Social Media News 7/27/10

It’s baaaaaack! After a three month hiatus, I’m so very glad to be blogging again and bringing you my weekly Social Media News.

Facebook has announced that it has officially reached 500 million active, registered users. That’s roughly the total population of the European Union. To celebrate, Facebook has launched its own app called Facebook Stories.  Facebook is inviting everyone to share their own personal Facebook story with the world, aiming to capture hundreds of thousands of personal experiences, lessons learned, reunions and revelations. Read more about it here on The Facebook Blog.

Filmmakers are working on a Facebook story of a different kind: a full-length feature film called The Social Network. Mashable rounded up what the founders think of the flick, reporting that Mark Zuckerberg had shared some negative comments about the movie at the recent D8 Conference.

The big news on the Twitter front is a possible new feature called Tweet Media. Twitter hasn’t released any notices about the feature, but a mysterious new privacy setting found by some users has caused speculation. It is suspected that by opting in to Tweet Media, users will be able to post and view photos and videos within the Twitter stream. The addition of multimedia within Twitter will force advertisers to change their Twitter content strategies in a big way.

Ford made news this week by revealing the new 2011 Ford Explorer on Facebook, before revealing it anywhere else. The Ford Explorer Facebook page, sporting over 50,000 fans, includes tons of multimedia content surrounding the Explorer, including a sweepstakes. Check it out at www.facebook.com/FordExplorer.

iPhone users rejoiced with news this week that the U.S. Copyright Office has made iPhone jailbreaking legal. What this means is that tech-savvy iPhone users can legally hack their phones to buy and use apps that are not sold within Apple’s iTunes App Store. Users should note that though jailbreaking is now legal, performing such a hack will void your Apple warranty. Also, jailbreaking is not the same as unlocking the iPhone, which is a hack to allow the iPhone to work with other carriers outside of AT&T.

Tweet Media

Twitter Begins Testing Inline Photos And Videos On Its Website – TechCrunch

5 Big Questions About Twitter’s Move to Multimedia – RWW

Twitter to Show Photos and Videos in the Stream [UPDATED] – Mashable

Social Media: Strategy

Bearhug Brings a Social Approach to Customer Service Management - Mashable

How to be the Life of the Social Media Party – ProBlogger

Old Spice Campaign Smells Like a Sales Success, Too – BrandWeek

5 Reasons Why Ford Continues to Kick Butt – ClickZ

Social Media: Consumer Electronics

Flipboard Launches as the iPad’s Social Media Magazine – Mashable

Amazon Customers Now Order $1 Billion of Products Per Year via Mobile – Mashable

Federal Government Rules in Favor of iPhone “Jailbreaking” – DMW

Jailbreaking iPhone apps is now legal – CNNMoney

Social Media: Location-Based

Inside Street Food’s Social Media Revolution [VIDEO] – Mashable

Brightkite Takes Branded Badges to the Next Level – Mashable

Go On Your Own “Eat Pray Love” Journey With SCVNGR – Mashable

Foursquare Reaches 100 Million Checkins – Mashable

Digital Advertising

Majority of Consumers Use Social Networks to Inform Buying Decisions, Says Study – RWW

Ford Makes New Friends The Right Way, Revealing Explorer On Facebook – MediaPost

Kelley Blue Book Goes Social For Stickers – MediaPost

Twitter Sees Sizable Ad Business – MediaPost

Internet Trends

Why QR Codes Are Poised to Hit the Mainstream – Mashable

YouTube Looks to Compete in Music Discovery – Mashable

StumbleUpon: The Silent Social Media Success Story – RWW

Ask Launches Social Network To Link Search With Answers – MediaPost

Social Media News 3/29/10

It’s iPad Week. The new Apple tablet will begin shipping this week, and iPad has been at the center of a media frenzy. The articles below are what I found most interesting in iPad news, including speculation about Apple’s mobile advertising platform called iAd, and rumors that Best Buy will stock the iPad later this week (if only a very small supply of them…).

In early February, Google announced a new endeavor to build an experimental fiber network and asked state, county and city officials across the US to respond to a RFI to be a part of the program. The selected communities would be eligible to become partners with Google in building the new broadband network. Everyday citizens were invited to participate by nominating their community for consideration. The deadline for responses was last Friday, and Google announced this week that they received over 1,100 official applications.  You can learn more about the project at Google Fiber for Communities.

