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 4/12/10

Twitter ads are here. Just launched last night, Promoted Tweets is a platform that allows advertisers to push messaging within Twitter search results. Twitter is expected to expand the ad system beyond search, one day allowing advertisers the ability to push paid tweets directly to user streams. User acceptance is critical, and Twitter has stated that branded messages will be “clearly labeled” as advertisements, according to AdWeek.

The Promoted Tweets vehicle isn’t the only new development currently brewing at Twitter. Recently, the micro-blogging service had acquired Atebits, the developer of  Tweetie for iPhone and Mac. This move signals a vital shift in Twitter’s evolution: Twitter will now compete directly with third party developers and produce its own proprietary software. Notorious as an open platform, Twitter couldn’t be what it is today without the programmers who have built over 70,000 applications that have made Twitter more accessible to many users. With dollar signs in their eyes, Twitter is bringing some of that development in house and is putting itself at odds other developers.

On that note, friction also continues to rise between Apple and Adobe. Hostility has reduced these multi-million dollar corporations to childish antics and name-calling. Read for yourself: Apple Gives Adobe The Finger With Its New iPhone SDK Agreement; and Adobe Flash evangelist: ‘Go screw yourself Apple’.  Can’t we all just get along?

Out with the old, in with the new. In the midst of ever declining market share, Palm is rumored to be looking for a buyer. News of the possible sell coincidentally come the same week that Microsoft unveils two new social media centric phones, Kin 1 and Kin 2. No word yet on whether Microsoft will pay royalties to Dr. Seuss for the names of the new devices.

Social Media: Strategy

How to Develop a Sound Facebook Fan Page Strategy: Step 1 – Ignite Social Media

Remember Google’s Super Bowl Search Ad? Now You Can Make Your Own (this is an awesome viral campaign)- TechCrunch

Twitter Launches A New Guide For Media Organizations – Tech Crunch

Yahoo Opens New Firehose of Social Media Data to Developers – Mashable

Zappos CEO on How To Deliver Happiness with Social Media [INTERVIEW] - Mashable

10 Essential Social Media Tools for B2B Marketers – Mashable

Social Media: Consumer Electronics

Adobe Flash evangelist: ‘Go screw yourself Apple’ – cnet news

Verizon CEO: U.S. Tops in Cellular Service – PC Mag

Sharp to launch advanced 3D panels for mobile gear – Reuters

Palm Said to Tap Goldman, Quattrone to Find Buyers – Bloomberg

Next, a Kin: Microsoft to try new consumer phones – Washington Post

Microsofts Project Pink phones now official, known as “Kin 1″ and “Kin 2″ - TechCrunch

Digital Advertising

Yelp makes two major changes in the way reviews are posted – LA Times

Source: Twitter’s Ad Platform Launches Tonight – TechCrunch

Twitter Starts ‘Promoted Tweets’ Ad System – AdWeek

The Multi-Billion Dollar Question: Will Users Click on Twitter Ads? – Mashable

Into Hand: Jobs Unveils iAd, Says ‘Search Is Not Where It’s At’ - Media Post

Internet Trends

Google Docs Overhauled, Microsoft Should Be Worried – Fast Company

Tensions Rise for Twitter and App Developers – New York Times

Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” in Twitter twist – Reuters

The Real Reason VCs Think Foursquare Is Worth $100 Million – Business Insider

HuffPo Launches Separate ‘Twitter Edition’; More Focus On Real-Time News – Paid Content

Apple Gives Adobe The Finger With Its New iPhone SDK Agreement – Tech Crunch

Social Media News 3/22/10

I read about a really interesting study reported by ReadWriteWeb about influence and the number of followers you have on Twitter.  Per the research findings, the number of followers you have on Twitter is an almost completely irrelevant metric for measuring influence. Read the RWW recap here, and see the actual report here.

Facebook hasn’t formally announce this yet, but the company has began to send weekly emailed reports on Facebook page metrics to their respective page admins. These reports include only metrics that are currently available to admins, so the weekly reports serve more as reporting summaries than anything else. Read more about this story at MediaPost.

Apple began to accept pre-orders for the iPad last Friday, with the promise that the first iPads will be arriving in the first week of April.  Rumor has it that over a hundred thousand  iPads have been pre-ordered, and some are speculating that more iPads will be sold in the first three months than iPhones sold in its debut. With all the attention the iPad is drawing, some are wondering if an iPad Killer is emerging… could it come from Palm? Or from HP?

