We’re always on the look out for instructive and intelligent social media case studies and debate, if only to cut through the deafening noise of social media blather being produced on an hourly basis.

So we were interested to download and read The Social Contract: Customers, Companies, Communities, Conversations in the Age of the Collaborative Relationship, published as an ebook by The Social Customer.com.

A slim but interesting tome, The Social Contract spares us the self-aggrandising of so-many social media PR and marketing experts and focuses on the nitty-gritty of what so-much online conversation about brands is really about – shoddy customer service.

This is an edited compendium of guest voices and the book’s strength comes from being able to drawing on the experiences of smart thinkers like Chris Brogan, Radian 6’s David Alston, Comcasts Frank Eliason and Barnes & Noble’s Kevin Ryan.

Admittedly there is nothing radically new here for anyone already working in the trenches of social media customer service but one central theme emerges from the writing time and time again: social media customer service is only as good as the structures a company has in place to rectify the parts of its operations that have been found wanting. That, by natural extension, suggests that social media’s full effect will be felt throughout the entire operations and DNA of global business as opposed to the balkanized approach of many current PR and marketing social initiatives.

As John Burton, Director Product Management at SAP Labs, succinctly titles his “chapter” Don’t Bother Wasting Money on Social Media Until Your Organization Can Competently Handle A Customer Phone Call of Email.

Those that can are best prepared to capitalize on the feedback and insight they will receive from social media customer service. As Radian6’s David Alston writes: “With the advent of Web 2.0, blogging, tweeting, and commenting have become far easier than looking up a phone number and waiting in a queue. Thankfully, a growing number of companies have realized this and are staffing up to assist customers on the channel they choose — the two-way channel called social media.”

For Alston, the worst thing a company can do is leave its customers hanging  on the social phone.

You can download the ebook from The Social Customer site.

On Facebook, there are over 60,000 fans who’ve declared their devotion to Cartier. Rolex is even bigger. While this social networking love affair certainly speaks well for the brand’s marketing efforts, it may not translate into so-called “social shopping” sales – at least not at the moment. That’s the verdict of a new study that looks into how the affluent demographic set uses social networks.

According to Unity Marketing, the affluent’s (defined as having an average income of $239,000) use of social networks has grown nearly five-fold since 2007, and even more so among young affluents. That’s the good news for luxury brands.

But eMarketer takes a closer look at the findings and shows that the rich use social networking sites mainly to stay in contact, have fun and share photos. Using social networks to glean product information or shopping tips from friends, family and acquaintances, meanwhile, falls at the bottom of their social networking behavior. And, they are not to keen to “friend” brands, the study shows.

Still, the authors point out that social shopping is a new retailing phenomenon, but growing, even among the super rich.

Online fashion retailer ASOS is one of the most social savvy of brands. It has over 230,000 followers combined signed up to its Facebook, Bebo and MySpace pages, and nearly 30,000 more tuning in regularly to the ASOS Twitter feed.

The AIM-listed retailer has little choice:the site is aimed “primarily at fashion forward 16-34 year olds,” in other words, the social networking demographic sweet spot. Having anything less than a full-on presence here would be bad for business.

The retailer this week has pushed the social media envelope yet again, this time building a site consisting of nothing but the streaming Twitter feeds of those it regards as the most influential fashion Tweeters. The ASOS Follows Fashion Twitter aggregator streams fashion tips, photos, links – everything for the “fashion-forward” trendster – from the likes of designers, photographers, journalists and brands. Here’s a peek:

As James Hart, ecommerce director at ASOS, told NMA:

“We’ve been chatting to our customers through social media for a few years but we also follow and interact with some of fashion’s greatest through Twitter. With asosfollowsfashion.com we get to share this passion.”

A fascinating example of how a brand is reinforcing its authority in the online community though the simplest of gestures: sharing what it considers worth following with its followers.

There are some social sites that busy business execs might want to understand but don’t need to visit.

This excellent commentary of new social phenom Chatroulette just about says it all:

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Glancing through Creativity Online’s annual list of the 50 most inspiring and influential creative personalities of last year, we couldn’t help but notice how important social media innovation has become in the creative industries.

The founders/creators of Posterous, Foursquare, Tumblr and Spotify all get a nod and so does major brand world that might once have been imagined only as large advertising campaigns – namely Forsman & Bodenfors Facebook showroom work for Ikea, DDB Stockholm’s inspired Fun Theory work for Volkswagen and what we call the “beyond campaign” approach of Ford and its launch of the new Ford Focus. (On a personal note it was also great see our friends Matt Ross and Matt Oxley from Tribal DDB honoured for their work for Hasbro).

Too many times creative agencies and their clients are wowed by their own, um, creativity and not by the real, identifiable interests of the customer. This socially-smart work demonstrates that creativity and understanding customers’ needs are not mutually exclusive.