Just when you thought you knew all the ins and outs of Facebook, Facebook changes something. This week, Facebook sent a memo to advertisers that “Become A Fan” will change to “Like” within Facebook ads and Fan Pages. The decision to change apparently comes from data testing “Like” buttons against “Become A Fan” buttons within Facebook ad units, in which users were twice as likely to click on the former. When this goes into effect, users that click “Like” on a Facebook ad will become a Fan of that advertiser’s Page and receive News Feed updates. There could be a very large backlash from users on this change (after all, there’s always some kind of backlash when anything changes on Facebook.) The question is, will users blame Facebook, or blame the advertisers?  See the memo from Facebook, or read this article from RWW.

iPad Week

MTV Developing ‘Co-Viewing’ Apps for the iPad – AdAge

iPad Out to Prove Itself as Gaming Platform, but Will Users Play Along? – AdAge

iPad App Store Preview Leaks: App CoverFlow – Fast Company

Apple posts up iPad Guided Tours… lots of Guided Tours – Engadget

Best Buy’s iPad supply: 15 per store – CNNMoney.com

Apple’s iAd Could Bite a Chunk Out of Google’s Mobile Ad Business – Fast Company

Social Media: Strategy

Viral Complexity (a review of ROI from 2009′s most viral videos) – Brandweek

Social Media Boosts E-Mail Marketing – Brandweek

Lessons From Leno and Twitter Bombers: 3 Rules for Next-Gen Marketing – Fast Company

The Two Most Important Questions in Social Media Marketing – Ignite Social Media

Social Media: Consumer Electronics

This Is What Cars Might Look Like On Your Next Kindle – Gizmodo

Android Devices Crave Google’s Attention - Wired

CTIA End-of-Convention Roundup: Android, 4G, and Even More Android – Fast Company

LinkedIn for BlackBerry Released [SCREENSHOTS] – Mashable

Digital Advertising

What Type Of Social Media Ads Are The Most Effective? – MediaPost

Apple’s iAd Could Bite a Chunk Out of Google’s Mobile Ad Business – Fast Company

Do You Like Us Or Like Like Us? “Become A Fan” Changing To “Like” On Facebook – RWW

Internet Trends

Facebook Will Rule the Web During the Next Decade – AdAge

Google Receives More Than 1,100 Official Applications for Fiber Broadband Network – Fast Company

Gowalla + Foursquare + Brightkite + Yelp + Google Maps=Checkin Mania – Fast Company

Social Media News 3/15/10

Sigh. Guess what mega-huge interactive conference is happening right now in Austin? SXSW. Guess who didn’t get to go? Me… a social media blogger that blogs weekly on social media news, and I couldn’t be at the single most important interactive conference of the year. Yeah… It’s ok. At least I can pretend #fakesxsw.

(That’s “South By Southwest” for those of you who do not speak geek.)

Big News from SXSW

Universal Check-in App Confirmed: Brightkite’s Stealth Service - RWW

Big Changes Are Coming to Digg: More Power to Publishers, Less Power to Top Diggers – RWW

Twitter’s New “At Anywhere” Platform Allows For Deeper Integration Into Third Party Sites – TechCrunch

Sneak Peek: Rhapsody’s Upcoming iPhone App – Wired

SXSW: Pandora in the Car Could Kill Sirius – PC World

Foursquare and Rival Geo-Location Games Find Lots of Love at SXSW – DailyFinance

SXSW Feeds

CMS Wire SXSW News and Articles

Wired SXSW News

Mashable SXSWi

Social Media: Strategy

9 Killer Tips for Location-Based Marketing – Mashable

Exploring Why Social Business Will Drive 21st Century Enterprises – Social Computing Journal

4 Ways to Effectively Use Social Media as a Catalyst – Mashable

Why User Competency Matters in Social Design – Mashable

Social Media: Consumer Electronics

More Droids Sold In First 74 Days Than iPhones – Nexus One Sales Very Slow – TechCrunch

PayPal Launches Revamped iPhone App, Teams With Bump For Phone-Tapping Money Transfers - TechCrunch