YouTube and Viacom are in the mists of a copyright lawsuit, which has revealed a few embarrassing details about both companies in recently unsealed court filings.  Among other interesting tid bits, Viacom had tried to buy YouTube just before Google’s acquisition was finalized. Read more of the story here.

Social Media: Strategy

Will B2B Companies Embrace Social Media in 2010? – MediaPost

10 Essential Social Media Tips for B2B Marketers – Mashable

Making Social Media Connections, Budgets and ROI – MediaPost

The Million Follower Fallacy: Audience Size Doesn’t Prove Influence on Twitter – RWW

PCH Unveils Sweepstakes Social Media Service For All – MediaPost

Facebook Starts Weekly Email Reports For Page Administrators – MediaPost

5 Things You Need to Know About Location-Based Social Media - Mashable

Social Media: Consumer Electronics

Palm’s phone sales slump and its stock dives - Associated Press

Smartphones not enough for carriers at CTIA – Reuters

‘iPad Killer’ May be Palm’s Last Hope – PC World

Digital Advertising

iPad subscriptions could boost mag circulation – Associated Press

Google: Dynamic Data And Social Features Can Save Display Ads – MediaPost

Google Maps Test Ads in Australia – Mashable

Internet Trends

WordPress Guns for Web Content Management Duties – PC World

Facebook News Readers More Loyal Than Googlers – News Factor

Nintendo’s Miyamoto wants Wii in schools – TG Daily

Google Bringing The Web To TV? – MediaPost

Foursquare Adds Almost 100,000 Users in 10 Days – Mashable

Internet Law

Viacom, YouTube air dirty laundry in legal battle - Associated Press

The juicy details behind the Viacom-YouTube lawsuit – USA Today

When Your Trademark Becomes the Key to Your Competitor’s Internet Ad – MediaPost

Google May Leave China on April 10 – Mashable

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

Freebie Twitter Listening Tools

Gotta love freebies. Yesterday, I started off my first day at the Consumer Electronics Show by attending a free session called “The Twitter Revolution: How The Real-Time Web is Changing the CE Landscape.” Steve Broback, founder of a social media agency called the Parnassus Group, was one of the speakers and shared some of his favorite freebie Twitter tools during the session. Here’s a recap of his recommendations:

search.twitter.com

This is square one. If you’ve never tried any listening tools, start with Twitter Search. Twitter Search can help reveal the current topics around your product, brand, industry, competitors, etc. It can also give you an initial look into consumer sentiment. Dave Taylor, who was another speaker on the panel, suggested combinations of queries that included, “I hate” or “I love”. There’s wealth of consumer research just at your finger tips with the humble Twitter Search.

TweetBeep.com

This is the Google Alerts of Twitter. TweetBeep allows you to get email alerts of keyword mentions on Twitter, every hour. TweetBeep also offers a premium version which allows you to get alerts every 15 minutes.

Trendistic.com

Trending Topics on Twitter.com are the top ten most mentioned words/phrases on Twitter in real-time. Trendistic is cool because it provides more information on the current Trending Topics, and it also allows you to search terms and view trend graphs for those terms, up to 180 days if you register.

PeopleBrowsr.com

This is a new one to me. It appears to be a Twitter management tool, like Hootsuite and Seesmic and Tweetdeck, but on a whole new level. I’ll have to play with this for a bit before I can really say much about it- but on the surface is looks very robust. If you’re a PeopleBrowsr user, leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Cloud.li

Broback called this “the cool Twitter tool that nobody knows about.” It’s a simple website that will create Twitter word clouds around your search terms, and will allow you to click on those terms to dive deeper. This is a good site for discovery.

BackTweets.com

All of the tools mentioned so far, Broback explained, have something in common. They are based on keywords. This last Twitter tool is different. BackTweets will allow you to enter in a web address and find Tweets that link to that address. This is really cool. It will show you the most recent tweets that have tweeted a given URL, and it even counts the short links like bit.ly and tinyurl.

Hope some of these can be useful to you. There’s so much you can learn about your customers by just spending a little time online and digging through Twitter. Happy hunting, I’m off to another great day at CES!

