Link Post for February 20th through February 22nd

This is the A2SM Link Post for February 20th through February 22nd. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • Twitter and Digicel Eliminate SMS Charges for Haiti – Twitter, as a platform, played a big role in the instantaneous spread of information following the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January. Today the microblogging site is officially supporting the exchange of real-time information and offering free SMS tweets for Digicel Haiti customers.
  • Guinness World Records Buys Video Site for Zany Challenges – Guinness World Records has purchased Bragster, a video-sharing site where you can “dare your friends and brag about it.”

    On Bragster, users post dares — for example, “I dare everyone to drink five raw eggs” or “I dare everyone to make as many spins in an office chair as possible (in 1 min)” — and other users respond by posting videos of themselves fulfilling the task. Selected winners get bragging rights points and compete in a site-wide leaderboard. Each initial dare also gets voted up or down, so you can weed through the news for the most interesting dares.

  • Denny’s Menu Misprint Leads to Twitter Mess – Denny’s dine-in menu invites customers to “Join the conversation!” and follow @Dennys on Twitter. The problem is that the account in question belongs to a Taiwanese Twitterer — Dennys Hsieh — and not the American restaurant chain, which manages two official accounts: DennysAllNightr and DennysGrandSlam.
  • Walmart Acquires Online Movie Service Vudu – Walmart is set to make a play for your living room. The company has acquired online movie service Vudu, just over a month after rumors about a deal first surfaced.
  • A Beginner’s Guide to Made-for-Internet TV – Web video is expanding right now, and though a lot of attention is paid to episodes of network TV shows like Lost or The Office that you can stream online, there’s an emerging wealth of content made just for the web. There’s going to be even more of it in the future, so this is a great time to get in at the ground level and experience an emerging art form.
  • Facebook Acquires a Third Startup, Shuts it Down

Link Post for February 18th through February 19th

This is the A2SM Link Post for February 18th through February 19th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • FarmVille Wins Social Networking Game of the Year Award – The 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony was held last night as part of the video game industry’s Dice Summit conference in Las Vegas, NV. Games.com reports that the top honor in the “Social Networking Game of the Year” category went to Zynga’s massively popular Facebook game FarmVille.
  • Couple Says "iDo" at Apple Store Wedding [VIDEO] – Talk about a destination wedding — this Valentine’s Day, an Apple-obsessed couple tied the knot at New York’s Fifth Avenue Apple Store in a ceremony that referenced Steve Jobs, boasted a first generation iPod as a ring bearer and was officiated by a priest decked out like Jobs himself.
  • William Shatner to Star in "Sh*t My Dad Says" TV Pilot – Justin Halpern’s immensely popular Twitter account “Sh*t My Dad Says” is in the process of being turned into a sitcom, and there’s a powerhouse of industry veterans attached to the project. Today we can add William Shatner to the list, as he’s primed to star as the dad-that-speaks-his-mind in the pilot episode.
  • Hollrr: Foursquare for Product Reviews
  • Tiger Woods Press Conference Draws 683,000 Views on Ustream – The web took a collective 15 minute pause this morning as Tiger Woods made his first public statement since becoming engulfed in scandal back in November. Ustream is the first in with numbers from the event, as they tell us that their live stream drew 683,000 views.
  • Is Your Target Audience On Twitter, Facebook, Or LinkedIn?
  • WordPress.com Outage Takes Us And 10,199,999 Other Blogs Down – TechCrunch is one of the millions of blogs hosted on WordPress.com (not to be confused with sites that run the WordPress software but are hosted elsewhere). All told, some 10.2 million blogs went down — wiping out some 5.5 million pageviews, WordPress estimates. This was their worst outage in 4 years.
  • Austin Pilot Joseph Andrew Stack Left Disturbing Online Manifesto – If you’ve been following the news, you know that a plane intentionally crashed into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. While details surrounding this tragedy are still being discovered, it appears that the man who owned the plane, Joseph Andrew Stack, left an online manifesto detailing his decision. Stack also set his house on fire before crashing his plane.

