Link Post for May 28th through May 29th

This is the A2SM Link Post for May 28th through May 29th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • An Author’s Plan for Social Media Efforts – Here’s a freebie: if I were an author looking to get the most out of the social web (and I am), I’d do something along the lines of what I’m about to share. Your mileage may vary, but here’s a decent approximation of the things I’d do. Please feel free to share liberally. Just link back to An Author’s Plan for Social Media Efforts, please.
  • Once Again, Bing Rumored To Become Default Search On iPhone – Citing unnamed sources TechCrunch is reporting that Bing will take over the role of default search provider on the Safari browser in the new iPhone OS. These rumors aren’t exactly new and we’ve written and speculated about them before:
  • Source: Microsoft Bing Taking Over iPhone Search – Microsoft Bing will replace Google in the next version of the iPhone operating system to be released in June, we’ve heard from mulitple sources, including a high level source who claims to have been briefed on the matter. We’re not calling this more than a rumor yet, but one thing is sure – our sources close to Google in particular are speaking freely about this as fact. In January Business Week reported that Microsoft and Apple were in talks over an iPhone search deal, and the deal certainly would be brilliant for Microsoft.
  • Chris Saad: "Facebook’s Claims About Data Portability Are False" – Earlier this week, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook's recent privacy changes were not nefarious, but rather an unselfish pursuit of "a concept called data portability."
  • Mark Zuckerberg Donated to Facebook Alternative, Diaspora – During a follow-up interview to Wednesday’s privacy controls announcement, Wired asked Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg what he thought of Diaspora, the anti-Facebook project that four NYU students will spend the summer building. Zuckerberg’s response: “I donated. I think it is a cool idea.”

Link Post for May 19th through May 20th

This is the A2SM Link Post for May 19th through May 20th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • Apple Says You Need To Be 17+ To Use Opera Mini – Apple may have let Opera Mini into the App store, but it is hardly allowing it to flourish. Apple has marked Opera Mini as containing “age-restricted materials,” forcing users to confirm to be at least 17 years old.
  • Licensing may keep Hulu off your Google TV – Although the newly launched Google TV (here’s everything you need to know) will support Flash 10.1, and popular online video service, Hulu videos run on Flash, there is a strong possibility that Hulu content will not run on Google TVs because of licensing restrictions.
  • More Street View Car WiFi Woes: Google Sued In Oregon – On the same day that Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted that the search giant “screwed up” by collecting and storing website data by “mistake” from unsecured WiFi access points with their Street View car, the company has reportedly been sued by two individuals in an Oregon district court.
  • MySpace, Facebook and a half dozen other companies just screwed up. Big time. – This is, to put it very lightly, not good. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that some of our largest fears have been realized. All of those promises that sites such as MySpace and Facebook have made regarding the safety of our personal information has been proven to be nothing but cheap talk.
  • EXCLUSIVE: Behind the Scenes at the "Married on MySpace" Wedding [VIDEO] – Today sees the airing of the Season 2 finale of MySpace’s original web series, Married on MySpace. We got an exclusive chance to go behind the scenes at the actual wedding of winning couple Dehlia and Graeham Ford-Feliz to sneak a peek at what it’s like to get hitched with a little help from the Internet.
  • Will Google TV Be a Game-Changer in the Realm of Connected Devices? – For many of us, the most exciting part of Google I/O today was the announcement of Google TV. Google and its partners are trying to make the connected living room a success and bridge the gap between the computer and the television at long last.
  • Chatroulette + FarmVille + Facebook = ChatVille – There’s a new Chatroulette spinoff in town: meet ChatVille. It’s a Facebook app that combines the basic video chat elements of Chatroulette with the game mechanics, badges and leveling up of casual games like FarmVille.
  • Android Froyo Is a Slap in Apple’s Face – It plays nicely with Flash and HTML 5. It does native and web apps. It makes devices run faster than the iPad. It streams music from iTunes or any other desktop music library. It does painless, wireless tethering. It makes transferring apps from the desktop to mobile completely automatic.
  • Facebook Privacy Makes The Cover of Time Magazine – Time Magazine’s May 31 issue will hit newsstands with a cover and feature story dedicated to the “scary” side of Facebook.
  • Twitter seems hell bent on not letting you re-tweet how you want to – Since the first days of Twitter, if you’ve liked something that someone said, it has traditionally been seen as appropriate to Retweet it. You would do that by giving a customary “RT @Username” then pasting their Tweet.

