The Social 6: Key Stories from This Past Weekend, 7/30/12

As you may know, I’m a voracious reader and tend to share a good deal of news via my social platforms. Here’s a countdown of the top six most important articles I’ve shared in the last day. I curate this top six based on number of retweets, clicks, favorites, and mentions, so you guys are a large part of what ends up listed here :).

Y Combinator has invested in pretty impressive companies such as Reddit, Dropbox, Airbnb, and more. But what about the ones that didn't quite make it? Christopher Jackson of TNW talks more about the sites that should have made it and how beneficial they could have been! Thinkature and JumpChat are probably two of my favorites on this list, but there are plenty of good ones here.
Reddit, the social news powerhouse, had posts up dealing with rapists. Redditor started a thread asking for rapists themselves to comment, writing, “Reddit’s had a few threads about sexual assault victims, but are there any Redditors from the other side of the story?” In this article, Kate Freeman of Mashable also adds that a young college male admits to raping women by using alcohol and other tactics. These particular rapist believe they need to share their side of the story and sure enough they got the attention they aimed for. Personally, it's a little hard for me to believe rapists have an outlet where they can share their side of the story without prosecution; I'd be perfectly fine if a self-admitted rapist gets prosecuted for their admission.
Over the last few months, Socialcam has begin picking up steam, and has streamlined the art of mobile video sharing. Spun off from Justin.tv in 2011, the social sharing platform allows users to upload, then customize videos  captured with iPhone and Android smartphones. Matt Petronzio of Mashable shows a virtual tour guide through Socialcam, which is yet another way companies can bring their brands to live using social media.
Bitly is now expanding  and playing around with a new service called Realtime. This new service is an Internet attention ranking engine, allows users to analyze what the world is thinking about right now. Drew Olanoff of TNW nicely explains more about how it works and its features! I think this is a very smart move by Bitly to continue to be relevant in the social marketing sphere.
This Saturday, the New York Times reported that Apple had been in talks for some time to acquire a piece of everyone’s favorite microblogging platform, Twitter. The article points out that both brands have (for now) stopped negotiations. While many industry sources feel that Apple shouldn't undertake another effort to get into social media, Ian Kar of the International Digital Times argues that a formal partnership between Apple and Twitter would stand to benefit both companies greatly.
Does the internet give all ordinary people the power to be content creators? According to Vibhu Norby of TNW, he thinks if you do not know how to create a visual presence for yourself than google might as well not exist! Do you agree with him?

by jeremygoldman

The Social 6: Key Stories from The Last 24 hours, 7/27/12

As you may know, I’m a voracious reader and tend to share a good deal of news via my social platforms. Here’s a countdown of the top six most important articles I’ve shared in the last day. I curate this top six based on number of retweets, clicks, favorites, and mentions, so you guys are a large part of what ends up listed here :).

#6 This Guy Modeled His Impressive Resume After Google Analytics

The #1 advice I give people is that their resume needs to stand out. The second key piece of advice is that is has to be tailored to whatever market you're going after. Online marketing manager Simone Fortunini created a great example of a resume that's modeled perfectly after Google Analytics, and really stands out from the crowd. Nicely reported by Vivian Giang of Business Insider Careers.

#5 Zynga's Mark Pincus blames engagement decline on Facebook

Harrison Weber of  TNW talks about Zynga's CEO, Mark Pincus, blames Facebook in part for the loss of users due to the changes to Facebook's platform. In my opinion, Zynga still has plenty of long-term potential, in that they've developed a strong gaming platform. However, they're just too dependent on Facebook. A strategy to become less dependent on Facebook would bode well for their long-term growth.

#4 Chick-Fil-A's Facebook Page becomes Ground Zero

Yesterday, I shared more news about Chick-Fil-A's PR troubles. I event went so far as to create abbyfarle.com to comment on the snafus. The PR problems continue for the fast food giant: a huge protest to "Eat Less Chikn'" has begun, and the company is finding it hard to control their message. Amora Mcdaniel of Upstart (part of Bizjournals.com) shares more about the controversy that the company is facing.