Digital Advertising

LivingSocial Raises $25 Million to Take On Groupon – Mashable

Hitwise: Facebook Hits No. 1 In U.S. – MediaPost

What Kind of Brand Associates With Chatroulette?: French Connection Offers Shopping Spree to Winner Who Hooks Up Using the Webcam Chat Room – AdAge

Twitter Expected To Take The Wraps Off Its Advertising Platform Today – TechCrunch

Internet Trends

How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive – Wired

A Short (and Personal) History of Social Media: Why It’s Important to Consider the Boring Basics That Keep Things Sustainable – AdAge

Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News Source - RWW

5 Ways to Use Google Wave for Business – Mashable

Foursquare Hits 347,000 Checkins in a Day – Mashable

Reuters to Journalists: Don’t Break News on Twitter – Mashable

Social Media News 3/1/10

March 1st brought joy to many Facebook users, a date which marks the end of Facebook app Notifications. Apps on Facebook are no longer able to send updates via Notifications, which are now reserved mainly for friend activity. Find out what alternatives app developers now have at this Mashable article.

Twitter and YouTube are also rolling out new features. On Twitter, the new “Be Found On Twitter” feature allows users to opt-in to share their email address and/or phone number, making it easier for contacts to find them. For YouTube, it’s a massive redesign that will improve the user experience by adding a video queue feature and improved playlist design. The redesign also includes the release of an AutoPlay feature, which will allow YouTube to be consumed more like TV, allowing the user to sit back and just watch one video after another in a push model rather than the current pull model. Find out more about these releases under the New Features heading below.

“Have you heard of Chatroulette?”  The latest fad of social media, Chatroulette is a video chat service which will randomly pair you to another video conferencing user. It’s a bare bones interface with minimalistic functionality- basically just two web cam windows and a chat room. The site connects users to complete strangers, there is no way to control who will pop up on the other side. Some believe that Chatroulette will become as popular as Twitter, though it’s not the first interactive video conferencing site, and probably won’t be the last.  I don’t think Chatroulette will be able to go mainstream without significant investment and added functionality. If the interest continues to increase, there’s a good chance that established social networking platforms like Facebook will adopt video conferencing as a new feature, which may kill Chatroulette before it has a chance to get out of the gate.

Want to know how your brand compares to your competitor in social media? Try uberVu Compare. A freemium social media comparison tool, Compare is a new product from uberVu that performs a side-by-side comparison of two brands based on their social media performance. It could be considered overly simplistic for veteran social media analysts, but this a great tool for a quick snapshot of social media presence.

“Crowdsourcing” is a still a hip buzzword. Grogger is a new platform that allows you to crowdsource your blog content. Mash together the words “group” and “blog”, what do you get? A “Grog”! For people that believe two heads are better than one, Grogger is an appealing tool that allows a community of users to write, edit, and vote on blog content. For more details, read the TechCrunch review.

New Features

Be Found on Twitter: Connecting Our Dots in the Social Graph – RWW

Twitter Comes To Yahoo - PC World

YouTube Redesign Keeps You Watching – RWW

Facebook to Say Goodbye to App Notifications on March 1st – Mashable

Chatroulette

Did Chatroulette Just Launch the Interactive Video Conferencing Boom? - AdAge

Chatroulette, by the Numbers – WSJ Digits

Social Media: Strategy

Most Super Bowl Ads Don’t Go Viral – AdAge

Vitrue Adds Facebook ‘Wall Apps’ To Social Platform – MediaPost

Compare Social Media Performance Head-to-Head with uberVu – Mashable

Oh Yeah, Well I’m Going To Twitter You! – MediaPost

Social Media: Consumer Electronics

Scribd Makes Push Into Mobile – MediaPost

Consumers Are Pushing Up Sales of Smartphones – Yahoo! News

Digital Advertising

Measure the Web Like TV and Brand Advertising Will Follow - AdAge

Sources: Twitter Ad Platform Quite Google-Like – MediaPost

Display Ads Stimulate Search, Confirms Eyeblaster Study – MediaPost

Internet Trends

Social Networking In Matters Of Life And Death – MediaPost

Grogger: A New Platform That Lets You Crowdsource Your Blog’s Content – TechCrunch

E-Cards Are Dead… Except on Mother’s Day – RWW

Time Spent on Social Networks up 82% Around the World – BrianSolis

How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement – Mashable

Facebook to Take 30% Cut of Developers’ Facebook Credits Revenues – Mashable

Social Media News 2/22/10

It’s back! Social Media News has been on hiatus for a couple weeks, as my client work (and spending time with my Valentine) always comes first- but I am getting back on track with this week’s update.

