Fake Reviews, Productivity Tools, & Apple Maps: the Social 6 for 9/26/12
Some days, it's easy to curate the Social 6. Some days, there's an outpouring of clicks, retweets, shares, pins, you name it - and really great articles don't make it into the top 6. Today's one of those days. Competition was fierce for the top 6 shares from yesterday, but here's to the victors:
#6: Whom Do Pop Stars Follow on Twitter? [INFOGRAPHIC] (Mashable)
#5: Why design is key to the connected world (GigaOM)
#4: Top 4 apps to 'gamify' your business (PCWorld)
#3: Apple Maps: Taking the Long View (Streetfight)
#2: 5 Tools You Need to Stay Productive at Work (Huffington Post)
#1: How To Counter Fake Social Media Reviews (Business 2 Community)
Facebook Plugins, Animated GIFs, and Social Media Myths: Today's Social 6
I got flack from some of you guys for being excited about Twitter blocking animated GIFs in profile pictures, but sorry; I hate them. That was clearly one of the bigger stories of the last 24 hours, but Napkin Labs and my post on Facebook's Shared Activity plugin made waves too.
Here's your Social 6:
#6: iPhone 5 and iPad Mini To Have Exchangeable Batteries? (Tapscape)
#5: 8 Social Media Myths Busted (Business 2 Community)
#4: Why Health Care Needs Social Media (Huffington Post)
#3: Napkin Labs launches Facebook ‘Fan Center’ to give brands more qualitative customer relationships (The Next Web)
#2: Twitter Blocks Animated GIFs in Profile Pics (Mashable)
#1: Mixing sharing with privacy: Facebook debuts its Shared Activity plugin (jeremygoldman.com)
Twitter Profiles, Social Highlights, iPad Mini: the Social 6 roundup
Trying to streamline the Social 6 by only providing you guys with the links and publications of the articles that attracted the most clicks, shares, retweets, and so on over the last day or so. Today we've got an interesting mix, from social highlights to Twitter's new profiles to -- shocker -- more Apple news (this time it's the iPad Mini). Here's your Social 6 news roundup for 9/19/12:
#6: How Social Media Made Us Narcissists (EBONY.com)
#5: Buying Followers On Social Media Sites (San Francisco Chronicle)
#4: The Designers Who Got The Most Social Media Buzz During Fashion Week (Business Insider)
#3: iPad Mini Release Date, Price: Why Screen Size, Retina Display Crucial to Compete with Apps on Kindle Fire 2, HD (Books & Review)
#2: How to change your Twitter header image (Mashable)
#1: Why Book Highlights Are Anti-Social (ReadWriteWeb)
Target, Oscar Mayer, GoDaddy, and Twitter: the Social 6 News Roundup for 9/11/12
Well, yesterday was a relatively busy day out there! GoDaddy's outage was big news, but Medium (brought to you by the founders of Twitter) and Oscar Mayer's new campaign made waves as well - and there's plenty more to keep you busy reading. Without further ago, here are the top news & views you missed yesterday:
Target Is A Perfect Example Of Why Retailers Should Be Investing In Social Media
"Measuring whether [social media] efforts are successful is difficult because there's no immediate return. But this anecdote about shoppers at Target shows why investing in social media is worthwhile for retailers...research determined that fans of Target on Facebook were 97 percent more likely to spend at Target, and friends of fans were 51 percent more likely than the average population to spend at the retailer."
7 Strategies for Dealing With Online Reviews
"With more than two-thirds of buying decisions now informed by online reviews, merchants are being forced to take a closer look at how they should handle customer feedback when it’s posted online...to find out how merchants should be dealing with these issues, we spoke to five experts in the field and asked what businesses should consider when managing their online reviews."
“Please Don’t Stalk Me” site lets Twitter users alter location data attached to their tweets
"Have you ever wished you could tweet from somewhere else in the world, without having to actually go there? The arctic circle? The great pyramids of Egypt? Or how about the Bermuda triangle? Well, now it seems like you can. A little website entitled “Please Don’t Stalk Me” allows any Twitter user to alter the location data attached to their tweets."
Evan Williams & Biz Stone of Twitter fame launch Medium, their "quality over quantity" network
"News broke recently that Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone had launched a new social media network centered around something we really love: sharing quality content...posting access to curate collections on Medium is currently limited to 'friends and family' of the founders. As a Beta Member, I am able to view and vote on content, which currently includes the boards “Been There, Loved That,” a collection of gorgeous images from around the world. Did I mention they were gorgeous?"
New Oscar Mayer campaign proposes bacon as a new currency
"Many people... [have] heard the lottery slogan, 'All it takes is a dollar and a dream.' Now comes an actor, comedian and writer, seeking to make his way across the country in the next two weeks with only a dream and, oh, yes, instead of a dollar, a trailer filled with 3,000 pounds of a new bacon.