#3 Forget About.me, Vizify is your new online profile of choice [Invites] 

Vizify, the new way to show a broad overview of data culled across every service that a user is on. You can see the official Jeremy Goldman Vizify here, as a testament to how impressive a visualization tool it is. Not only does Brad  McCarty of TNW give you more information on the site, but he shows you how to navigate it!

#2 Greek Athlete Kicked Off Olympic Team For Tweet

Another day; another downfall brought to you, in part, by Twitter. The top microblogging platform got Voula Papachristou, Greece's triple-jump champion, in deep trouble after a very offensive tweet. She's now prevented from competing in the London Olympic Games. Billy Gallagher of TechCrunch details the situation in this piece.

#1 McKinsey Says Social Media Could Add $1.3 Trillion to the Economy

While we may be in a social bubble in many ways,  McLinsey Global Institute, the research division of the business consulting powerhouse, released a study called "unleashing value and productivity through social technologies."  Quentin Hardy of The New York Times summarizes nicely and explains more about the study's findings.

by jeremygoldman

The Social 6: Key Stories from The Last 24 hours, 7/23/12

As you may know, I’m a voracious reader and tend to share a good deal of news via my social platforms. Here’s a countdown of the top six most important articles I’ve shared in the last day. I curate this top six based on number of retweets, clicks, favorites, and mentions, so you guys are a large part of what ends up listed here :).

#6 5 Unmissable Benefits of Social Media for Business (Including Infographic)

To really get the benefits of social media for business there are some ideas a practitioner must understand; in this Business 2 Community piece, Rosalind Henshell outlines her top 5.

#5 Sponsored search results on Facebook: I'm not sold

Facebook is beginning to slowly roll out sponsored search results. However, will it wind up becoming a key part of the Facebook monetization puzzle? Drew Olanoff of TheNextWeb isn't a big believer yet.

#4 Chile Startup Awards: Meet the nominees

The TNW Chile Startup Awards will take place in Santiago on July 25th. Here's an outline of the nominees across a number of categories, including startup of the year, best web app, best mobile app, and more.

#3 The Future of sound? You'll play it with your mind, says electronic music pioneer Vince De Franco

Vince De Franco, master of music and technology, has now stepped it up a new level. Not only has he helped bands such as U2  or Alice in Chains by creating sounds for them, he has now expanded and wants to help YOU! Great article by JamillahKnowles of TNW.

#2 Viral Marketing For The Robocop Reboot Begins

Omnicorp, the fictional corporation behind the making of Robocop, already has an Internet presence up and running! Impressive, considering the movie is still a year away. Unleash The Fanboy has more details.

#1 Twitter-owned blog service Posterous loses multiple databases, suffers 17-hour outage

Going offline is pretty much the worst-imaginable scenario for a blogging platform like Posterous, but that's exactly what happened over the weekend. The leading Tumblr rival – acquired this past March by Twitter – saw a number of databases go down. Its service went offline for over 17.5 hours. Jon Russell of TNW has more.

by jeremygoldman

Come Join Me at Prestashop's 3/20 Barcamp Event!

In case we haven't spoken recently, you might have missed the chatter about Presto Changeo. My good friend Abe Shaw, VP Marketing at Presto-Changeo (the leading provider of Prestashop modules/add-ons and website dev provider), is helping organize Prestashop's is holding their Barcamp event here in NYC on March 20th. I'd love it if you could come, hang out, meet me, yada yada.

If you don't know about Prestashop yet, you should absolutely come and learn about the platform. It's like Magento, but plenty of pros like it more. It's an open-source, free e-commerce solution founded out of Paris & has offices in Miami too. The underlying technology has a strong undermining, based on the Smarty template engine, and is currently used by 100K+ ecommerce sites worldwide. PrestaShop was named the Best Open Source E-Commerce Application in the Packt 2010 Open Source Awards and the Best Open Source Business Application in the 2011 Open Source Awards.

Get all the details here: http://barcamp.prestashop.com/

In addition to everything Prestashop has planned (some great keynotes speakers, workshops, and of course, cocktails), Presto-Changeo will be holding "360 Degree Social Media Integration" workshops throughout the day.

Hope to see you there, and please pass this note along to anyone interested! I'd love to meet you guys there.

by jeremygoldman