They also point to a truth that all the major brands are beginning to understand. Social media communities expect to be treated as equals by brands whether it’s being entertained in a promotional venture or offered support through customer service. By combining creative thinking with community participation (creative they can use for want of a better term) brands win kudos from and create a connection with their customers in a way no print or TV ad campaign can achieve.

Speak to any corporate comms honcho and they’ll tell you de-fuzing a Twitter #fail storm can be not just a PR headache, but can really sink the brand’s reputation. On the flip side, there’s no better publicity than genuine customer praise cascading across Twitter. Still, we want to know: who outnumbers whom, the haters or the lovers?

The good news is that good news beats bad most days on Twitter. Just look at all the congratulatory Tweets (sprinkled in between far fewer groans) for Oscar winners trending this morning. Or, represented graphically here thanks to TwitterSpectrum:

Drill down to the brand level though and it’s not nearly that warm and fuzzy. Ad Age points out this morning on its latest Top 10 Most Tweeted Brands chart that two well known names – the BBC in the UK and BET in the US – made the list for all the wrong reasons last week: respectively, unpopular programming cuts and an unfavorable hashtag trend. And, a quick glimpse of what’s trending on #fail this morning shows some big names: Apple, Telstra and American Express are all taking their knocks for perceived customer service failings.

What does this all say? Twitter, on aggregate, is more positive than negative. That’s not too surprising when you consider Twitter reflects the sum total of our opinions, observations, jokes and yes, gripes and kudos, and that most days that all adds up to be more positive than negative.

I’m even going to suggest that when brands are trending for all the wrong reasons this too can represent a positive development. It’s a free report card on how you are doing in all areas of your business. And this can be more valuable than a sudden eruption of praise. So, embrace the bad news. And learn from it.

Remember when CRM was the holy grail of customer insight? Back before social media came along and promised to really tell you what your customers are thinking and doing.

Well you won’t be surprised to know that combining the decade-old lessons of CRM with the evolving church of social media understanding is a discipline marketers are willing to invest a great deal of time and thinking to.

Enter Altimeter’s Jeremiah Oywang with his consultancy’s new study: Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management.

The Twitter advertizing platform isn’t even live yet and the UK’s advertizing standards watchdog already wants tighter controls. The same goes for Facebook.According to The Guardian, the ASA wants oversight of all forms of social media advertising, not just the digital remit it has today of banner and web site display ads. The ASA says tighter controls of social media marketing – i.e. governing how user profiles may be used by advertisers wishing to incorporate their fresh faces in real time into their promotions – is designed to protect children and minors on social networks.

The ASA’s push into social media marketing comes as little surprise. Any time members of the public knowingly (hopefully, knowingly) participate in a brand campaign it opens up a whole new set of advertising standards issues. For privacy scaremongers, take heart: most major brands tread with extreme caution when it comes to incorporating the public into their brand campaigns. Still, the sting of an ASA sanction/fine should make all marketers even doubly cautious.

If you listen to pundits of the Silver Screen, the competition for “Best Picture” comes down to just two films: James Cameron’s “Avatar” and Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker.” But that’s not how it’s playing out on Facebook.

We thought we’d have a little fun with the “Best Picture” Oscar competition by taking a look at which studios have best harnessed social media (specifically, Facebook) to build buzz ahead of Sunday’s Academy Awards decision. Yes, this would probably be an exercise better suited for “The People’s Choice Awards, but here goes.

We looked at the 10 nominees to see which have amassed the biggest Facebook fan base, a telling sign of the buzziest films of the year.

The envelope please.

Okay, so maybe it comes as no surprise that Cameron & crew win here. More surprisingly, “The Hurt Locker” falls in the lower half of the top 10. Without a doubt, Cameron has built up the most successful social media marketing effort the film industry has ever seen, another reason why it’s broken all kinds of box office records. Earlier this week, Nielsen released new data showing “Avatar” was leading the field by a wide margin in Internet buzz as well.

So, it won’t even be close Sunday night. Hand the Oscar to the “Avatar” crew – for best use of social media, anyhow.

At some point yesterday, Twitter surpassed the 10 billion Tweets mark, which, you’re no doubt wondering, means what exactly? Well, it’s just another measure to tell us what we already know: the micro-blogging platform is now mainstream.

Consider these quick observations: usage (by volume of Tweets) doubled in the past four months and has grown 10-fold in about 15 months (from 1 billion in November, 2008).

At the same time, corporate Twitter usage is growing, though much more slowly. According to a new study, 27 of the Fortune 100 companies now have an active Twitter feed.

From our discussion with companies, many more are soon to follow, or are at least considering a corporate Twitter policy. Which ones? In the UK, think an entire sector of the high street landscape that is not yet on Twitter: yep, the banks. When they do make the plunge, we advise they look at our Ten Commandments for Corporate Tweeting.