We hear a lot about how the communications community is changing and we see more and more interactive applications, streaming media and social interactions, but services that specialize in entertainment seem to grow faster than the sector as a whole. This growth is definitely led by online video, but it isn't just about watching. Users now want to interact with video. Check out "BigStage". BigStage's software was originally funded by the CIA, which wanted 3-D computer models of suspects' faces to match against images in a database. The company's commercial customers take three digital pictures of themselves and upload them to BigStage's servers, and in about 50 seconds, they have a digital avatar that they can insert into videos or photos. Users will be able to post the ­videos to their ­Facebook pages or e-mail them to friends; eventually, they should also be able to purchase brand-name virtual accessories for their digital selves.

...you get the Most Innovative Celebrities in Digital Media, or, the Econoclast10.

Last week the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint released a study that analyzed the 100 most valuable brands (according to BusinessWeek/Interbrand) and how they engage across 11 different online social-media venues. The result of the study was published as  "engagement database" that critiqued the brands on not only their breadth of engagement across these channels, but also their depth, such as whether they reply to comments made on blog posts. Each brand was given a numerical score. The top 10 ENGAGEMENTdb brands with their scores are:

1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie - Yahoo!/Intel (85)

The full report is available at http://bit.ly/KRGNt. Personally, it's questionable to assume that  a company's social engagement can be correlated with its financial performance.   But, in Steve Rubel's words "good use of social media could be seen as a proxy for an innovative culture, eagerness to engage with consumers and take risks, a net positive for any business." Much more interesting then this is however to take a look at what the social media strategy of those brands have in common: All top brands weren't afraid of innovation, did so early, often (also after set-backs) and incrementally:

• Starbucks and Dell were early to leverage their fans for corporate crowd-sourcing.
• With Nikeplus.com, Nike was early in the game to use an innovative technology in order to connect its worldwide fan base in early 2006.
• Quite a few of the top 10 brands embraced Twitter early and in innovative ways. Amazon started offering deals on Twitter back in 2007 and EBay started to live-tweet earnings in 2008.
• Microsoft encouraged their employees to blog as early as in the late 1990. Yahoo and Google started and actively promoted their corporate and product blogs in 2004
• Other top brands were building out communities to connect customers and employees early on. Microsoft, for example, launched its inventive Channel 9 platform for developers back in 2004

No need to fret - turns out all that time spent trawling the search engines for the latest and greatest gossip...er...important news items is in no way detrimental to your brain functionality. On the contrary, a recent study shows that this activity among seasoned internet users actually promotes brain activity. Check out the full article at USA Today.

After the news leaked over the weekend, Walmart confirmed that it will roll out a new de-hyphenated logo.

While most companies flog their make-overs, Walmart's overly restrained release seems intended to tamp down any speculation that the company is struggling to find a new sweet spot, as competitors get increasingly efficient and Target's model continues to pick up steam.

Here's the parse.

Walmart: Walmart U.S. Refreshes Stores' Logo

Translation: We're not changing our logo. We're refreshing it.

Walmart: For the past two years, a customer focused transformation has been taking place in Walmart's U.S. business.

Translation: We've pushed the price-as-the-only-differentiator model as far as it can go.

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Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit, gives a great 3-minute rundown on the power of social media. Check it out at TED here.