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 11/25/09

(Covering the social news from 11/14 through 11/24)

With 2010 just on the horizon, we’re beginningto hear social media predictions and the new strategies that advertisers will be rolling out next year. Here’s a quote I liked from Chris Bruzzo, VP of brand, content and online at Starbucks: ”People are saying this is going to be a big year for social media and we’re a microcosm of that. Whereas last year it was a curiosity, this year it’s a core part of the program.” Starbucks is planning to cut back on its TV spend and invest quite a bit more in social media. Read about their strategy in this story from Ag Age.

LinkedIn has been busy working on sweeping changes to its features and services. Earlier in the month Social Media News reported LinkedIn’s plans for a homepage redesign and the new ability to link Twitter with LinkedIn updates. On Monday, LinkedIn announced that it will open its API to third party developers, a strategy that has been critical to the rapid success of other social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Last week, LinkedIn announced a new program for advanced group pages, called Custom Groups. Currently, LinkedIn group pages are little more than discussion forums. With Custom Groups, organizations can transform their group page to a central, multimedia social hub that will allow groups to post videos, white papers and feeds. The program costs $50,000 a month, however LinkedIn will include advertising support to drive traffic to the custom groups. Lastly, LinkedIn and Microsoft are joining forces to sync Outlook contacts with LinkedIn information. In the 2010 release, Outlook users will be able to quickly view LinkedIn user activity and information of their contacts as a subpane of the email window. These are very smart updates to the LinkedIn product offering, and will ensure that LinkedIn becomes an even more powerful business social networking tool for individuals as well as businesses and organizations.

A couple small updates on the Twitter front:

The Twitter Geolocation API has been officially released, however we won’t see anything new on Twitter.com just yet. For now, the release is significant for several third party developers that have built applications that will utilize the Geolocation feature, like Foursquare and Seesmic.

Twitter has also made a small improvement to its new Twitter Lists feature, allowing users to add descriptions to their Lists. It’s a nice-to-have, but personally I can’t wait to see Twitter roll out the ability to search Lists. I believe the lack of a search feature is the single most crippling disadvantage for Twitter Lists.

HootSuite is a Twitter publishing and management tool preferred by many, including myself. New updates launched this week allows HootSuite users to connect their Facebook and LinkedIn accounts for the first time. In addition, HootSuite users can create new columns to pull in their Twitter Lists feeds.

YouTube also released new updates this week:

YouTube Direct is a new platform for professional news organizations to solicit and utilize video content from citizen journalists. It’s an API that news media can incorporate on their existing websites to allow individuals to submit video coverage around current events. The news organization’s moderate can preview submitted material on a backend interface, then choose whether to approve the material to be linked from their site. Get the details from MediaPost.

Google has matched its speech recognition technology with YouTube’s caption feature to unveil a new automated video captioning service. Laurie Sullivan from MediaPost explains how the new service will have a big impact on SEO.

Have a great Thanksgiving holiday!

Ad Age

Behind the Redesign: Virgin.com Mixes Social Activity and Lead Generation

Starbucks Rings in the Holidays With Big Social-Media Push

Bing: an America’s Hottest Brands Case Study

Brands on Twitter: 76% of Accounts Are Infrequent Users

Why Murdoch Can Afford to Leave Google for Bing

Ad Week

Is Facebook Getting Uncool for 18-24s?

Social Media Users Really Are More Social

Brand Sweepstakes Get Twitterized

Media Post

Facebook Targeting Fans’ “Connections”

100 Ways To Measure Social Media

Brightcove Unveils Latest Platform, Integrates Mobile and Social Functionality

Q+A: Razorfish’s Shiv Singh On ‘Social Media For Dummies’

YouTube Unveils Tool To Connect News Organizations With Citizen Journalists

LinkedIn Launches Custom Groups For Marketers

YouTube Automated Captioning Changes Game For SEO

LinkedIn Opens Up To Outside Developers

Mashable

Toys R Us Explodes on Facebook With Black Friday Preview

HootSuite Adds Support for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter Lists

How Google Wave Is Changing The News

Twitter Lists: Now You Can Add Descriptions!

TechCrunch

Blogging Vs. Microblogging: Twitter’s Global Growth Flattens, While WordPress’ Picks Up

Salesforce Chatter: A Real-Time Social Network For The Enterprise

Microsoft Outlook To Become Even More LinkedIn

Foursquare Continues Its ground Assault With 50 More Cities

Twitter Turns On Location. Not For Twitter.com Just Yet.

