When it comes to management style, it’s helpful to compare Apple with Sears, writes Felix Salmon. There are lots of reasons why Apple Stores succeeded while Sears stores have failed, not least the fact that people really want what Apple is selling.Apple is willing to spend whatever it takes to make its products exciting and desirable, while Sears repurchases stock. Apple’s investments pay off in innovative products, while Sears remains mired in selling the ordinary. “If you don’t want to revolutionize the retail experience, at least somewhere, somehow, you’re doing something wrong,”

This past week, Facebook launched a subscribe button, which allows you to choose on a user by user basis “whether you’d like to see all updates, most updates, or just important updates from another user.” It also allows you to open up your profile to subscribers who are not your friends on Facebook.

By opening up more of its content to the public, Facebook is increasing your content’s chances of showing up in search engine results. Facebook’s subscribe option also allows individuals to grow their following and determine which content they want to make viewable to certain groups of friends or subscribers.

The No. 1 reason for Americans to go online? Social networking by far. The Nielssn Company, the longtime TV analyzer, released its first report on Internet traffic patterns today, and concluded that social media represents 22.5 percent of the time Americans spend online. They spend 9.8 percent on online gaming, and just 7.6 percent for email. Not surprisingly, Facebook was the most visited social media network, according to the report. Americans logged 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook from home and work computers.

If you’re looking to boost engagement on your brand’s Facebook Page, a new report from Buddy Media has some key findings for you. The social media marketing company collected data from 200 of its clients’ Pages* over a 14-day period and found that time is an important factor in determining the success of a Facebook post. The study reveals that more often than not, a Facebook post is ill-timed — in fact, office hours could be the worst time to blast content.

“While marketers may work Monday through Friday, Facebook is humming with activity 24-hours a day, seven days a week,” says Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow. And so, brands must adapt to their consumers’ schedules in order to optimize their engagement.

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released results of a study on mobile QR and bar code scanning based on data from its comScore MobiLens service. The study found that in June 2011, 14 million mobile users in the U.S., representing 6.2 percent of the total mobile audience, scanned a QR or bar code on their mobile device.