In the social media sphere, change happens in a blink of an eye. While I was on break from blogging a lot of big things happened in this space, most notably the release of Google Buzz. The buzz about Buzz is that it’s Google’s latest life-streaming social media portal. Like Twitter and Facebook, Buzz allows users to keep in touch with friends and by sharing status updates, links, photos, and more.

Is Buzz a formidable threat to Twitter and Facebook? Maybe, but probably not. Buzz is integrated with Google’s email platform Gmail, and I’m guessing Google thought that would be a good way to gain immediate adoption en masse. But for many internet users, email use is in decline as social media use continues to rise. If Google had released Buzz two or three years ago it could have gained real traction, but unfortunately many would-be early adopters have already abandoned their Gmail accounts in favor of Facebook messaging (which is moving towards a full webmail service, code named Project Titan).

Also while I was off the grid, I missed a couple of birthdays. Flickr and Facebook both turned six years old this month.  That’s a pretty long time in Internet years; do you think they’ll make it another six?

Google Buzz

If Google Wave Is The Future, Google Buzz Is The Present – TechCrunch

Google Buzz: What It Means for Twitter and Facebook – Mashable

Google Will Ask Buzz’s Early Adopters to Confirm Privacy Choices – Wired

Google Buzz May Help Its Rivals More Than Itself – MediaPost

Facebook

PayPal and Facebook Credits Will Play Nice After All – Mashable

The Fun of Facebook Measurement – Gilligan on Data

Facebook Moves Towards World — Not Just Social Networking – Domination -MediaPost

Social Media: Strategy

5 Ways Airlines and Hotels Can Drive Revenue with Social Media – Mashable

HOW TO: Deal With Negative Feedback in Social Media – Mashable

How Much Blog Would a Blogger Blog If a Blog Chucked Its Comments? – MediaPost

Social Media: Consumer Electronics

Official Twitter App for BlackBerry Looks Really Good – Mashable

Fashion Show Goers Purchased Clothes Straight From the Runway Using a BlackBerry App – Gizmodo

Motorola Backflip Will Be the First Android Phone on AT&T – Wired

Digital Advertising

Online Video Gets an Ad Exchange – AdAge

Live TV’s Alive as Ever, Boosted by Social Media – AdAge

Pre-Roll Video Ads Still Hated, Here to Stay – AdAge

Beyond the Badge: Big Media Brands Strike Foursquare Deals – AdAge

Internet Trends

How Social Media Is Changing the Super Bowl – Mashable

Walmart Buys Vudu, Jumping Into Online Movie Rentals – Wired

School District Halts Webcam Surveillance – Wired

It’s Official: Google Can Sell Power Like a Utility – Wired

Checking In, Checking Out [a great article summing up the latest location-based mobile/social apps] – MediaPost

Social Media News 2/1/10

Apple’s iPad was the biggest news last week, drawing attention from every corner of the web. Within minutes of the announcement, hype turned into hysterics as the jokes started pouring in. Apparently #iTampon was the third most trending topic that evening. Many see the Maxi- I mean iPad as a huge threat to existing eBooks like the Kindle. I’m not so sure about that. Yes the iPad has a full color LED display, but one very important feature of a true eBook is eInk. This is a low res, black and white display with a low refresh rate that reduces eye strain, making the screen more like reading printed paper. To me the iPad is like a glossy magazine, but the Kindle is like a simple black and white novel. The bookworms that consume the most eBook content are going to stick with Kindle, and the iPad will appeal to people looking for a Netbook first, eBook second.

Interested in measuring ROI from your Facebook efforts? That’s about to become a little easier when Facebook rolls out its new conversion tracking tool. Facebook announced the upcoming feature at last week’s OMMA Social event in San Francisco. MediaPost embedded video from the discussion on this article.

Proctor & Gamble is officially in favor of social media marketing, embracing Facebook in particular and encouraging its brands to do the same. I found it interesting that in the article reporting on this topic, AdAge felt it was necessary to quote Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation for P&G, with contradictory remarks from 2008. This one caught my eye:

“Who said this is media?” he said. “Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

With this quote AdAge is perhaps trying to demonstrate a riff in P&G’s ranks, though the remarks were said over a year ago and I have the suspicion that it may have been out of context. Whether McConnell supports social media marketing or not, this is a great quote with a lot of truth behind it. We can’t treat social media as advertising, it’s an entirely different kind of game. Ignite’s Jim Tobin was on the same wavelength in a recent Web Trends episode when he said, ”The web is the worst place in the world for interrupting people.”  I couldn’t agree more.

Facebook

P&G Embraces Facebook as Big Part of Its Marketing Plan – AdAge

Facebook Now Has Yahoo In Its Sites, Already Bigger In Pageviews (ComScore) – Tech Crunch

Facebook Develops Conversion Tracking Tool: What’s A Fan Worth? – MediaPost

Why Your Boss Hates Facebook – ReadWriteWeb

Baby Boomers and Seniors Are Flocking to Facebook [STATS] – Mashable

Foursquare

Does Foursquare Have A Douchebag Problem? - Tech Crunch

Will Foursquare’s Users Say ‘Bravo’ for Bravo? - ReadWriteWeb

Social Media: Strategy

Web Trends Talks Social Media Marketing with Jim Tobin [VIDEO] - Ignite Social Media

MediaPost’s OMMA Social SF 2010 [VIDEO] - MediaPost

Social Media: Consumer Electronics

Apple IPad Charges at Kindle and Netbooks – AdAge

Apple vs. Amazon: The Great E-book War Has Already Begun – Mashable

Firefox for Mobile Makes Its Debut – Mashable

AT&T Will Spend $2 Billion To Improve Wireless Network – Mashable

Digital Advertising

Study: Consumers Are Not Annoyed by Ads on Facebook – AdAge

Why Most Digital Ads Still Fail to Work – AdAge

Internet Trends

Apple’s Tablet and the New Splintered Web – AdAge

Proof the Splinternet is real – Groundswell

Google Exec: We’re Here to Help Newspapers – AdAge

Yahoo and the AP Reach a New Deal – But What About Google? – ReadWriteWeb

Social Media News 12/14/09

After months of rumors and speculation, it’s official: the Google phone is real. It’s called the Nexus One, and several Googlers (Google employees) have been issued beta devices and are using them now. Google has been working on a partnership with T-mobile to offer the phone at a discount, after Verizon turned down the deal. However, the Nexus One will not be exclusively sold through T-mobile, it will be an unlocked device (unlike how the iPhone is tethered to AT&T). News about the Nexus One is all over the web, but a good place to start is with this Mashable article.

More changes to how Facebook handles privacy settings.  With an update last week, users can now set privacy settings for each wall posting separately, and now Facebook profile information can be indexed by search engines (which has implications for real-time search). Be sure to read up on the changes from cnet News and PC World.

Holiday shopping is in full swing, and analysts have reported an up tick in online shopping this season. New research from comScore has shown just how much social media is effecting holiday shopping.  Check out this TechCrunch article for details, stats and charts.

A great article from ChannelWeb discusses Google and Apple’s dance with acquisitions. Earlier, Social Media News reported Google’s acquisition of AdMob. Recently, Apple just purchased online music streaming service LaLa, which may revolutionize the way Apple sells music.

Mashable

What Do Goo.gl and Fb.me Mean for Bit.ly?

8 Must-Have Traits of Tomorrow’s Journalist

Friendster’s Fate: Sold to Malaysian E-commerce Giant

Facebook Connect: 365 Days, 60 Million Users, 80,000+ Web Sites

What Do Seniors Do Online? Visit Facebook and YouTube, of course [STATS]

Nexus One: T-Mobile Partners on Google Phone

Ad Age

Augmented Reality Is Overhyped And Abused

Tech Crunch

Apple Brings iTunes Gift Cards To Its Facebook Fans, With Help From Black And GroupCard

Online Holiday spending Reaches $16 Billion; Social Media Continues To Influence Purchases

MySpace Kills Off Imeem API Without Warning Developers

Yahoo! News

How fakes sites trick search engines to hit the top

What the Apple-LaLa Deal Cpould Mean for Video Streaming

cnet News

Facebook backtracks on public friend lists

Facebook details new privacy settings

Fast Company

Today’s vision of Tomorrow: All Your Music in the Cloud

Major Print Publishers Gang Up to Pre-empt Apple, Already Make Mistakes

Cheddar for Tweets: @HuffingtonPost’s Twitter-Based Revenue Scheme

Blogs & Other News Sources

Facebook Simplifies Privacy Options (PC World)

Love The One Your’re With: Apple Wanted AdMob, Google wanted Lala (Channel Web)

HarperCollins Joins Ranks Of Those Delaying E-Books (WSJ)

Online, Offline, No Line (WSJ)

Google ponders risky Android solo act (CNN Tech)

Social Media News 12/7/09

Social Media News from 11/14/09 covered Rupert Murdoch’s statement about preventing Google from indexing News Corporation publications. This week, Google announced an update to its “First Click Free” program, partly in response to Murdoch’s threats I’m sure. First Click Free allows web users to access paid content, like news from newspaper websites, for free if they found that content through Google search. Now Google is giving more control to publishers, allowing them to lock out unregistered users after a defined number of page views. Google allows paid content providers to limit up to five free page views, per day- after that, users would be redirected to a registration page. Google search plays a huge role in helping users discover paid content, providing a significant amount of site traffic to many of these large publishers. So it makes sense for publishers to allow their content to be indexed by Google. However, publishers of premium content are also interested in making a profit. It will be interesting to watch what happens now, if News Corp. really does decide to completely block Google indexing, and if they decide to make an exclusive deal with Bing. If you’re still confused about First Click Free, check out this great 5-Click FAQ from Wired.

Google also announced a deal with Twitter this week to integrate the microblogging site with its own social media service, Google Friend Connect. That’s really interesting, because Google and Twitter are both in the race for real time search, so in a way Google and Twitter are competitors. It’s also interesting in light that Yahoo! and Bing have recently made deals with Facebook, and Google has yet to follow suit. Check out the Bing announcement here, and the Yahoo announcement here.

Speaking of Facebook, there’s a lot of talk about Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of privacy changes. If you’re worried, don’t be. The announcement, which was posted in a Facebook note to users, doesn’t reveal sweeping new privacy changes. It does say that Facebook is doing away with regional networks, which is a good thing. This only relates to privacy in that you won’t be able to share your photos and posts to all of your selected regional network, which would be the town you live in or the college you attended. If you’re anything like me, you didn’t do that anyway. Users have always had the option to select who sees what, and I generally limit my content to Friends, or Friends of Friends (if you need help understanding how to manage your Facebook privacy settings, leave a comment).

A more significant bit of Facebook news came from Mashable in a reveal of screenshots for the next redesign. This interface update is more extensive than the simpler News Feed/Live Feed update. I’m looking forward to the launch, these new layout changes should improve Facebook’s engagement and usability.

The best tablet computer interface that I’ve seen to date is this demo from Sports Illustrated. SI appears to be moving in the right direction transitioning from print to digital media.

If you’re considering a new mobile site, or looking to improve, check out this article from WSJ: Squeezing Web Sites Onto Cellphones.

Wrapping up, I wanted to point out two important articles from Brandweek. Be sure to read Why Social Sites Are Less Friendly to Video Ads, and A Marketer’s New Worry: Are My Ads Retweetable?

Mashable

Facebook CEO: Prepare for Some Big Privacy Changes

5 Big Changes to Watch in Facebook’s Upcoming Redesign

Microsoft Launches its own Twitter… in China

WSJ

FCC Seeks Revamp of Phone Subsidy

Squeezing Web Sites Onto Cellphones

Media Post

Bing And Facebook Launch New Photo Contest

Ad Age

Sports Illustrated Readies Digital Version for Tablets

Brandweek

Why Social Sites Are Less Friendly to Video Ads

A Marketer’s New Worry: Are My Ads Retweetable?

Geotargeted Display Ads Poised for Growth

IRI Unveils Service for Measuring Online Ad Effectiveness

JC Penney’s ‘Doghouse’ Lives to Bark Another Season

Fast Company

New Layar Makes The World Your Augmented Reality Show

With Redesign and Twitter Deal, Is Google Growing Up?

