"Social media spending in the U.S. will increase from $716 million this year to more than $3.1 billion in 2014, a 34% compound annual growth rate, according to a forecast from Forrester Research released this week at the Forrester Research Marketing Forum.

Social media spending will grow faster than spending in other interactive marketing channels, which will grow at a 17% CAGR, according to Forrester. “For consumer-facing companies, that means tapping into consumers’ increasing expectation that they will participate with your brand. For b-to-b firms, it means leveraging the power of innovative customers who are increasingly engaging with their peers to solve their problems,” Christine Overby, Forrester Research VP-research director, said in a statement."

Guess who doesn't have a funny bone?

"his study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements."