.

Kimball says he has no marketing budget and Twitter has been a great way to amass fans. He doesn’t have as much of a presence on Facebook, and he’s not sure the model is as efficient as Twitter. “Twitter can absorb more than Facebook with very little effort,” Kimball adds. Yelp has also been a valuable source of referrals for the entrepreneur. The cart has 224 reviews and is rated with 4 and a half stars.

Joie De Vivre: Joie De Vivre, a company that operates 33 luxury hotels in California is using a variety of social media platforms to drive sales and marketing for its properties. Central to the hotel group’s strategy is disseminating deals and coupons to followers and fans on Facebook and Twitter. Every Tuesday, Joie De Vivre’s Twitter account will Tweet an exclusive deal to its nearly 10,000 followers. Followers have only hours to book the steeply discounted room rate. For example, this past Tuesday, it offered $79 rooms at the group’s Galleria Park Hotel in San Francisco in November and December. The company also operates similar deals for its 5,000-plus Facebook fans on Fridays.

In less than a year, Joie De Vivre has booked over 1,000 room nights through these types of deals—rooms that otherwise would have stayed empty.  The company has also started a partnership with coupons site Mobile Spinach to offer coupons for the group’s restaurants. And the company has partnered with Foursquare to offer deals for check-ins at its various restaurants. In terms of flash sales, Joir De Vivre has done a number of deals with travel sites like Gilt’s Jetsetter as well as RueLaLa, and Nadeau says these deals have done moderately well.

The company’s marketing VP Ann Nadeau tells me that because of the economy the hotel industry’s marketing budgets have shrunk, and social media efforts have proved to be a great way to both drive sales and build loyalty. The company’s social media efforts are not solely deal based. This summer, Joie De Vivre encouraged consumers to enter its Road Trippin’ California contest, which asked people to submit videos on YouTube that share why they love California. Three winners, out of 270 videos that were submitted, were selected to win all-expense California road trips with stays in the company’s hotels.

In terms of using social media for customer service, Nadeau says that each property hotel manager is responsible for monitoring conversations and reviews on Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp.

Stone Korean Kitchen: Co-founded last November by chef Terry Lin, and LinkedIn employees Robby Kwok and Dan Yoo, Stone Korean Kitchen aims to bring modern Korean cuisine to the Financial District in San Francisco. Yoo tells me that as soon as the restaurant launched, he started a presence on social media sites, including Twitter, Yelp, and Facebook. But the challenge of many small businesses with social media is driving traffic to the right social media channel rather than splitting it between various sites. Yoo says that interconnecting content between the various profiles has helped gain Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Currently the restaurant’s Twitter profile has 65 followers and its Facebook page has 107 fans.  Many of these are repeat customers.  For a small restaurant, it doesn’t take that many loyal customers to keep the kitchen busy.

Yoo says that he consistently Tweets links to comments and reviews on the Facebook page. Of course, Yoo also stresses the importance of managing Yelp reviews and responding to customer complaints on social media platforms.

But what really tipped the scales for Yoo was Groupon (disclosure: my husband works for Groupon).  Yoo says that restaurant saw significant traction in both sales and traffic to its Yelp sites and Facebook page when the restaurant signed up for a Groupon deal in April. Stone Korean Kitchen sold 2600 groupons in one day, and saw a packed house for two months for both lunch and dinner. Now Yoo says that they see around 5 to 10 Groupons per day instead of 30 or 40 but the restaurant is still seeing a good number of repeat customers from the Groupon deal, says Yoo.

One effect of the Groupon deal, besides increased sales, was that there were a flux of Yelp reviews. It took the company six months to accumulate 80 reviews on Yelp and after the deal, the restaurant accumulated 90 reviews within three months. Yoo also says that he’s seen a steady increase in Foursquare check-ins following the Groupon deal.

Of course, since Yoo and Kwok are both LinkedIn employees (chef Lin manages the restaurant on a day-to-day basis), they put their heads together to figure out how they could use the professional social network to drive sales. With the ad targeting capabilities on LinkedIn, the restaurant started serving ads that target lawyers and bankers in the San Francisco area, as both industries are centralized in the financial district. They’ve noticed an increase in foot traffic and corporate catering requests as a result.  In the future, Yoo says that the restaurant is working on a promotion with Foursquare. And he is in talks with Twitter on featuring a deal on the social network’s new Earlybird venture.