Blogs And Other News Sources

Yahoo! Extends Facebook Integration to Bring Together Social Experiences From Across the Web (Mercury News)

The Fall Of Bing (Seasonal Release, That Is) (Tech Crunch)

New Data: Canadians Embrace Social Technology (Groundswell)

Placating Publishers by Limited Links: A Google 5-Click FAQ (Wired)

Social Media News 11/7/09

Welcome to the Social Media News double-hitter! This week’s post will also cover last week’s headlines in social media. For the first time since I’ve been writing the Social Media News, I missed last week’s recap due to illness as well as being out of town. So here’s a two-for-one post to make up for it.

Twitter’s new List feature has been the talk of the town in social media during the past two weeks.  I first made mention of the new feature in the 10/23 SMN post.  Since then, there’s been thousands of articles and blog posts written up about Lists. Some of my favorites are these: Twitter Lists:  FAQ and Strategies, Twitter Lists and Real-Time Journalism, 4 Ways News Organizations are Using Twitter Lists, and The Brilliance of Twitter Lists and Suggestions for Improvement.  Twitter Lists are fantastic for grouping tweeps based on interest or profession, organizing various Twitter streams into topic categories, and allowing users to quickly access specific tweeps without having to be a follower. More over, an unexpected benefit from Lists is the creation of another way to judge popularity, authority and/or influence of every Twitter user: each Twitter profile displays how many times a user has been “Listed”.  In addition to how many followers one may have, the number of Lists that a user has been listed on gives us a quantitative value of their Twitter social status.

Lists have been praised as the most useful improvement ever made on Twitter. However, the TwitterPeek is a new gadget hailed as one of the most useless Twitter tools of all time. The TwitterPeek is a small, smartphone-sized device meant for one thing, and one thing only: connect you to Twitter. It doesn’t do anything that just about any smartphone can’t do, and I believe the price tag is a little steep for a one trick pony: $99 for six months of service ($8/month after that), or $199 for a lifetime service plan. I much rather have a new Coach wallet, thanks.

On Wednesday Apple announced that it’s iTunes App Store has reached 100,000 iPhone apps. But as ReadWriteWeb reports, new data from AppsFire reveals that of those 100,000 available apps, only about 20% of them are currently used. The other 80% of apps are not actively installed on iPhones, iPods or iTouch devices. Classic 80/20 rule. Click here for the long-tail graph from AppsFire.

Following the news of Bing and Google’s deals with Twitter to include tweets in search result a few weeks ago, Google announced a new Google Labs experiment its calling Google Social Search. Here’s the idea: you create a social graph on your Google user profile by linking all of your social networking accounts like Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed as well as Google products like YouTube, Picasa and Blogger. Once your social graph is complete, information from those networks will be integrated into Google search results.  When you search Google for a product, service, destination, or anything else, recommendations and comments from your friends, family and other contacts would be displayed alongside the normal Web results on the search page. In this way, the Google search engine becomes a recommendation engine. If this idea becomes mainstream, it will be a game-changer for SEO and SEM marketers, as organic search listings will compete against word of mouth from the user’s social circle. Watch the demo video and get all the details straight from the Google blog, and be sure to check out this great article from ClickZ: Social Media, Meet Search.

Ad Age

The Two Faces of Facebook

Social-Media Pranksters Had Fun With Walmart’s Caskets

TechCrunch

NBC Prepares For The Winter Olympics With Silverlight, HD Video, And Facebook Connect

Facebook Share Adds Live Share Counts, Analytics

Apple Has No Sense Of Humor. Luckily, Google Does

MediaPost

Research Brief: Twittering To Keep Current

Consumers More Willing To Share Brand Info On Social Networks Than Previously Thought

Mashable

4 Ways News Organizations are Using Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists: Frequently Asked Questions and Strategies

WOW: Facebook Adding Half a Million New Users Every Day

Twitter Lists: Frequently Asked Questions and Strategies

Killer Facebook Fan Pages: 5 Inspiring Case Studies

LinkedIn Is Getting a Redesign [Pics]

Pizza Hut’s iPhone App Has Generated $1 Million in Sales

Google Dashboard: Now You Know What Google Knows About You

Blogs and other news media

Twitter lists and real-time journalism (CNN)

Social Media, Meet Search (Click Z)