Link Post for February 16th

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

  • How I Became the Robert Scoble of Buzz
  • 7 Things to Consider for Social Media in the Enterprise – Marketing and communications folks are all over social media. They implore company executives not to be left behind. Your company absolutely must get on the social media train this year before it leaves the station. So they go around and get management, sales and ultimately the president of the company all excited about this shiny new thing. Then it’s time to create the magic. That’s where the technology department steps in. Sure, many of the best online marketing folks these days know how to throw around a little web coding. Maybe they even know Joomla from Drupal, but it’s unlikely that they know about what it takes to roll out a relatively new, third-party technology across the entire corporate structure.
  • 340,000 Facebook Fans Want Betty White to Host SNL – A Facebook fan page set up to persuade Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels to let Golden Girls star Betty White host the show has officially become a phenomenon.
  • This Twittering Tree Can Tell You How it Feels [VIDEO] – The tweeting, talking tree is being shown off at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and you can check out a demo video of the live and interactive orange tree in the video below.
  • Google Real-Time Search Results Now Include MySpace – Google’s real-time search results, which include data from Twitter, Yahoo Answers, and other sources, has just added MySpace updates to the mix.
  • Fisher Price iXL: iPad for Rugrats – You know, toys from the ’80s and early ’90s were cool, but today’s kids really have it made. Case in point, while Mom, Dad and Auntie Christina might be lusting after the iPad, the Pre-K family members get their own tablets. Gizmodo got to play with the Fisher-Price iXL at Toy Fair and it looks adorable.
  • It’s Official: Skype Calling Coming to Verizon Smartphones – On Saturday, we reported on rumors that Verizon and Skype would be announcing a partnership deal at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Well, it’s official. The two companies are announcing what they call a “strategic relationship that will bring Skype to Verizon Wireless smartphones in March.”
  • The Social Media Playbook
  • Google Buzz copied FriendFeed’s worst features, why? – Robert Scoble's take on Google Buzz.
  • Kevin Smith ‘too fat’ to fly Southwest – CNN.com – Kevin Smith's most famous role is a guy who rarely speaks. But he's got a lot to say — much of it profane — after being kicked off a Southwest Air flight because he didn't fit comfortably into the seat.

Link Post for January 27th through January 28th

This is the A2SM Link Post for January 27th through January 28th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • Adobe Calls Out Apple for Lack of Flash on iPad – While the iPad sports a lot of features, one of them isn’t Flash. The Adobe plug-in is nowhere to be found on Apple’s device, meaning that many online games and video sites (such as Hulu) aren’t usable on Apple’s tablet device.
  • Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right – Social media marketing campaigns are proving to be goldmines rich with customer engagement and insight that companies wouldn’t likely have otherwise. Companies like PepsiCo are going to extensive lengths to foster this type of collaboration with fans, and the payoff has been big.
  • Holy wow! AT&T admits NYC/San Fran 3G service sucked – A recent AT&T earnings call consisted of a lot of talk talk talk but one slide stands out: it essentially admits that 3G in San Francisco and New York sucked ween AKA were both far below their official performance objective.
  • Benioff On The iPad: “The Most Important Feature Is Its 10-Hour Battery” – Everyone has an opinion about the iPad, even at Davos. Michael is there this week at the World Economic Forum, grabbing video interviews with the people he is running into (like Michael Dell showing off a yet-to-launch Android device). In the video above, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff talks about the iPad (what else?). Other people might be wowed by the touchscreen or the 140,000 apps or the iBooks, but not Benioff. He’s impressed by the battery:
  • MyYearbook Rolls Out Its Crowdsourced Redesign – This week, social networking site MyYearbook launched a revamped design, changing some key UI elements to better reflect the way people use the site. One of the more interesting points of the redesign isn’t its appearance though — it’s how it was actually put together. Rather than simply rolling out a new design, MyYearbook actually polled its userbase for suggestions, then drafted some mockups that users voted on. The result? Users favor the new design by a factor of over 3 to 1, without the kind of backlash other sites have seen from their redesigns.
  • Video: Obama’s State Of The iPad Address – Remember those guys who made those nifty Google Wave movie mash-up videos? You know, the ones with Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting? Well, they’re at it again, with the new hot ticket in town: the iPad.
  • WordPress Foundation | – The WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software.
  • 47 Lists of Bloggers to Watch in 2010 – Check them Out!
  • Twitter Thinks It Can Evade Chinese Censorship – GigaOM – Though its web site has been blocked by Chinese censors since last June, Twitter is working on utilizing the distributed nature of its service to become available to Chinese users, said CEO Evan Williams at the World Economic Forum in Davos, according to a report by the Financial Times.
  • 4 Reasons iPad Will Kill the Kindle, 4 Reasons It Won’t – Uh-oh,” is the reaction we can imagine Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had when watching today’s unveiling of the eagerly awaited Apple iPad tablet. The new Apple device looks, at least upon first glance, like it will completely eat Amazon’s lunch. In fact, Steve Jobs even eulogized the Kindle in his unveiling.

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.

Link Post for January 20th

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

Link Post for January 15th

This is the A2SM Link Post for January 15th:

Link Post for January 8th

This is the A2SM Link Post for January 8th:

Link Post for December 30th

This is the A2SM Link Post for December 30th:

