Trending topics on Twitter are largely driven by retweets of mainstream media accounts, according to research by HP. The computer firm examined Twitter’s trending topics – the list that shows what Twitter’s users are talking about – to discover where the tweets were coming from. This report from the Telegraph.

After analysing more than 16 million tweets, HP found that just 22 Twitter accounts were “the source of most retweets when a topic was ‘trending’”. Furthermore, 72 per cent of those 22 were mainstream media outlets.

Instead of Twitter celebs, such as Stephen Fry, or your friends and colleagues, HP says that tweets from the likes of the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and, yes, The Telegraph, are driving Twitter’s trending topics.

Bernardo Huberman, HP senior fellow and director of HP Labs Social Computing Research Group, said: “We found that mainstream media play a role in most trending topics and actually act as feeders of these trends.

Twitter users then seem to be acting more as filter and amplifier of traditional media in most cases.”

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Facebook Places Deals: Starbucks, Yo! Sushi, and O2 are some of the major brands on board for the UK launch, reports the Telegraph.

Facebook has confirmed several major partners for the UK launch of the service, which rewards users for visits to different locations by logging their whereabouts on the site via their mobile phones.

Starting today, as revealed first by The Telegraph, the first 30,000 Facebook users who check in at participating Starbucks stores across the UK, will be able to claim a free filter coffee.

Debenhams is set to give away 1,000 Benefit mascaras and free makeovers to those who check in at its stores on Valentines Day and Mazda is going to give away five cars, every month for five months, and a 20 per cent discount to anyone who checks in a Mazda showroom on certain models.

There are different type of deals as well. For instance, Benetton and Argos have launched deals which are linked to charitable donations. Facebook users will also sometimes receive discounts and free products from gaining loyalty points through continued check ins at the same places and sometimes by taking a friend to a shop or a restaurant too.

Emily White Facebook’s director of local, said that the service would be offering deals at local smaller shops and restaurants soon, but had decided to launch the product in the UK, and four other European countries (Spain, France, Italy and Germany) with major brands such as Yo! Sushi.

Facebook currently makes no money from these partnerships but did not rule out cashing in on people’s purchases initiated via check ins in the future.

When Places Deals launched in the US at the end of 2010, some of the initial partners included Macys, Gap and Starbucks.

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Facebook reached an important milestone for the week ending March 13, 2010 and surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week, according to new findings from Hitwise.

The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame.

» Read more: Facebook knocks Google off top ranking in US

The majority of UK retailers are failing to exploit the opportunity to integrate social media as a means to increase sales and generate loyalty, according to a new study from dotCommerce. The ecommerce solutions company reveals that while 42% of retailers have some kind of social media presence, just 12% are using more than one social media channel and only 32% of retailers with a Twitter or Facebook account promote these on their website.

» Read more: Retailers still struggling with social media as a marketing tool

More than three quarters of brands (88%) rate social media as important to their business and will be allocating greater percentages of their budgets towards the medium this year, according to a new study from the Internet Advertising Bureau.

The study, conducted in partnership with research company Opinion Matters, also found that marketers identified  the main challenges for social media as measurement and proving ROI.

» Read more: Marketers not sure into which category social media falls?

If you’re on Twitter, no doubt you’ve noticed different Tweeple running polls from time to time.

We ran our first poll on Twitter over 3 years ago which resulted in the post, Guide to Twitter as a Tool for Marketing and PR, offering insights from other marketing and PR professionals experienced with the Twitter web site.

» Read more: Benefits of Running Polls on Twitter