This week we explain why brands should do their best to remain nonplussed

Last week, CharityInsight.com played host to an online debate about using social media to benefit non-profit organisations. It asked five sets of questions on behalf of charities that are all six’s and seven’s about the social web. Our very own Rachel Beer was one of the panellists.

Facebook is seeing some changes to its usage and user base. Meanwhile, Google is hoping their latest social features will take off. Let the social network battle for popularity commence!

On the 6 month anniversary of beautiful bytes we bring news that DOWNLOAD TO DONATE encourages donations in exchange for new music, Hootsuite updates its suite of tools, Foursquare reaches 10 million users and Everything Everywhere permanently suspends text donation fees.

YouTube reveals research on ad skipping YouTube recently launched a new TrueView advertising proposition. It’s a scheme in which viewers can skip video ads after five seconds and the advertiser only pays when viewers choose to watch. Subsequent research into ad skipping has thrown up some interesting findings. TrueView works in one of two ways: [...]

This week’s focus is on social search. Bing integrate Facebook into it’s search, and Facebook play dirty when Google try to do the same.

This week’s beautiful bytes looks at how the launch of JustTextGiving, Likester and Unity could impact the sector and looks at an innovative use of Groupon for clever crowdsourcing.

Social media have been around for years now, so it might be reasonable to assume that our attitudes to them, and the way they’re used, should be reaching some kind of maturity. But they still feel very much like the new kids on the block in the media mix and they still seem to be much misunderstood, not entirely trusted and certainly not proven in the eyes of many.

This week we look at free agents and how social media enables them to inspire more people and generate more donations than ever before. We question whether Google should buy LinkedIn and reveal new tech acquisitions that will impact the sector. Finally we concede that Lady Gaga does some good to the world.

Highlights from the live question and answer panel for Guardian voluntary sector network. The panel answered questions on how your organisation can best use social media to raise awareness. An overview of the Q&A in the most general sense sees panellists urging organisations to use a simple, integrative to approach to social media.

The old volume vs value debate is always ongoing and is as pertinent as ever with the arrival, and spread, of social media. But the way people communicate has changed, the tools we have are different, and so the debate has moved on…

Google encroaches on Facebook and Foursquare turf, pressure increases for Apple to allow in-app donations and getting buy-in for development of your online strategy

Swipegood makes donating even easier, Google updates offering to non-profits, check-in to Facebook events and Twitter may be soon to roll out brand pages

As her time at beautiful world draws to a close Lucy looks back on her eight weeks as an intern.

Facebook introduces a new version of Questions, Google takes on competition with NFC payments and Plus one Service and LinkedIn reaches 100 million members

This week, Facebook ads to star your face, Twestival kicks off and Twitter celebrates its fifth birthday

We are marking Twitter’s game-changing micro-blogging service’s fifth birthday by highlighting five significant charity landmarks that have transpired in 140 characters

In those situations where a punchy encapsulation of your situation floods over you and you think “I’m going to tweet about that funny character on the bus/free coffee from random coffee chain” which Twitter client does your smartphone thumb instinctively reach for first? Is it Echofon? TweetDeck?