Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Do "likes" and retweets add up to sales? Who knows

At an annual gathering of budding socially conscious businesspeople the money-for-good-deeds company held a competition to find the best path toward massive growth. For a company that wants to quickly grow its business from 2 million users to 10 million, there are a few obvious steps to take: consultants, marketing, focus groups. One less obvious step is the one Recyclebank --the company that offers redeemable rewards for recycling and other good behavior--took in its quest to grow: hold a competition of young social entrepreneurs to see who could come up with the best idea.

On a recent Thursday , Hipmunk's CEO, Adam Goldstein, laid out his travel plans.

In the midst of the Egyptian revolution, David Gorodyansky and Eugene Malobrodsky, co-founders of AnchorFree , came in to work one sunny morning and realized something peculiar: Overnight, their company had scored about a million new customers in Egypt. "It was absolutely fascinating," says Gorodyansky. "Our original idea for AnchorFree was to make your Facebook and e-mail become just as secure as a banking site.

Alexa Andrzejewski returned to San Francisco from a vacation to Japan with an idea: a field guide to global food.

A look behind the scenes at what it took to make it onto this year's list, and at some of the emerging trends it illuminates about young entrepreneurship today. What does it take to make the 30 Under 30 list? It's a question that we're asked often, and one that's a bit difficult to answer.

While working at Facebook in 2009, Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever had a question: Why isn't there a place on the Internet where a question can be answered by someone who actually knows the answer? That question led the pair to start Quora , a Q&A website that allows users to share knowledge. You can pose a question, answer a question, and edit others' answers

Facebook VP David Fischer explicitly downplayed the social network's role in Middle Eastern revolutions to an Israeli conference which included a tech industry who's-who. One of Facebook's highest-ranking international executives told a dignitary-packed Israeli conference that the website played a minimal role in the Arab Spring .

What do you do if creative agencies are constantly bugging you to create new ways to promote brands on your network? Hold a competition

Today Foursquare announced a nationwide partnership with American Express to offer discounts to cardholders when they check in at select merchants. Now, after linking your AmEx card to your Foursquare account, you'll be able to earn special offers at certain retailers and restaurants: Spend $75 at H&M, for example, and you'll get $10 back on your next statement.

Impressive "parlor tricks" are no longer enough to win, said the jurors. This year's Grand Prix recipients combined classing storytelling with a systemic use of interactivity

Women are more prolific networkers in male-dominated industries. Is social media correcting the real-life old-boys' club? Women are the best networkers in the tobacco and ranching industries; men rule cosmetics, according to LinkedIn 's new study of the 21st century workforce, Battle of the Sexes, in which the social network tapped its massive trove of user data to examine gender imbalances between industries.

These days, it takes nearly a half-dozen apps to keep up with all our fragmented social networks. But a new app out today called Banjo aims to solve those disconnections by integrating all your social networks into one streamlined service. We shoot out quick updates to friends on Facebook.

The Fast Company reader's essential rundown of who's breaking into and shaking up your tech space--updated all day. Skanz Are Wearable Business Cards/Social Network The New York Consumer Electronic Week conference will outfit all attendees with a QR-code wristband that activities a sophisticated business card-like app called Skanz. In addition to basic info, Skanz is a mini-social network that facilitates offline interacting after the conference--in other words, no more trying to cram even more URLs and social media IDs onto increasingly tinier slivers of what was once called a business card (for more business-card ditching strategies, see our post from SXSW)

“I don’t know if you’ve ever walked a pit bull. You owe it to your life to walk a pit bull down the street, I’m telling you. It’s like a gun you can pet, it’s the only way to describe it, it’s awesome.” Comedian Bill Burr.