Blogs and Other News Sources

Clearing up the Clutter (Smart Marketing)

Chrome Unveiled; Microsoft Cheers (PC World)

Google Unveils Chrome OS; Tech World Yawns (PC World)

Social Media News 11/14/09

It’s been known for a while that Rupert Murdoch has no love for Google. However, this week was the first time the leader of the second largest media conglomerate (News Corp.) said that he will prevent his news from being indexed by Google. That’s including sites like WSJ.com. It sounds like Murdoch is quite serious about the claim, even though sites like WSJ.com could lose 25% of its traffic or more, according to some estimates.

Then a few days later, TechCrunch Europe published this article detailing a secret presentation by Microsoft to various leaders of UK news media. According to the article, Microsoft is developing something known as ACAP, “Automated Content Access Protocol,” to index content like news stories on Bing in a more robust way than Google’s robots.txt protocol. If a significant amount of news media corporations get on board with the new indexing protocol, it will have a serious damaging effect on Google’s popular news search, news.google.com.

Though it may be bad news for Google in the news media industry, the communications industry might be looking up. On Thursday Google announced that it had purchased Gizmo5, which will power Google Voice with VoIP capabilities. This move makes Google Voice a serious competitor for Skype, and could also be a really nice addition to Google Wave.

In the same week, Google also purchased the popular mobile advertising platform, AdMob, for $750 Million. With this deal, Google now has a powerful mobile display advertising product that it can add to its existing mobile search advertising offering.

Twitter is in the process of rolling out its Retweet feature, though the public launch of the feature may take a little longer than expected. Prior to this announcement, retweeting has been an established norm in the Twittershere but has not been officially supported by the Twitter API.  Due to its enormous popularity the Twitter developers have been working on incorporating the retweet action to become an official part of Twitter.com, but apparently they are still trying to figure out exactly how to do it.

Now here’s an interesting story in the world of social gaming. Personally, I avoid Facebook games like Farmville, Mafia Wars and Sorority Life like the plague, but I’ve always known that these games are popular among my friends. And I wouldn’t have guessed that a game maker like Playfish, the creators of games like Pet Society and Word Challenge, could be worth a whooping $400 Million. Last Monday, Electronic Arts (EA) acquired Playfish in a move that signifies just how lucrative social gaming has become. Be sure to check out this Mashable article, The Future of Gaming: 5 Social Predictions.

Mashable

5 Impressive Real-Life Google Wave Use Cases

7 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn

BREAKING: EA Acquires Facebook Game Maker Playfish For Up to $400 Million

Rupert Murdoch Plans To Hide His Sites From Google, The World Yawns

The Future of Gaming: 5 Social Predictions

New Version of Google Search Is Launching Soon

STATS: Has Twitter Flatlined Just Short of Mainstream?

LEAKED: Facebook is Coming to the PlayStation3

Top 5 Must-Read Social Media Books

Tech Crunch

Twitter To Rollout A New API For Location-Based Trends

Google Acquires AdMob For $750 Million

Exclusive: Google Has Acquired Gizmo5

If The WSJ.com Says Goodbye To Google, It Will Also Say Goodbye To 25 Percent Of Its Traffic

Social Networks Continue To Rally Around Twitter As LinkedIn Goes Tweet Crazy Too

When It Comes To iPhone In-App Purchases, Games, Social Networking, And Books Rule

Hate It Or Love It, Twitter’s New Retweet Style Is Rolling Out

Google Latitude Now Tells You Where You’ve Been

Zynga’s FishVille Sleeps With The Fishes For Ad Violations

Facebook Killed The MTV Star: Shakira To Debut New Music Video On Ustream/Facebook

Retrevo Lets You Tap Into Electronics Recommendations Via SMS And Twitter

Badda Bing! Microsoft woos newspapers by funding their stick to beat Google

Fast Company

Augmented Reality Is Both a Fad and the Future — Here’s Why

Cisco’s Collaboration Platform: Facebook for Business?

New “Microformat” Could Change the Way We Read Online

YouTube Does Something Great at Last: 1080p HD

Ad Age

Why Digital Agencies Are Indeed Ready to Lead

Brand Week

Good News, Bad News for Mobile Marketing

Wendy’s Hunts for Bacon Lovers in Social Media

Blogs and Other News Media

Google Puts Voice on Steroids with Gizmo5 (PC World)

Second Life Founder Launching Reputation Currency System (Read Write Web)

Project Retweet: Phase One (Twitter Blog)