Vegas Hotels Trade Rooms In Exchange for New Twitter Followers (BlackWeb 2.0)

Introducing Google Social Search: I finally found my friend’s New York blog! (Google Blog)

The TwitterPeek is a Peek that tweets (CrunchGear)

TwitterPeek: The Twitter-Only Gadget Destined for Extinction (PC World)

iTunes App Store: 100k Apps, But Only 20% Are Being Used (ReadWriteWeb)

Google’s Creepy Social Search (PC Mag)

E-Mail Marketers Don’t Get Mobile Marketing (Mobile Marketing Watch)

Blinded by the Tweet: Don’t let social media infatuation blue TV and video (MediaPost)

The Brilliance of Twitter Lists and Suggestions for Improvement (The Next Web)

Social Media News 10/23/09

Twitter made multiple headlines this week. Most significant of which, Bing and Google will now index Tweets in real time and display them along with search results. Bing has a public beta now available, but as far as I know Google hasn’t disclosed when they will begin to integrate. If you can’t wait for the official release, check out a new broswer plugin called Kikin. The plugin will allow you to integrate content from multiple social networking sites (like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even eBay and Amazon) with search results from your favorite search engine.

The Twitter announcement was made Wednesday at this year’s Web 2.0 Summit held in San Francisco. At the same conference, venture capitalist Sean Parker gave a presentation that has spurred a lot of conversation. Parker made the distinction between “network services” like major social networking sites, and “information services” like search engines. In his slide deck, Parker claims that network services will trump information services and ultimately shape the future of the internet. “Companies that harness the power of networks will dominate the internet. Collecting data is less valuable than connecting people.”

If Sean Parker is right, then the Bing and Google deal with Twitter is a good move. This week, the Pew Internet Project reported that Twitter and other microblogging services are used by 19% of internet users, which has increased from 11% of users 6 months ago. Also this week, Twitter hit a significant milestone on Monday with the 5 billionth Tweet, now known as the “Pentagigatweet”. (The Tweet has since been deleted by it’s author Robin Sloan, for whatever reason.)

The final word on this week’s Twitter news comes from co-founder and chief executive Evan Williams. The New York Times reported on Williams’ remarks from the Web 2.0 Summit, at which he announced that later this month Twitter will release its “Lists” feature, currently in beta for a few thousand users.  Lists allow Twitter users to better organize Twitter feeds that they are interested in, and I believe it’s going to be very similar to Amazon’s Listmania feature.

Facebook debuted a new feature of its own this week with a redesign of the Facebook user home page. Users can now toggle between “News Feeds” and “Live Feed”. The change was made without much explanation to Facebook users, thousands of which were left wonder what the heck was different between the News and Live feeds. Here’s I how explained the difference: The Live Feed are all the status and news updates that Facebook users are accustomed to seeing on their homepage; The News Feed is the feed of events from the Live Feed that the site believes will be most interesting to the user, based on how popular the post is, and based on the user’s past interactions on the site. This feature was developed in response to user feedback, but as with any major site change, there has been a minor backlash to the upgrade.

Mashable

Twitter: 5 Billion Tweets Served

Facebook Adds Digital Music to Gift Store

Tech Crunch

MySpace Adds Full Music Video Archives, Deep Artist Analytics

Sean Parker’s Rise of Facebook And Twitter, Fall Of Google Presentation (Full Slide Deck)

The ‘I Automatically Hate The New Facebook Home Page’ Group Gets Some Big Support

Kikin Personalizes Search By Tapping Into Your Social Graph

Ad Age

Google, Microsoft’s Bing to Include Twitter in Search

Controversial Amp App Gets Dumped By Pepsi

Brandweek

McAfee’s Documentary ‘Reverse Migrates’ to TV

Google Makes a ‘Banner Move’

Pepsi Pulls Amp iPhone App

19% of U.S. Internet Users Tweet

Wired

Amazon Dumps Sprint for Kindle 2, Embraces AT&T

Nation’s First Open Source Election Software Released

Blogs & Other News Sources

Amazon, Facebook, and Google back FCC on Net neutrality

Twitter’s Chief Talks About Lists, Traffic and Revenue

Facebook Revamps Homepage, News Feed

RT @google: Tweets and updates and search, oh my!

Twitter hits 5 billion tweets