Social Media Butterfly

I Can Has Cheezburger Goes Social

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Popular LOLcats site I Can Has Cheezburger is going social. And unlike at Facebook, you can be as grammar-challenged as you like.

LOLcat lovers can create profiles and in the future be able to leave messages for friends on the site.

The site is already well known for its user-generated content. ICHC says they’ve improved their LOLbuilder to enhance the experience of providing narratives for animal photos.

Social Network Updates for the 2 weeks ending July 3, 2008

Posted by Nathania Johnson

I’ve got a pile of updates since I didn’t post the weekly update last week. But good news, it’s coming a day early this week since I suspect most of you will have the Fourth off. Here we go…

Flock, the social media browser, releases German edition

FriendFeed adds audio files.

Digg released their Recommendation Engine, and updated Digg the Candidates.

LinkedIn improved their news and discovery recommendations, launched a learning center, and hired Common Craft to do one of their famous videos.

SocialVibe is now on Bebo.

Facebook enabled comments on Mini Feed items.

Ws.dm revamped My Ws.dm.

FriendFeed’s New iPhone Version vs. FF2Go

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Compared to most websites, FriendFeed is extremely mobile browser friendly. Still, I felt the need recently to see if anyone had used FriendFeed’s api to create an even more mobile-friendly version that I could view on my iPhone.

At first, I couldn’t find anything. But eventually someone told me about FFtoGo (fftogo.com). This was exactly what I was looking for.

Now, FriendFeed has released its own iPhone version. FriendFeed will automatically detect if you’re connecting from an iPhone. You can view the version from a “normal” browser by going to friendfeed.com/i. That should also work if you’re browsing from another mobile device.

There’s hardly any difference between FriendFeed’s iphone version and FFtoGo. FriendFeed has its logo at the top and FFtoGo lacks a logo altogether, but it’s not intrusive. There looks to be a slight font difference between the two, but it’s barely noticeable.

So, I can confidently recommend both for FriendFeed mobile viewing!

Facebook/ConnectU Saga Comes to An End (Finally)

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Facebook now has judicial approval to enforce a settlement reached with ConnectU earlier this year. The co-founders of college social network ConnectU claim Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea. The founders of both networks were all classmates at Harvard together. ConnectU’s co-founders are twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra.

ConnectU wanted out of the settlement when Facebook apparently de-valued itself. Last year, when Microsoft announced it would be buying a stake in Facebook, the social network was valued at $15 billion. But during the settlement, Facebook said they were worth less.

Now a judge has sided with Facebook, though no figure$ were made public.

The whole thing sounds shady on both sides, if you ask me. ConnectU’s founders sound like a bunch of money grabbers while Zuckerberg comes across as dishonest.  And Zuckerberg either has crappy lawyers or he really did steal the idea.

Still, none of them really had an original idea. Social networking was around long before either Facebook or ConnectU.

Friendster Continues to Embrace Mobile with Text Alerts (for Asia)

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Friendster recently released a mobile version of their site and now they’re taking mobile social networking to the next level with their site by offering text alerts. The text alerts will be made available to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippine. The service has been tested in the Phillipines.

“Since SMS text messaging technology is universally available on over 1.2 billion mobile phones in use today in Asia, all of our 52 million users in Asia that have mobile phones can subscribe to Friendster Text Alerts and stay connected when they are on the go and away from a computer,” said David Jones, vice president of global marketing for Friendster.

52 million of Friendster’s 70 million users hail from Asia. Out of the 40 million unique monthly users, 36 million of them are in Asia. So while you may feel the need to balk at Friendster from the comfort of your American desk or couch, Friendster’s making bank across the Pacific.

Social Network Updates for the week ending June 20, 2008

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Facebook finds a way to let homeschoolers sign up.

del.icio.us releases Internet Explorer add-on.

FriendFeed adds feeds to rooms.

Flock, the social media browser, released version 2.0 in beta.

SocialVibe is now on Twitter. Follow @SocialVibe

Veoh added groups.

Facebook Planning to Add Inbox Search

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Facebook is planning to roll out inbox search this month. Users will be able to query their friends’ names or keywords. The search system was built in-house and has already been tested by some users.

Writing on the Facebook blog, engineer Prashant Malik said the search will be rolled out to select networks this week, but everyone will soon have access to the new feature. Malik also said inbox search has been requested for a long time, but they wanted to make sure they had a solid product that could scale, something that Twitter has been struggling with lately. I’m thinking that having a bunch of ex-Googlers on staff helped the effort finally get completed. 

Still, many users would probably prefer that Facebook’s security issues are fixed before new features and updated designs are rolled out.

10 Fake Facebook Profiles for Sale

Posted by Nathania Johnson

They’ve already been taken down, but earlier eBay user pseudopr415 was attempting to sell 10 of his fake Facebook profiles, according to Silicon Alley Insider.  Each profile reportedly had a minimum of 200 friends.

Let me be abundantly clear - this is not what social media marketing is about. If you have to be sneaky about your brand, then something is wrong with your product!

One of the reasons social media has become a phenomenon is the ability to quickly access user opinions of products and services. Consumers are tired of emptying their wallets based on advertising. They want to know what they’re getting into and now they can.

Faking it hardly ever works. Major, national brands (such as Sony and Wal-mart) have tried to either pay off bloggers or create fake blogs in an attempt to play in the social media space. Both were found out and both reputations suffered for it (as if either of those brands needed more damage to their reputation!).

The best way to play on Facebook is to create a kick-butt app that everyone wants to add to their page.

via AllThingsD, sorry we don’t all have your connections and cannot therefore do “actual reporting”

MySpace to Launch Site Redesign Next Week

Posted by Nathania Johnson

MySpace is launching the redesign of their enormous social networking site next week. The changes aren’t just cosmetic, according to Reuters. Beginning next Wednesday, June 18, expect to see changes on the home page, profile editing, navigation, search, and MySpace TV player.

Tom and his gang worked with Lucene Open-Source engine and community on the update. MySpace has been slowly but surely making headway into the open source community and recently joined with Google and Yahoo to form the OpenSocial Foundation.

What do you think about the changes? If you haven’t logged into MySpace in a while, will this be reason enough to type in that password? Let me know how you really feel…in the comments.

Would You Quit Your Job If You Couldn’t Access Facebook?

Posted by Nathania Johnson

If you’re reading this blog, the answer should be YES. Most people who read this blog do some form of social media for a living. If you can’t access Facebook, your company has a bad business model.

But for the rest of the working world, having access to Facebook and similar sites is increasingly becoming a desired benefit at the office. A recent survey has 39% of younger workers considering leaving their jobs if they lost access to the popular social networking site. And while some (mostly older generations) saying they should just grow up, I say it’s the companies that need to grow up.

First of all, all workers take breaks. Some drink coffee, some smoke, some gossip. And last time I checked, those three weren’t particularly great for health or a happy work environment (sometimes the coffee is necessary, I know. Ok, always. But large amounts of caffeine are not good for you.)

But I think blocking access Facebook sends a bigger signal to younger workers than simply not being able to access one site. It says “We don’t trust you,” or “Your duties to us are more important than the rest of your life.”

Companies that offer the best benefits are often the ones that are most successful. That should be intuitive to everyone. Blocking Facebook will never be good for employee morale or a company’s bottom line.

No Facebook? I wouldn’t quit, you still have bills to pay. But I would start looking elsewhere for a company that appreciates its employees.

via IT Business Edge 

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