Dr. Irena Vaksman, Dentist: Social media and dentistry don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but one San Francisco dentist has forged an impressive social media campaign to raise awareness of her recently launched practice. She has a Twitter profile, a Facebook page, a YouTube channel and an website. Dr. Vaksman’s husband, lawyer Robert Vaksman, has been the strategist behind her social media efforts. Robert says that his wife is confronted with the challenge of practicing in a building that houses hundreds of other dentists that have more established practices. He says that it’s a no brainer to be looking at as many social channels as possible for marketing efforts.

While the practice is still young, the Vaksmans say that they are starting to see patients and potential patients begin to communicate with them on the Facebook page, which has 70 fans. Vaksman will publish her Yelp reviews from patients on the site as well as YouTube videos containing educational content about dental procedures. Twitter is still a fairly new forum for the practice says Robert, and he’s still trying to determine the best way to engage with potential customers on the network.

Last October, Dr. Vaksman signed up for a Groupon deal in San Francisco, and received 320 new patients because of the deal, which was for a patient exam and x-ray. The Vaksmans say that the deal propelled the five month old business in the right direction and boosted its patient base significantly. Robert is also looking into partnering with Facebook campaign startup Wildfire to set up a promotional sweepstakes for the practice’s Facebook page.

Levi’s: Now more than ever, retail brands are engaging consumers on social networks to offer deals, allow users to socialize around purchases, and more. Levi’s Jeans was one of the brands that was first to use Facebook as a tool for sales and marketing initiatives and has launched a number of compelling campaigns using Facebook.

As one of Facebook’s initial partners using the social network’s new Like functionality, Levi’s allows Facebook users to like products on Levi’s online store and its Facebook page (which has nearly 500,000 likes) and share their favorite items with their friends. Within the first week, Levi’s got more than 4,000 likes, says Inside Facebook.

The jeans giant also promoted a major campaign in conjunction with SXSW this year, partnering with music publication The Fader to promote a music event at the festival. The company worked with brand marketing platform Involver to incorporate music and video into their page, with the hopes of driving music fans to buy jeans from the Levi’s brand. Most recently, Levi’s has begun to promote retail offerings with geo-targeted event advertisements on Facebook.

In terms of Twitter, Levi’s recently enlisted a “Levi’s Guy,” 23-year-old USC graduate Gareth, to engage consumers on the microblogging platform. He has over 6,000 followers and is responsible for responding to and engaging in conversations about the Levi’s brand on Twitter. The company is currently in the process of trying to find a Levi’s Girl, which will serve as a female foil to Gareth.

Levi's director of digital marketing, Megan O'Connor, told us that the engagement with both Twitter and Facebook is about creating and informing brand ambassadors that will help drive sales through their own actions and word of mouth.

Starbucks: Most experts will agree that Starbucks has one of the best social media strategies out there.  Now that it is giving away free WiFi, it is even more of a magnet for roving laptop warriors.  And with 10 million Facebook fans, Starbucks is now close to surpassing the Facebook fan base of Lady Gaga. The company has held a number of promotions on its page to drive engagement. For example, Starbucks held a promotion for free pastries on its Facebook page, allowing customers to access a coupon that would give them a free pastry with a purchase of a coffee drink. Advertising on the social network has also helped to drive traffic to Starbucks’ page.

In terms of Twitter, Starbucks has also been incredibly active on the microblogging network, amassing nearly one million followers. Not only does the company’s Twitter stream serve as an engagement tool with customers who are talking about the brand on Twitter, but it is also used as a way to spread news from Starbucks. Starbucks has also participated in Twitter’s promoted Tweets program, which allows advertisers to buy sponsored links on Twitter.

The combination of geolocation and social networks is also a huge avenue for Starbucks and the company was one of the first major brands to broker a deal with popular location-based social network Foursquare. In March, Starbucks started offering Foursquare mayors of retail stores special ‘Barista’ badges that would come with discounts on drinks and food. Starbucks also partnered recently with mobile social network Brightkite to give members special discounts on drinks.

Photo Credit/Flickr/Snickclunck