A2SM Podcast #26: More Facebook Shenanigans

In this Podcast:
Why Your Facebook Fans Could Be Worthless
Also see: A Book Attracts Loads of Facebook Fans. But Why?

How a 13-year-old gained 16,000 fans in 96 hours
Also see: Officer Ludwig’s Facebook Fan Page

Facebook Goes Back to School with New Universities Page

Facebook Places
Also see: How to Disable Facebook Places

TweetDeck’s Underground Project: Allowing TweetDecks To Talk To Nearby TweetDecks

Facebook’s Zuckerberg, “Guess What? Nobody Wants To Make Lists.”

Feature of the Week
Amazing Use of HTML5 A Must Watch (in Chrome)
Also see: Arcade Fire’s Wilderness Downtown A Slightly Buggy Treat for HTML5 Fans

Picks
Neal: Apture for Your Browser
Seth: RememberTheMilk (Free, Pro is $25/yr)
Jody: Faxzero.com (send up to 2 free faxes per day)
Payvment.com Facebook shop

Merton of Chatroulette Piano Guy Fame Returns [Video]

That mysterious hooded wonder that is Merton posted another video to his Youtube channel this past weekend. This time he uses not only Chatroulette but Omegle, the former’s older and less popular brother program (of sorts, go along with the bad analogy please).

It’s worth checking out. Definitely make sure you watch for the song Blueberry Pancakes from Hell.

Link Post for April 7th

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 7th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed

  • Google Continues To Embrace QR Codes, Integrates Them Into Its URL Shortener – Last December, Google joined the myriad other companies that offer link shortening services with the launch of Goo.gl, the official Google URL Shortener. Today, it’s gotten a nifty new feature: add “.qr” to the end of any shortened link, and Google will generate a QR code for it. For example, the link http://goo.gl/SJhz would become http://goo.gl/SJhz.qr. The new trick was tweeted about earlier today by Google’s chief spam fighter Matt Cutts.
  • Zynga Mafia Wars Addicts Can Now Whack Their Rivals With An SMS Message – Mafia Wars addicts can now get their fix anywhere they get a cellular signal. Social gaming giant Zynga has just started rolling out two-way SMS support for the popular mob-themed Facebook game, allowing users to both receive notifications and play the game from nearly any cell phone. The new feature is being rolled on a limited basis for now, but interested users can sign up for it here by clicking the game’s help button and selecting ‘SMS mobile’ from the menu.
  • Plaxo Doubles Address Book Traffic, Raises Ambitions – Plaxo wants to be the Google of digital address books but the newly minted CEO, Justin Miller, knows it will be a difficult and long slog.
  • UnitedParents To Provide Early Warning Against Online Predators, Cyberbullies – Stealth Israeli startup UnitedParents is stepping closer to the bright lights today by announcing a $900K seed round, and the beta availability of its online child safety product, aimed at alerting parents whenever their children become involved in a potentially dangerous relationship with online predators and / or cyber-bullying.
  • Greylock Bats off Market Concerns, Calls Pandora an IPO Candidate [Video] – Last week we invited Greylock’s David Sze and Reid Hoffman into the studio for a chat about the state of the venture market, with its odd mix of soaring valuations and horrible returns. As it turned out, these two might be the worst guys in Silicon Valley to ask. I don’t say that because they refuse to pay up to be in good companies. (See Sze’s 2006 investment in Facebook—considered shocking at the time due to the company’s $500 million valuation, now considered one of the top trades in Web 2.0 history.) I say that because their portfolio doesn’t seem to be hurting.

Link Post for March 19th through March 21st

This is the A2SM Link Post for March 19th through March 21st. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • Sprint Makes Your iPhone 4G [VIDEO] – The iPhone 4G (next generation iPhone) is yet to be released, but Sprint is cleverly advertising “4G speeds” on your iPhone thanks to its Sierra Wireless Overdrive 4G WiFi hotspot.
  • Yelp for Business: 4 Steps for Success – For local small businesses, Yelp (Yelp) isn’t just an option — it’s a necessity. People in urban centers use it to choose where to go to dinner, where to buy clothes, and where to be entertained. Users decide where and how to spend their money using Yelp, so if your business is local, you need to curate your Yelp page.
  • 4 Ways Non-Profits Can Use Google Buzz – When a green field lies before you, so does opportunity. Some non-profits stand to gain from being part of the early Buzz adopter community. Whether a cause needs to further the dialogue with a tech-savvy crowd, or is attracted to the functionality of Gmail (Gmail) integration, Buzz does bring some new capabilities to bear.
  • Ben Folds Plays Chatroulette Live in Concert [VIDEO] – Singer-songwriter Ben Folds visited the random video chat site Chatroulette during a recent live concert in Charlotte, North Carolina, playing improv piano tunes about the people he was connected with.
  • New Twitter Phishing Attack: “You’re On Here?” [WARNING] – Twitter users are reporting a new attempt to extract their usernames and passwords — a Direct Message attack that asks “You’re on here?” with a link. Others report DMs linking to a site called “mhansenhome” with the message “’someone posted on their blog about you”.
  • Happy Birthday Twitter! – Sunday, March 21st (a few hours from now on the West Coast) marks Twitter’s 4th birthday — exactly four years since Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent his first Tweet and, along with Evan Williams and Biz Stone, started a phenomenon.
  • In choosing its battle names, the military must know its target audience – washingtonpost.com – Names are important, especially in war. Like a good advertising jingle, war names must be catchy and concise. But above all else, they have to sell — all sorts of things, to all sorts of people: inspiration to the troops, righteousness to Americans at home, partnership to allied countries, peace and promise to non-combatant civilians.
  • Social Media & Scott Monty @ Ford Motor Company – Online Marketing Blog – When you think of successful consumer brands in the social media space, names like Dell, Zappos and Pepsi come to mind. Another is Ford. Last year the Ford Fiesta movement generated a tremendous amount of awareness (and pre-orders) for a vehicle that wasn’t available to the public yet. (Great summary on Jeff Bullas’s blog) At the same time, it inspired a community to engage, create content and continue discussions about the Fiesta with over 7 million video views.
  • Social Media Optimization Tools – Online Marketing Blog – Plenty of bloggers are talking about the inevitable intersection of social media marketing and search engine optimization. Heck, we’ve been blogging about SMO since 2006! Keyword optimized social content and channels of promotion provide abundant signals to search engines for improved visibility on standard, social and real-time search.
  • Responsibilities of Community Managers » Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg – Every time I tell someone I’m a Community Manager, I get a varied response. But the response doesn’t vary enough. The response is usually something along the lines of “Wow! So you tweet and facebook for a living! Kewlz!” or “So do you blog on the interwebs all day, or sumthin?” Another favorite is “What’s that?” That last one might be the most honest of the three, since asking a Community Manager whether they tweet for a living is like asking a construction worker if they cat-call for a living, or a doctor if he asks people to say “ah!” for a living.

