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LinkedIn now offers sharing widgets to publishers
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Business Tools, Social Networks
When people speak of social networks, a lot of the conversation these days is focused on Facebook and Twitter, but in the business world, LinkedIn is where the action is. Today, the business social networking site has started offering a "Share" button to web publishers, very similar to the one already available from Facebook. The new button allows readers to share content from sites they visit with their LinkedIn connections. Several button sizes and options are available for publishers to choose from. Competition in the sharing area is of course very high, with many sites already offering Facebook, Digg, and Twitter buttons. It's unclear if many sites will jump in and add LinkedIn sharing links, or if those will remain confined to the business world.
Read More 
| LinkedIn
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Why your site needs Facebook and Twitter share buttons
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Features, Marketing, Social Media
It doesn't matter if you run a Fortune 500 company, or if you just have a personal blog. It's also not about whether you like Facebook or Twitter, or if you're active on the social scene. The simple fact is that the world is moving to social, and in a big way. Facebook has over half a billion users, growing every day, with Twitter following behind. Where people used to look up things on Google or Yahoo!, now they look it up on social networks. Instead of getting stories and links from news sites, they get them on Twitter. Instead of writing an email to a friend asking how he's doing, they sit on their Facebook walls and see what they're up to.
Social Browser RockMelt now in beta
Posted by Jazz English Categories: Internet, Software
Yesterday, new browser RockMelt entered a limited Mac and Windows beta with hopes of capitalizing on your favorite social networks.
In the last few years, social network after social network has popped up and each has become more and more a part of daily Internet habits. According to RockMelt co-founder Tim Howes, that is why their goal is "reinventing the browser for how people use the Web today."
Click to continue reading Social Browser RockMelt now in beta
Barack Obama calls Facebook users to publicly commit to vote
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: News, Social Media
President Barack Obama has had a Twitter account for a while now, which many think was influential in getting him elected. With the election season coming up once more, Obama sent a call yesterday morning inviting people to install a Facebook app on their profiles called "Commit to Vote Challenge". The app itself is also more than just an ad. In typical social fashion, it allows you to "compete with my friends to inspire the most commitments". This is perhaps the first time a head of state has recognized the popularity of the social networks to a point where they create actual apps, in order to push their messages and invite people to participate in the vote.
Regardless of political allegiance, this is an interesting step forward, with this kind of embrace of online social sites. This is only a first step, and I wouldn't be surprised if in the coming years, we could easily see iPhone apps, online forums, and so on.
Read More | Twitter
Facebook introduces Friendship Pages
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: News, Social Media
Today Facebook introduced yet another new feature of the popular social networking site: Friendship Pages. The way they describe it, this feature allows two people who've shared a bunch of common Facebook interactions to have their own dedicated page. With this new feature, a couple, friends, or any two people can see on a single page all their common wall posts, pictures they're both tagged in, events they've both gone to, and so on. This adds a layer of personalisation to the site, and makes it easier to follow the happenings of the ones you want, through the sometimes overwhelming amount of 'stuff' that can plague your stream of posts.
Of course, being Facebook, this will also most likely bring out questions about privacy and security. It remains to be seen if Friendship Pages become popular, but we bet they'll at least bring more embarrassing moments to the masses, for those who enjoy that kind of stuff.
Read More | Facebook Blog
More than half of Facebook users log on to play games
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Social Media
Wondering why your friends are taking forever to respond to your IMs or wall posts? Chances are they are probably too busy playing Facebook games.
According to a new statistic from AllFaceBook.com, a whopping 53% of Facebook users play games while on Facebook. That’s about 290 million people playing Farmville, Mob Wars, etc. 56 million of these people play FB games daily. To put this in perspective, that’s more people than the entire population of England. This means that you can talk openly about your FB games exploits and more than half the time will be able to spark up a convo based around social network gaming. Interest fact for the guys as well, as 69% of those FB gamers are women. We predict pick up lines to sway drastically into the “So, how many crops do you harvest, girl?” category.
Check out the stats after the jump.
Read More | All Facebook
Greater Manchester Police tweet every emergency call in 24 hours
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Social Media
In an extraordinary attempt at transparency, the Greater Manchester Police has been tweeting every single call, minuscule or serious, on Twitter. So many tweets have been coming in that the UK based police department had to create three separate accounts to get around TwitJail. Chief Constable Peter Fahy discussed the point of this Twitter overload:
"It is a serious message about transparency and how we get that out to the public."
"As well as serious crimes, we deal with many social issues and other incidents that the public are quite surprised about.
"Through this experience we get a better picture that crime is connected to our social issues such as drug use and relationship breakdowns.
"Many of the things we deal with are about the same people: missing people who have been missing 60 or 70 times before or repeat offenders putting demands on public services."
Since they started tweeting, the GMP Twitter page has skyrocketed from 3,000 followers to over 14,000. Tweets consist of calls to 999 (the British version of 911), such as: "Man refuses to leave the gym", "Woman being followed by suspicious vehicle", "Woman asking for advice about ex partner putting abusive messages on Facebook ", "Man calls police to say he is going away over Christmas, is worried he is going to be burgled".
The amount of updates shed light on the overwhelming amount of emergency calls made to the GMP in just 24hrs. Have a look at what's going on outside of America at their three Twitter pages:
Definitely an interesting use of social media for public service!
Read More | GMP via GMP Twitter
Editorial: Facebook is not your dear diary
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Social Media
Remember when the Internet was a place where you could come to put a mask on, and say whatever you wanted, however you wanted thanks to anonymity? Those were the golden days. Nowadays, however, with the advent of Facebook, more and more people are wearing their hearts on their digital sleeves. And the simple truth of the matter is some people look a hell of a lot better masked.
Twitter introduces massively redesigned website
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Design, Social Media
We know tons of people that prefer using third-party Twitter apps because the Twitter homepage is a bit too basic, but it looks like the company just threw that line of thinking right out the window. Dubbed ‘The New Twitter,’ the Twitter website has received a much-needed overhaul, and the end result is that it looks and feels very similar to Twitter for iPad…but in a browser. Get a look at it in action in the video above. The new design is rolling out to users as we speak.
My Struggle With Facebook Addiction
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Productivity, Social Media
To the artist, distractions are all too familiar. Often times rearing their ugly head under clever guises to fool you. The Victorian poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Lady of Shallot, symbolized the quandary that writers and others of a creative nature face - to watch the world or to live within it. It used to be that the most prevalent form of distraction to the creator came in the form of booze, drugs, and other destructive vices. However, in the digital age distractions invade our personal space with the dexterity of pop up ads. Charming and inviting as they may be, submitting to these distractions sends productivity packing back to the assembly lines.
As I sit here writing this in between drags of a cigarette, I can’t help but think about all the distractions that come to light when working day in and day out on a computer. The main culprit (besides philosophy and smoking) is none other than Facebook (dun dun dunnn!). I’m sure there are more than a few of you out there that have fell prey to the time consuming nature of the social networking phenomena. To remedy my ailment I even went so far as to deactivate my Facebook. But it was short lived.
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