Many banks have started using social websites to help them with everything from healing the financial industry to promoting their latest credit cards. By embracing the most popular tools available, the industry has also been embracing the best of what social media culture has to offer, and smaller, community banks seem to be leading the charge when it comes to social media innovation.

This post profiles some U.S. banks that have used social media in their marketing and communications plans in some interesting and successful ways. These banks have tapped into the root of what social media means to the community, enjoying success in the way of returning real value for their institutions.

Era solo cuestión de tiempo. Colombia, un país que históricamente no ha sido líder en América Latina en la penetración de Internet ostentaba desde hace un par de años el título de ser el país de habla hispana con mayor penetración de Facebook. Superaba incluso a España, un país del primer mundo con una penetración de Internet mucho mayor (hoy en día España tiene más de 9 millones de lineas de banda ancha) y a Brasil, Argentina, Chile y México, países históricamente líderes en la penetración de Internet.

En América Latina Colombia todavía es el país con mayor número de usuarios de Facebook (6.3 millones de Colombianos tienen cuenta en Facebook) y le siguen Argentina, Chile y México con 5.9, 5.2 y 4.2 millones de usuarios respectivamente. España, que ahora cuenta con 6.4 millones de usuarios lidera la tabla de países hispanos y ocupa la quinta posición en el ranking europeo después del Reino Unido, Turquía, Italia y Francia.

Coupon site Savings.com just got a redesign and a new board member: Mahalo CEO (and TechCrunch50 co-host) Jason Calacanis. “They’ve broken $10 million in revenue after just a couple of years,” says Calacanis, “and are crushing it in the deals space. Obviously this is a great place to be in a recession.”

For four years now we’ve been following Patagonia Footwear as they strive to apply their business manta of “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis” to the art of shoemaking.

Now we’ve been invited to join Patagonia Footwear as they accept a challenge from Backpacker Magazine to build a backpacking boot with the least environmental impact, as part of the mag’s “Zero Impact Challenge.” TreeHugger will be tagging along as Patagonia transparently reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly of the entire design process. Read below about this will all come together.

China’s energy administration is drawing up plans to increase power generation from renewable sources to 15 percent of the nation’s total by 2020. To do so, the country will rely more on solar, wind and biomass energy with the goal of deriving more than 200 million emissions-free kilowatts.

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Wikipedia en Español acaba de alcanzar el hito de los 500.000 artículos publicados. El proyecto global arrancó en 2001 y la versión en español lo hizo en mayo del mismo año. Eso quiere decir que en unos 3.000 días se han publicado medio millón de artículos en nuestro idioma, casi unas 170 nuevas incorporaciones al día. ¡Felicidades a todos, especialmente a los bibliotecarios que la cuidan!

Neither music historians nor hard-core metal fans will gasp to learn that the band Staind, with songs like “Painful” and “Mudshovel,” tends to go far more negative in its lyrics than did the heavyweight of soul, Luther Vandross, whose many hits included “The Closer I Get to You.” Or that Slayer (“Raining Blood”) paints darker word pictures than Faith Evans (“I’ll Be Missing You”).

The global rise of Facebook is nothing less than astounding. In the month of June alone it gained 24 million unique visitors worldwide, compared to the month before, for a total of 340 million unique visitors worldwide. It is now the fourth largest site in the world, trailing only Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo sites, according to comScore (see table below). Facebook itself only officially acknowledges 250 million active registered users (but you don’t have to be a registered user to visit some Facebook pages).