Link Post for January 29th through January 31st

This is the A2SM Link Post for January 29th through January 31st. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

Youtube Music Video Discovery Tool! A Must Check Out!

Most people know Pandora, the music site that creates stations of your favorite artists and other music that sounds similar to it. Youtube recently released a new section of their site dedicated to music discovery. Youtube.com/disco isn’t about disco per se, what is about is discovering new music and creating playlists of your favorite music.

On this new interactive feature you can listen and watch to your favorite musicians, make playlists and even make lists.

The service’s tag line is “Find/Mix/Listen.” So go try it out and let us know what you think in the comments.

youtube, social media, music

Link Post for January 22nd through January 24th

This is the A2SM Link Post for January 22nd through January 24th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

When Social Media Properties Influence Creativity

youtube-logoI was going through Youtube today and noticed: Top 25 Pop Songs of 2009 Mashup (explosive Mix ) Le Migliori Canzoni Del 2009. This is an amazing remix of the Top 25 Pop songs of 2009 and to be honest, all of them mashed together make a much better product than each individually.

What this video also shows is how social media, in this case YouTube, influences creativity and enables people from all walks of life share their creations.

So far the video has received more than 250 5-star ratings, has gone viral on Digg and has gained a spot on Revision3′s very own Digg Reel.

Take a look at the video (below). What are you thoughts on how social media and how it has helped people express themselves?

Link Post for January 8th

This is the A2SM Link Post for January 8th:

Link Post for January 4th through January 6th

This is the A2SM Link Post for January 4th through January 6th:

  • 28 Days Later: Say Goodbye to the Netflix New Release Rental – Today is sad day for Netflix customers. The online video rental supplier has just announced an agreement with Warner Bros. that will forever alter your online rental experience. Now should you wish to rent a Warner Bros. flick you’ll have to wait out a 28-day holding period after the film’s initial DVD release date.
  • Analysis: Yawn, Google Introduces iPhone Clone | Epicenter | Wired.com – Congratulations, Google. You’ve spent untold millions of dollars to produce another iPhone — two years late. That about sums up the company’s Nexus One phone launch today.
  • Exclusive: Apple to Buy Quattro Wireless for $275 Million | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD – Apple is set to announce that it has acquired Quattro Wireless for $275 million, several sources confirmed.
  • Make Video Encoding Easy and Affordable With Encoding.com – Encoding.com is the leading SaaS provider of studio-class video encoding services. It scales instantly and supports all popular media formats.
  • Yahoo to Unload E-mail Provider Zimbra on VMWare – As Yahoo continues to refine and redefine itself, it’s been offloading and shuttering some services in an effort to slim down (RIP Geocities!). One of the divisions that’s been on the auction block since September is Zimbra, an open-source e-mail company Yahoo acquired in September 2007 for $350 million.
  • 5 Superb Social Media Tools for Musicians – Musicians take notice
  • Eric Schmidt: The Baddest Man On Twitter – Stop what you’re doing right now (reading this) and go look at Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s latest Twitter profile picture. Now look closer. Yes, it appears he’s wearing a flak jacket, also known as a bullet-proof vest.
  • An Inside Look At A Twitter Style Guide: 140 Characters – We’ve all seen Twitter grow into the company that it is now, but what was it like when it first started — back when it was still called Odeo, and Twitter wasn’t in existence. As we know, Twitter was spun off from Evan William’s company Odeo, into what we know now as Twitter, the social networking service where you post short messages in 140 characters or less.
  • Nothing to celebrate on Public Domain Day 2010 in the US – What child has not sat starry-eyed around the fire, dreaming of the goodies to come on January 1—Public Domain Day? The thought of new books and movies and music coming out from copyright is enough to send sugarplums dancing through heads, unless you live in the US in 2010. In which case, you have nothing to celebrate, since nothing is entering the public domain this year.
  • Pearl Jam Gives A Song Away For A Tweet – Regular readers may know my affinity for Pearl Jam. The band, which released a new album, Backspacer, last year had a series of promotions with MySpace to promote the album. Now they’re turning to Twitter for some more.