Link Post for May 12th through May 13th

This is the A2SM Link Post for May 12th through May 13th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

A2SM Podcast #16: The Web In The Palm Of Your Hand

Social Media Podcast

News from Around the Web

HP Buys Palm
http://a2sm.org/77

Apple the Ipad and the Feds. Uncomfortable bed fellows.

http://a2sm.org/73

Ning announces new pricing plans, doesn’t explain exit strategy for folks who don’t want to pay:
http://a2sm.org/75

“Starting in July, there will be a $50/month Ning Pro plan that removes ads and Ning promotion, adds “premium support” and is comparable to services that currently cost $75 a month; a $20/month Ning Plus one that ‘s similar but with less storage, less bandwidth, and “Help Center” support; and a $2.95/month Ning Mini option with fewer features, a 150-member limit, and “community-based” support. In all three cases, there are discounts if you sign up for a year at a time.”

Twitter Launches Tool to Embed Tweets
http://a2sm.org/76

Picks of the Week:

Neal: Revisit (http://a2sm.org/78)

Seth: Venmo.com (http://a2sm.org/79)

Link Post for May 5th

This is the A2SM Link Post for May 5th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed

Link Post for April 29th

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 29th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed

Link Post for April 29th

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 29th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed

  • BREAKING: Twitter Usage In America: 2010 – Twitter Usage In America: 2010, a report released today from Edison Research/Arbitron Internet and Multimedia Series, is among the most significant data released to date on Twitter. A three-year project that is both nationally representative and projectable.
  • Tim Ferriss: 7 Great Principles for Dealing with Haters – Dealing with negativity online can be tough, which was why we were all ears when Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week, took the stage at The Next Web ‘10 event in Amsterdam to discuss how to learn to love haters.
  • 5 Reasons Google and Search Won’t Dominate The Next Decade – Over the past few years, there has been an underlying shift in the way we use technology in our lives. This could be simply described as moving from user-initiated (search) to auto-serving (suggestions) technologies, and it’s about to change the way we live, communicate, make money, shop, collaborate and more. Instead of actively searching for things, we will be presented with them, as we live our lives.
  • New Report Details the State of Twitter [STATS] – A recent report on Twitter usage in the U.S. by Edison Research concludes that 87% of all Americans are now aware of Twitter — up from 5% in 2008 — but only 7% of the population actually use it.
  • Steve Jobs: Flash Is No Longer Necessary – Steve Jobs has just posted a long open letter on Flash, listing all the reasons why Apple has decided not to support it on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
  • LinkedIn Follows Facebook And Twitter Into ‘Follow’ Model – LinkedIn has been working to make its professional social network, well, more social. With the massive popularity of Facebook, and Twitter, it makes sense for LinkedIn to use some of the feature from these networks in order to make its platform more social. Last fall, Linked integrated with Twitter, allows users to Tweet from its platform and send Tweets from outside clients to LinkedIn with a hashtag. Today, LinkedIn is launching a small yet very familiar feature: the ability to “follow” a company’s profiles.