  • Zynga CEO Mark Pincus On Charlie Rose – Charlie Rose welcomed Zynga CEO Mark Pincus on his show last night for a 15 minute interview. Pincus says 60-70 million people a day are playing social games on Facebook and MySpace, and 1%-2% are willing to shell out actual cash to enhance gameplay. Mobile social gaming is still small, just 5 million – 6 million/ day, he says. But mobile is a fast growing platform.
  • Evernote Reaches Two Million Lifeloggers, Half Of Them Are On The iPhone – The idea of a life recorder that captures every moments of your life on video is still a bit of a tech fantasy, but an early version of the life recorder already exists. It is called Evernote, the popular iPhone (and now Android) app which lets you record your memories by snapping geo-tagged photos, making voice notes, or just text notes and making it easy to search through them. Evernote does not yet support video recording other than as an attachment (for premium subscribers), but when that becomes more practical it will.
  • 10 Things You Need for Your Social Media Road Trip
  • Palm Pre and Palm Pixi Headed to Verizon? – The Palm Pre is headed to Verizon sometime in early 2010, but now BGR is reporting that the Palm Pixi will be coming to Verizon, too.
  • Hot PCB – Printed Circuit Board Design, Fabrication, and Assembly Industry Blog » Blog Archive » When a Tweeter becomes a Twiddler – We have all experienced that moment where we open our email again even though we just minimized it and there was nothing new. Or we have refreshed our facebook/twitter to see if anything new has popped up. Or we’ve closed a browser and out of habit opened it up again even though there is no need. Or you end up staring aimlessly at your monitor wondering “what can I do?”
  • SEOmoz Decision Making Flowchart – SEOmoz caused a stir this week by publishing a “study” that allegedly showed NoFollow tags were still effective in sculpting the flow of PageRank.

    This of course flies in the face of what Matt Cutts has said on the issue, and the data in the study doesn’t seem to actually be all that solid. But hey, why let that get in the way of a good link bait post, right?

  • Twitter API Is Becoming Far More than Just an API for Twitter – Webmonkey – Twitter’s API has spawned hundreds of mashups and third party software apps, but now it’s growing even further — outside sites have begun mimicking an API to piggyback on Twitter clients.
  • Web Designer – Defining the internet through beautiful design » Blog Archive » What has blogging done for the quality of writing on the web? – IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to read much of the IT press these days without coming across an article about Twitter, how it’s going to save the world, and how it isn’t. I don’t want to add to that discussion here (except maybe I already have) but its soaring popularity got me thinking about how easy it is to get one’s voice heard on the web these days. Twitter is a special case – technically it’s micro-blogging – and it is typically used to provide short updates on what people are doing there and then. But it is a form of blogging, micro or not, and it is blogging in general I think I have a problem with. Wikipedia defines a blog as “A type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
  • Is Social Media Killing Your Business? | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing – Social media for the small business is a catalyst, a tool, a way to create awareness and deeper engagement – it’s not a way to take orders.
  • 10 Questions for Brian Williams – TIME – Brian Williams doesn't get Twitter. Calls it a time suck and a waste of time. He misses the point completely and it's really sad.

Link Post for December 23rd through December 24th

This is the A2SM Link Post for December 23rd through December 24th:

  • Why B2B companies should be using social media | Socialmedia.biz – Many B2B com­pa­nies ask me whether social media is right for them. This post is all about why social media and B2B go hand in hand.
  • Social media & startups: It’s a different ballgame | Socialmedia.biz – I get asked a lot: “How do I make money off social media?” Uhmm, well, you use the magic wand of online web awe­some­ness, obvi­ously. Or maybe not. We have all read a mil­lion arti­cles point­ing us toward tools we should be using, things we should be con­sid­er­ing, and the best prac­tices we shouldn’t ignore. We get it: Social media is valu­able. I think by now we all under­stand the impor­tance of social media as a vis­i­bil­ity engine and viral mes­sage maker. It can be used to enable con­ver­sa­tions, announce infor­ma­tion, put out fires, and so on.

    It can do a lot. But it has lim­its. Ohhh buzz kill.

  • 7 tips to increase your online media literacy | Socialmedia.biz – t’s become a tru­ism that we’re all media cre­ators now, from blog­gers and pod­cast­ers to the most wet-behind-the-feathers Twitterer.
  • 5 ways to increase the reach of your blog or RSS feed | Socialmedia.biz – You may be los­ing out on oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve the reach of your RSS feed or blo
  • DDoS Attack Takes Down Amazon, Wal-Mart – If you’ve been doing some last-minute Amazon holiday shopping on Wednesday evening, you’ve probably noticed that Amazon’s website was sluggish and, at times, completely down. The same fate greeted Wal-Mart, Expedia and a number of smaller sites. The reason? A severe DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on the servers of Neustar, the company that offers DNS services to many major companies under the name UltraDNS.
  • The Pirate Bay Goes Retro for Christmas – Remember how one of the most popular torrent sharing sites, The Pirate Bay, looked back in 2003? Today, you have a chance to refresh your memory, because the pirates have gone retro, changing the layout of the site to the way it looked back then, when the Internet was innocent and there was no pile of lawsuits on The Pirate Bay’s desk.
  • Fun Stats: 28% Of Sites Use Google Analytics; 5% Have Facebook Or Twitter Links – # 28% of sites have Google Analytics on them
    # 12% of sites have AdSense
    # 5% of sites have EITHER a Twitter or Facebook link but…
    # 2% of sites have BOTH a Twitter or Facebook link
  • Disney Wants Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg On Its Board – GigaOM – Disney’s board today nominated Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to be its thirteenth member. It’ll be put to shareholder vote at the next Disney annual meeting, scheduled to be held March 10, 2010.