And a chilly one it is. Here’s all the news that’s fit to blog this week:

Friday:
1. According to European pollster Ipsos MORI, blogs are already having a big impact on business in Europe. 34% of Europeans say they have not purchased something after reading negative comments on a blog, while 52% said they were more likely to purchase after reading positive comments. Blogs are now also second only to newspapers as a trusted source of information. You can read the full article here.

Thursday:
1. Tony Bradley, President of Europe-based Chartered Institute of Public Relations (“CIPR is the largest public relations institute in Europe…”) announced that they’re updating their code of conduct to include social media; a discussion paper has been released to facilitate this.

Wednesday:
1. Here’s some analysis of the YouTube/CBS stats I posted about this week. There’s a vague suggestion that something funny is going on, but not enough data to get a clear picture. Keep your eye on this one.

Tuesday:
1. GREAT article from Niall Kennedy about spam and social media – particularly instructive is his explanation of spam farms and how they work. It’s been widely publicized (because it’s a great piece) and I am sure that social networking sites are a-scramblin’.

Saturday:
1. Perhaps you have heard of the “peanut butter memo” sent by Yahoo senior vice president Brad Garlinghouse and leaked to the media last weekend? The blogosphere is all a-twitter about it. You can read the full text here. It’s being labelled the PB memo because “Yahoo is spreading its resources too thinly, like peanut butter on a slice of bread.” As discussed last week, they’re certainly playing catch-up when it comes to social media.

Last Thursday
1. Great post reminding us that social media is not mass media and that the real challenge for advertisers in the next 5 years will be to develop new models that are scalable for both.

Last Friday:
1. Bluestreak released a study called Emerging Digital Channels: Consumer Adoption, Attitudes & Behavior. Respondents had to use email and at least one of the other technologies being tracked (it was a sort of “early adopter” group they’re getting insight into) and here’s the top-level graph, stolen from eMarketer.com:

For marketers, the most important insight is probably the fact that users do not hate ads (except for text message ads, but this probably has more to do with the fact that users of that technology are essentially paying to have someone try and sell them stuff, which is understandably annoying).

Various:
1. A discount airfare reseller called Farecast has a function whereby you can track fare prices by RSS. You simply select the trip(s) you’re interested in taking, create a feed and add it to your RSS reader and you’re ready to jump on that $49 flight to NYC the minute it becomes available – brilliant.

Have a great weekend!