Kevin: Every newspaper wants to be The Economist. Even during the recession, the magazine's revenues and circulation are growing. Jeff Jarvis compares The Economist to Apple. Both companies break all of the 40 rules Jarvis laid out in his book What Would Google Do?. They succeed because they are uniquely good. "The problem for the rest of the industry is that they can’t all break the rules as The Economist does because they’re just not that good. You have to be great to the The Economist or Apple and if you fall short, you fall all the way. And staying great is constant work."

Kevin: The Washington Post decided to publish a 7,000 word, two-part series only on their website. "The Post cited the financial pressures facing the company as the reason for publishing the feature exclusively online. Is this something that you would consider? Why or why not?"

Kevin: Todd Ziegler at The Bivings Group, a digital consultancy in Washington DC, finds "Traffic from Twitter and Facebook is increasing by 20-30% per month on the sites I manage that (1) produce content on a consistent basis and (2) are working to promote themselves on these platforms." But they don't drive much traffic on sites that 'aren't actively engaged on those platforms".

Kevin: A new blog about Facebook has launched. To get some buzz, they revealed a hack that could expose crucial profile data. Facebook quickly plugged the hole. Memo to self: Don't rely on privacy settings to keep data private.

Kevin: Google has greatly improved their maps of Iran through their Mapmaker programme, which allows users to add details to Google maps. O'Reilly looks at the improvement in mapping in just a couple of Iranian cities.

Kevin: Steve Outing is sceptical of news organisations demanding that users pay for content, but he says that news organisations need to investigate ways that effortlessly allow people to pay for content. He was one of first to write about Kachingle, which has an intriguing model that allows people to support the sites they love, and other companies are starting to provide similar services.

Kevin: How not to use Twitter. Habitat, an up-scale furniture company in the UK, is accused of using spamming popular hashtags with offers, including using hashtags related to the Iranian election protests.