Link Post for April 26th

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 26th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed

  • Cechriecom.com.js.php – WordPress Hacked on Godaddy | Case Study | WPSecurityLock – WordPress blogs hosted on Godaddy were hacked by another malicious attack on April 24, 2010 at 6:54am. What was visible in the source code was <script src="http://cechirecom.com/js.php"> located just above the </body> tag on all .php files.
  • Steve Wozniak On Apple Security, Employee Termination, and Gray Powell – Steve Wozniak – Gizmodo – The Woz speaks out!
  • Bebo speak: Teenagers create secret language to hide partying and drinking | Mail Online – Teenagers on social networking site Bebo have created a secret language to stop adults knowing what they are up to, researchers say.
  • How To Use Hot Chicks To Spread Your Brand Message On YouTube – Brands are trying to figure out this whole social marketing thing, but the success stories are still few and far between. “I think everyone is grappling with how to use digital these days,” says Judy Hu, who is in charge of advertising and branding for General Electric. She oversees one of the world’s largest advertising budgets which spans TV, print, and the Web. I spoke with her last week about one early success GE is seeing with an online video campaign organized by Howcast that is generating millions of video views on YouTube as part of its larger Healthyimagination branding effort.
  • Blippy’s Security Plan: The Details – As I mentioned in Sunday’s post, Blippy’s founders were hammering out a new security plan to assure users that all their information, especially their credit card numbers, would be safe. They delivered this morning, in their latest blog post, issuing new details about the blunder, how it worked with Google, and the framework for a go-forward plan. In addition, Blippy sounded more contrite about the situation. On Friday their post said, “it’s a lot less bad than it looks,” this Monday the tone is less defensive and more apologetic: “However, this is a very serious issue and simply apologizing is not enough. We’ve spent the last 48 hours working around the clock to dissect the issues, reach out to affected users, and put together a plan to ensure this never happens again.”
  • The Age Of Facebook – Two years ago I was on the Charlie Rose show and we talked about, among other startups and trends, Facebook. It wasn’t clear then that Facebook had what it took to become one of the great technology companies. They had conquered the college market and were destroying the hopes and dreams of MySpace. But they were also reeling from the Beacon debacle and hadn’t proven that they could turn those massive reach and page view numbers into sustainable revenue streams.
  • HOW TO: Spring Clean Your Twitter Account – It’s no secret that we love Twitter. It’s a fantastic social media tool, a window on the world that can keep you updated on the big things, such as global news and events, the little things, like where your buddies are headed on a Friday night, and just about anything in between.
  • 10 Killer Tips for Creating a Branded YouTube Channel – There was a time when YouTube was considered a wild-wild west of content — a place where marketers shied away from uploading their commercials, let alone building a branded channel. But these days, YouTube has become more mini-van than stagecoach. From Toyota Sienna’s high-profile television commercials urging consumers to visit their YouTube channel, to (what might be considered the anti-minivan) Harley Davidson’s fan-centric YouTube universe, there has been a noticeable shift in corporate adoption of the platform.
  • The Wall Street Journal Partners with Foursquare – Foursquare’s bread-and-butter is the partnerships that seed the location-based social network with curated content. Now, that includes editorial tips and badges from the renowned business publication The Wall Street Journal.
  • Google Adds Local Business Annotations to Street View – While Google works to extend Street View to the inside of stores — at least according to rumor — for the time being they’ve released a handy utility for better browsing with Google Street View: local business annotations.

