Mary Fletcher Jones offers a bright look at a gloomy economy for those using new media. On The Fletcher Prince Blog, Mary offers a fascinating reflection on a PRWeek Survey that concluded, “Despite weakened economic conditions, over 75 percent of senior marketers say they expect spending for new media and online initiatives to increase in the next year.” The study goes on to say that digital marketing is a discipline that can grow in a sluggish economy.

Are social networking sights a businesses’ Friend or Foe? Network Observations‘ Stephen Brown highlights a study by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. that considers this matter in great depth. Brown offers insight into some of the positive and negative aspects of social networks in the workplace, and includes some of the study’s key statistics. For example, the fact that “social networks are banned by 25% of businesses,” and that 50% of businesses say that social networking isn’t a problem, so long as employees get their work done.

Ben Lorica of O’Reilly Radar takes a deeper look at Facebook’s prevalence throughout the world. In his post, Ben examines the “number of users by country and region, along with growth rates for select regions and countries.” Interestingly, Facebook’s fastest growing regions are South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Ben also points out that there are over 32,000 applications on Facebook, but the total usage of applications remains flat.

“The raw power of one-to-one relationship marketing is enough to make even the most experienced marketers cringe and shout for joy, often at the same time.” Find out from John Burg on Future Vision 10 “easy” steps for “kick-starting social media marketing.” Some of his suggestions are to set up Google Alerts, create an open communication channel with Legal, and enable indirect response to social media. Check out his post for the complete list, and leave your own suggestions.

Guest blogger Amanda Vega shares her experiences working as a consultant for top ad agencies on Metz Mash. Amanda offers “some of the truths and realities that are at the root cause of their failed attempts at real social media integration.” It has been Amanda’s experience that ad agencies don’t understand what they don’t know and that agencies are unwilling to adapt their corporate culture to the new environment.

For five months, Facebook has been promoting a new redesigned interface. That day is now here. Scott Gilbertson of Webmonkey points out that the new look has great similarities to FriendFeed, as, “under the new interface, your status updates, wall posts and news feed items have been combined into a single content stream.” Take a look at the ‘new Facebook,’ and heed Scott’s advice – let Facebook know what you think.