The actor, Josh Sankey, will embark this week on a promotion for the Oscar Mayer division of Kraft Foods that is being called the Great American Bacon Barter. The promotion includes a Web site, baconbarter.com; social media like Twitter; and a public relations campaign."
GoDaddy goes down, Anonymous claims responsibility
"GoDaddy, the domain registrar and Web hosting company, experienced outages Monday, perhaps taking millions of websites down as a result...a quick call to the company's customer service line resulted in a voice message stating that the company is aware of issues involving several services, including web hosting and emails. The company suggest following its Twitter page for updates...Twitter accounts thought to be associated with the hacking group Anonymous claimed responsibility for the attack."
Mixer, NYFW, and Twitter's new API : The Social 6 for 9/7/12
I knew New York Fashion Week would be a pretty big point of discussion yesterday, but Twitter's API news was pretty major too. Here's the rundown:
Is Mixer The Mobile Social Location-Based App We’ve Been Looking For? Maybe…
"Mixer is a new social mobile application for iPhone that lets you converse with people on a location...users can post text and photos to the local feed and others can comment. Via a nice visual interface you can zoom out from your locality to join conversations far away or zoom back in to your neighbourhood. But when you leave a location where a conversation happened you can continue to converse with those people."
Fashion Week Dieting Spreads On Twitter, Surprising No One
"Search #NYFW and the word “diet” right now on the social media site and you’ll find lots of tweets linking back to the CNN article mentioned above. But if you go back a bit further, you’ll find women tweeting about their actual diets. Just yesterday, fashion stylist Elizabeth Tran tweeted “So my one-cube-of-cheese-every-hour diet starts tomorrow. Well, I think it will…#lesigh #NYFW“ Let’s not forget this shockingly sad picture tweeted out almost a month ago by PR rep Keisha McCotry. Yep, you read that right: a bowl of broccoli and a glass of water is her dinner. She told CNN she began her fashion week diet in July, and that, 'Perception is reality in this industry, and unfortunately, you have to look the look to get the clients.'"
The #NYFW diet: Part of the job?
"New York Fashion Week is one of the fashion industry's biggest events of the year, the culmination of months of planning, organizing, schmoozing ... and dieting? When it comes to the biannual fashion shows, which kick off Thursday, models aren't the only ones looking to drop a few pounds before hitting the tents. Some publicists, bloggers and fashion editors have been counting calories for weeks in anticipation of the week-long event, where to some, networking and being seen are just as important as the collections debuting on the runways."
The relationship between Case Studies & Social Link Bait
"These are a few of the many benefits offered to you for taking your precious time and creating a great piece of content, such as a case study. One of the benefits I’d like to discuss in much more depth is the social link bait benefit. But before I get into it, I want to just make sure everyone understands what social link bait is."
Twitter officially launches v1.1 Of its API
"...today, the company officially unveiled the newest version of its API, v1.1, and updated its “Developer Rules of the Road” and display requirements.One of the more notable changes we’ve seen so far, brought to our attention by Steve Streza’s tweet, is that developers will have until March 5, 2013 to switch over to the new version of the API. After that, v1.0 will be “kaput” — to use the technical term."
More on Twitter's new API, which drops support for RSS
While it was easy to see the loss of XML coming — Twitter has slowly dropped support for XML in favor of JSON over the last year and a half — dropping support for RSS and Atom is a major shift. RSS and Atom are the two major formats for serving up web feeds. These feeds can include text, audio, video and other types of media. While most users use RSS as a way to subscribe to web content from a blog or podcast — the format can also be used as a way to subscribe to tweets. Since its inception, Twitter has allowed developers to access Twitter timelines and search queries using RSS. As a result, lots of social aggregators have used RSS as an easy way to pull in tweets alongside messages for other services.
The Social 6: 8/24/12 News Roundup
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: Nicholas Sparks Beat Box Office Predictions After Social Media Campaign
While this is old news in that The Lucky One came out earlier in the year, Jason Boog of Galleycat shows how author Nicholas Sparks used social media to spark (sorry, I tried to avoid it!) increased word of mouth and box office receipts.
News Corp.'s Jonathan Miller, who has led its digital efforts for a year years, is stepping down. This is just one of many executive moves since the company announced it would be splitting its traditional publishing business from the company's other properties. Miller's departure is just another sign that News Corp. is going through a pretty significant overhaul.
#4: Facebook Has 44% Fake Followers; Twitter Has 33%
The @facebook account on Twitter's following is 44% fake, and @twitter's number is at 33%. That's according to the new online tool provided by StatusPeople, a social media management company out of London, that looks at a Twitter account's following and estimates its number of fake, inactive, and authentic followers. I've tried this tool, and while I can't (yet) attest to their entire methodology, it's certainly a good place to start. From some of the accounts I've tested already using their tool, it appears that it's at the very least a good tool to get a directional sense of whether or not you have an inactive/fake follower problem.
#3: Mayor Bloomberg & NYC launches digital toolkit for small businesses
Mashable, Google, Tumblr, Weebly have partnered with the City of New York to provide small businesses a digital education program to, essentially, start kicking butt and taking names with respect to their digital aptitude. Rachel Sterne, NYC's Chief Digital Officer, will be teaching the Digital Toolkit's first course on September 20th. All in all, a really cool initiative to give small businesses some of the tools they need to compete effectively.
#2: 7 Ways YouTube Can Grow Its Platform
Is YouTube still one of the top social platforms, and the web brand most associated with video? Absolutely. However, it's important to continuously innovate and address its challenges to stay ahead. In my second piece for Mashable, I outlined ways that YouTube can accomplish just that, some of which are already in the process of being addressed (good for them!).
#1: 3 of 4 CMOs Say Social Media Impacts Sales
This Forbes piece shares results of a Bazaarvoice survey asking 100 members of the CMO Club how they feel about social media. While it's a pretty small sample size, over half of the CMO respondents represent brands with over $1 billion in annual revenue, so it's very interesting -- and important -- to note their results on how social media affects sales.
The Social 6: Key Stories of The Last 24 hours, 8/15/12
#6 Done Deal: 10 Weeks Later, Salesforce.com Owns Buddy Media
Peter Kafka delivers a great article for AllThingsD sharing that Salesforce.com now officially owns Buddy Media. The deal was said to have closed at $750 million. All in all, a pretty quick acquisition as these deals tend to go. Congrats to my friends at Buddy Media for officially being part of the Salesforce family.
#5 Facebook's Instagram Deal Moves One Step Closer: UK's Office Of Fair Trading Gives IT The All-Clear
Speaking of slower acquisitions, Facebook’s Instagram deal is one step closer to being a reality: Ingrid Lunden of TechCrunch explains some of the anti-competitive concerns surrounding the deal. Personally, I can see why any consolidation of social platforms should be closely reviewed.
#4 Mobile Apps Could Be Affected by New COPPA Privacy Rules for Kids
Brian Proffitt writes a great article on ReadWriteWeb explaining why the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act are considering new changes.
#3 How the Second Screen Scored in the Summer Olympics
Mobile media became a huge deal during this years Olympics. John Paul Titlow writes an interesting for ReadWriteWeb telling why, and is a great way of telling what the future holds for mobile event consumption.
#2 Ultimatum to stores: sign pledge not to sell 'trampy' kids clothes or be boycotted
Nick Ralston posts a video and an article on Life & Style about whether or not to sell kids clothes that may be a bit revealing. Inappropriate clothing for children has raised as an issue against Target Australia (*very* loosely affiliated with Target USA), and a grassroots attempt is being made to respond to the store’s decisions.
#1 Dell CEO's Daughter Booted From Twitter for Security Reasons
How annoying would it be for you to spend $2.7 Million to keep your family safe, only to find that the biggest security concern was your own daughter? Even though it was innocuous, Alexa Dell, CEO Michael Dell’s daughter, posted a photo going to Fiji, which could lead to people following her. Zoe Fox writes for Mashable and gives more details to the situation, which sheds some light on the concerns associated with geo-location sharing.
The Social 6: Key Stories of The Last 24 hours, 8/14/12
#6 Now In 20 Cities, Startup Grind Aims To Inspire The Next Generation Of Global Entrepreneurs
Rip Empson writes for TechCrunch profiling Startup Grind, an event-based community for entrepreneurs.
#5 How Maker Camp uses Google+ to give teens a behind-the-scenes look at tech and science
Now here’s a pretty cool initiative: a new summer camp is in the making and the markers are Google and Make Magazine! This new online camp is targeted at 13 to 18 year olds that want to learn more about science and technology. Anna Heim writes for The Next Web explaining more about this new online initiative.
#4 Answer Underground Aims To Be A Mobile-Focused Quora For Education, Hits The iPad This Week
Did you know there are 3.7 billion web searches every month for education-related topics? I sure didn’t. Sallie Severns, formerly of Answers.com, founded and created Answer Underground, to help fill this information niche. Answers Underground is a mobile-focused learning utility created to help students share information and get answers quickly. Rip Empson shares more details in this TechCrunch piece.
#3 Kim Dotcom promises that disruptive new music service, Megabox, will launch this year
Writing for The Next Web, Jon Russell says Dotcom's new venture, Megabox, will allow artist to sell music to direct users, and is said to launch before the end of the year.
#2 Case Study: Twitter and Mindy Kailing
An article on Pocket Stop’s Basement Blog about Mindy Kaling, , and how her new show on Fox, The Mindy Project, might not have gotten off the ground without the strength of her voice on Twitter. This is a great lesson for any sole proprietor or personality: having a strong “social voice” clearly can pay huge financial dividends.
#1 Google makes another huge move in travel with rumored acquisition of Frommer's
Fresh off of acquiring Zagat a few months back, Google is now acquiring Frommer's brand of travel guides! Brad McCarty writes for The Next Web outlines the move, which should improve Google’s travel-planning searches.
The Social 6: The Weekend Recap, 8/13/12
You know the drill by now: 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 Tips to Take Food Photos Good Enough to Eat
I think most people can agree, seeing great pics of food can make you hungry. Samantha Murphy delivers a great piece on Mashable giving you tips on how to take great food photos using your smartphone.
#5 5 Reasons Why Your Social Media Training Will Fail
There are things to always keep in mind so your social media training does not fail. This Business 2 Community piece by Kate Rose gives 5 reasons why training fails, and some tips for making sure this doesn’t happen to you.
The Summer Olympics had plenty of viewers and pundits going social, turning to social media and traditional media to criticize Olympians in real-time. Even if you’re not remotely involved in the Olympics, this is a great piece to read to get an understanding of the problems with media scrutiny in 2012 and how to best deal with it.
#3 Funded! Dalton Caldwell’s Twitter alternative App.net reaches $500,000 funding goal
App.net , a “real-time social feed without the ads,” reached its funding goal ahead of time. The approach Dalton Caldwell and his team have taken is commendable: reaching out to users and developers first, with the goal of putting them ahead of advertisers. There’s an alpha available at https://alpha.app.net/global/ if you want to check it out. Great project and worth rooting for.
#2 Paul Ryan Is Gabe From 'The Office'
The most newsworthy story this weekend undoubtedly had to be Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate. While there's tons of serious analysis out there, Amanda Wills takes a different approach, and posts a great slideshow illustrating the similarities between Gabe and Paul Ryan. Nice to see that Gabe Lewis is (in a way) finally getting what he's always wanted - a shot at the bigtime. Personally, I've noticed some similarities between Gabe and VP nominee Paul Ryan, so it's nice to see I'm not the only one.
#1 Viewpoint: 11 Reasons a 23-Year-Old Shouldn't Run Your Social Media
Wow. This story sure elicited plenty of feedback and retweets from you guys. I think the provocative title may have helped.
Technology is changing at a rapid pace, sure; however that doesn't mean you must hire a 23 year-old to manage your social media. Hollis Thomases writes for TIME Business and offers some great guidance. Don't be misled by the title of this article; the analysis inside is a serious, thoughtful approach to how a brand should be handling its social strategy.
Related articles
The Social 6: Key Stories of The Last 24 hours, 8/10/12
#6 Facebook turns to its army of users to report phising attacks using new public email address
Facebook's success unfortunately makes it a target for phishers and scammers. Matt Brian writes a great article on TheNextWeb explaining how Facebook is turning to its users to cut down on Facebook-related phishing. Solid move for the company to get the rise in phishing under control.
#5 Are RIM and Samsung Ready to Do the Deed?
Richard Adhikari writes a nice article on Ecommerce with details about how Samsung and RIM might be getting in bed together, either through a licensing agreement or flat-out acquisition. In my mind, RIM’s value isn’t going to go up anytime soon, and a deal would be a step in the right direction for the struggling firm.
#4 Where Apple's Boy Genius Went Wrong
During the Olympic coverage, Apple aired three ads that they thought could have helped sales, but they’ve been reportedly pulled from the air pretty quickly. Chris Maxcer delivers a great E-Commerce Times article explaining why the ads were pulled, and how an advertising powerhouse like Apple went wrong.
#3 Chick-fil-A: Stop Trying to Control the Conversation
Another strong E-Commerce Times piece! Christopher J. Bucholtz outlines where Chick-fil-A went wrong in its support of gay marriage. If you’re following my writing or my tweets, you know I think Chick-fil-A is 100000% within its rights to support its brand values, but the shifty way they managed the fiasco from a PR perspective is what really got to me – and many others.
#2 If a Google Employee Dies, Spouse Gets Half Pay for 10 Years
I wrote my upcoming book Going Social based on not just being sociable with your customers, but being good to them in general. When you think about it, some of your most important customers – or constituents – are your employees. This piece outlines how amazingly good Google is to its employees. It’s not just free food and fitness classes anymore: the death benefits extended to employees are pretty impressive. Samantha Murphy of Mashable goes into good detail in this piece.
#1 Pinterest Drops Invites, Now Open to Everyone
This past Wednesday, Pinterest announced they have removed their invite-only strategy towards increasing membership, and are now open to anyone with a pulse. Yet another sign Pinterest is looking to go mainstream in a major way. It will be interesting to see how adoption rates go up – or not – as a result of this move.