Link Post for April 23rd through April 24th

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 23rd through April 24th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • Could Facebook Buy Palm? – For the past year, I’ve been increasingly playing with the idea of Facebook building their own phone. The reason is that it has become pretty apparent that Apple is becoming a significant threat to the social networking behemoth. Then this afternoon I saw two posts suggesting that Facebook needs a mobile operating system and one suggesting Facebook could buy Palm. So could an acquisition of Palm by Facebook at this critical juncture take place?
  • Facebook Roundup: Lobbying, Lite, iPhone, Foursquare and Privacy – Facebook Lite is No More – Before f8 this week Facebook shut down Facebook Lite, launched in 2009 aimed at helping new users with weak Internet connections have a better Facebook experience. As the company announced on Facebook’s fan Page, “we’re no longer supporting it, but learned a lot from the test of a slimmed-down site. If you used Lite, you’ll now be taken to the main Facebook.com site.”
  • Twitter Launches Countdown to OAuthcalypse – In 9 weeks, 3 days and some change, Twitter will turn off basic authentication for apps, making OAuth the only way to connect to Twitter applications. The Twitter API team has even launched a countdown to what it calls “OAuthcalypse.”
  • Facebook’s Open Graph: It Depends On What The Meaning Of The Word “Open” Is – Following Facebook’s big Open Graph announcements at f8 a couple days ago, many of the leaders of the so-called “open web” are taking exception to Facebook’s use of the term “open” for its grandiose plans. While the Open Graph may be a lot of things, it is not open, is the feeling many of them have, as Erick laid out earlier.
  • Twitter Acquires Cloudhopper, Looks To Become Highest Volume SMS Program Worldwide – Twitter announced this morning its acquisition of Cloudhopper, a startup it hopes will help it "become one of the highest volume SMS programs in the world."
  • Facebook Open Graph: The Definitive Guide For Publishers, Users and Competitors – Facebook just shook the tech world by announcing several major initiatives that collectively constitute an aggressive move to weave the social net on top of the existing Web.The rumors were that the leading social network would launch a "Like" button for the entire Web. Instead, Zuckerberg & Co. unveiled a bold and visionary new platform that cannot be ignored.
  • Lost iPhone prototype spurs police probe | Apple – CNET News – Silicon Valley police are investigating what appears to be a lost Apple iPhone prototype purchased by a gadget blog, a transaction that may have violated criminal laws, a law enforcement official told CNET on Friday.

Link Post for April 16th through April 18th

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 16th through April 18th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • 12 Chatroulette Clones You Should Try – Chatroulette has been giving journalists reporting fodder for slow news days for a few months now — enough time, apparently, to spawn a number of clones.
  • 5 Tips for Creating the Perfect Profile Pic – No matter how much quality information or witty repartee we send out into our social networks, first impressions are almost always visual. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the first thing we see when checking out a new Twitter (Twitter) follower, Facebook (Facebook) friend, or LinkedIn (LinkedIn) connection is a profile photo. And in a world of quick clicks and divergent attention, if the photo you present isn’t eye-catching, or illustrative of your personal brand, you may miss your shot at making a positive first impression.
  • HOW TO: Maximize Your Content’s Reach on the Social Web – We have all heard that “content is king” — Sumner Redstone deemed it so, then Rupert Murdoch upped the ante, calling it “emperor.” But how do we make sure content is delivered to the right places, at the right times? How can we measure the effectiveness of this content and its distribution?
  • Spam Suspect Uses Google Docs; FBI Happy | Threat Level | Wired.com – FBI agents targeting alleged criminal spammers last year obtained a trove of incriminating documents from a suspect’s Google Docs account, in what appears to be the first publicly acknowledged search warrant benefiting from a suspect’s reliance on cloud computing.
  • Study: Young adults do care about online privacy – Yahoo! News – But it's not quite true, a new study finds. Despite mounds of anecdotes about college students sharing booze-chugging party photos, posting raunchy messages and badmouthing potential employers online, young adults generally care as much about privacy as older Americans.
  • DOJ abandons warrantless attempt to read Yahoo e-mail | Politics and Law – CNET News – The U.S. Justice Department has abruptly abandoned what had become a high-profile court fight to read Yahoo users' e-mail messages without obtaining a search warrant first. (via Matt Cutts)
  • Good Enough For A Pulitzer, But Not Good Enough For Apple | Techdirt – Just as online content only begins to get some recognition as being Pulitzer worthy, it looks like those content creators still have a major hurdle to overcome: namely, Apple's incredibly screwed up application approval process. Cartoonist Mark Fiore made Internet and journalism history this week as the first online-only journalist to win a Pulitzer prize for his work over at the San Francisco Chronicle. Much more difficult? Getting his iPhone cartoon application past Apple's application store guardians. Fiore says his application was rejected last December because, as an Apple letter phrased it, his satirical cartoons "ridicule public figures," a violation of Apple's iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.