Google Search Update:

Google has been working to try and enhance search, and this week, their update to search will have a noticeable impact on 11.8% of queries.  The Official Google Blog describes the change:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

eMarketer Study:

A recent study by eMarketer showed that by the end of 2010, more than half of U.S. Internet users were on Facebook monthly. In contrast, only 9% were using Twitter. By 2013, eMarketer expects there will be 152.1 million U.S. Facebook users and 27.7 million Twitter users. See the following chart for more information:

Facetime for Mac:

Facetime for Mac is now available in the Mac App Store. For $.99, Mac users can now Facetime iPhone 4 users, Mac users, or iPad users. The app even supports HD video calls. Download it here.

(Oh, and if you don’t have a Mac yet, Apple just announced their latest MacBook Pro).

“Like” Chipotle?

NBC has taken to social media to promote their new show, The Next Great Restaurant. The campaign is simple: Like “The Next American Restaurant” Facebook Page and watch the show promo video and you’ll get a coupon for Buy One Get One Chipotle (Fine print: The promotion runs through March 6th and the coupon expires 7 days after you view the video). “The Next American Restaurant” Facebook Page fan count has been growing substantially and is at nearly 150,000 fans.

Higher Ed Report:

A recent study indicates that colleges may be Facebooking students before accepting them. As AllFacebook described (in their article titled: Facebook Profiles Now Part of 80% Colleges’ Admissions Outreach),

“Recruiters aren’t the only ones looking at candidates’ Facebook profiles. Four out of every five college admissions offices look up prospective students on the social network. That statistic comes from the college admissions test-prep company Kaplan, which surveyed admissions counselors from ‘some of the top colleges and universities.’”

-Anna (@alucas9)

Twitter Translation Center

This week, Twitter launched a translation center that uses crowdsource translations to quickly translate Twitter into different languages. The translation center will be used for French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Indonesian, Russian, and Turkish translations.  Visit the translation center at http://twitter.com/translate and follow @translator for updates.

A Win for Watson

“I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords,” Ken Jennings wrote on the screen in the final Jeopardy round this week.  This was in reaction to a three day series where top Jeopardy players Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter went up against… a computer. Not just any computer, IBM’s Watson computer was equipped with servers that equaled the size of 10 refrigerators (loaded with around 200 million pages of text). After the three day battle, Watson’s earnings totaled $77,147, Jennings’ winnings totaled $24,000, and Rutter’s earnings totaled $21,600. Watson was awarded $1 million dollars for the win, 100% of which went to charity.

National Broadband Map

The National Broadband Map, an initiative of the Obama administration, has gone live today. All Things D describes the initiative: “Nestled within that amount was $350 million to draw a map showing a detailed, block-by-block inventory of the existing broadband infrastructure in the U.S. It took two years, but the results were unveiled by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration today on the Web site Broadbandmap.gov.” It was found out that 68% of American households have access to a cable modem, a DSL Line, or a home fiber connection, 28.3% do not use the Internet (Woah!), and 5% to 10% do not have access to acceptable broadband speeds.

Social Bing…

This week, Bing announced a social toolbar update. The Bing Bar 7 allows web users to view Facebook, email, weather and other favorite sites without having to open a new tab. Facebook is Bing’s latest toolbar integration, allowing Facebook users to get information quicker and easier. Watch this video to learn more.

…Vs. Social Google

During the same day that Bing announced their new social toolbar, Google announced additions to social search. Contrary to Bing, one thing you won’t find in Google’s social search is Facebook. However, Google is integrating other popular social channels into search. When you are signed in to your Google account and search, you will now see results from people you’re connected to on Blogger, Twitter, Flickr, and Quora. Watch the following video to learn more.

-Anna (@alucas9)

Facebook is the most visited site on Gogo inflight Internet. So, in conjunction with Gogo, seven major airlines are offering free Facebook access on Wi-Fi enabled airlines for the month of February. North American flights for Virgin America, United Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, AirTran, US Airways and Alaska Airlines will offer free Facebook access.

VeriPhone:

Pre-orders for the Verizon iPhone, which began on Thursday, have already sold out (they sold out within 17 hours). Not to worry, the Verizon iPhone will be available to order online on February 9^th, and will be in stores on February 10^th. Reviews are already coming in, and as expected, Verizon appears to have better iPhone service than AT&T.

Egypt’s Back on the Internet:

Image from CNET News

After a 5-day net blackout, Egypt’s Internet is back.  Sources say the Internet is back for the same reason it was taken away: to quell protests. The internet ban could have economic repercussions for Egypt. As The Huffington Post reported, “The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says the blocked services account for roughly 3-4 percent of economic output, resulting in a loss of $18 million per day for the Egyptian economy.”

Social Super Bowl:

Super Bowl weekend is finally upon us. Foursquare and the NFL have partnered up for the big game. If you check into the “Super Bowl Sunday” location and shout about which team you’re rooting for, you will receive a team-specific super bowl badge. Unlocking the badge also gets you 20% off of merchandise at NFLShop.com.

Also keep up with Twitter updates and trends at http://sbtwitter.nfl.com/. If you’re tweeting during the game, use the hashtags #superbowl and #sb45. The NFL also has a grid that displays real time trending around Super Bowl related topics.

iAd Success:

This week, a Nielsen study came out that compared Campbell’s mobile ad success with their TV ad success. Apple’s mobile ads (iAds), which debuted seven months ago, had an effectiveness study done and found that:

“Those exposed to one of Campbell’s IAds were more than twice as likely to recall it than those who had seen a TV ad. Indeed the five-week study, conducted by Nielsen, showed that consumers shown an iAd remembered the brand “Campbell’s” five times more often than TV ad respondents and the ad messaging three times more often.”

IAd respondents said they intended to purchase Campbell’s four times more than the TV group and that they liked the ad five times more. TV and mobile audiences were queried separately in mobile and online surveys. The TV audiences were part of Nielsen’s panel, while mobile users were recruited within various apps.” (Adage)

-Anna (@alucas9)

Egypt & the Internet

Reports (like this one) have been coming in the past few days that Egypt’s government has censored the Internet. Last night, it appears that the government shut down the majority of Egypt’s Internet service. This is thought to be in reaction to the massive street protests over President Hosni Mubarak’s rule that have been spreading virally through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and SMS. It is reported that the most major social media channels have been blocked, cell towers have been deactivated, and Internet service has been taken away.

Captcha Who?

Facebook is amping up security by introducing social Captchas. So, instead of having to type in the warped letters (that sometimes make pretty awesome fake band names: http://twitter.com/#!/captchaband) as a security measure before posting, you will have to identify the name of a Facebook friend from a photo of them. As Facebook says, “We will show you a few pictures of your friends and ask you to name the person in those photos. Hackers halfway across the world might know your password, but they don’t know who your friends are.”

Old Spice Man Is Back

The Old Spice Man is back. He released a new video this week, which already has over 400,000 views, alerting fans that new Old Spice videos are on the way. For the next spot, Old Spice will be searching for a superfan to release the video through. As Mashable reported, “…the video will be e-mailed to one superfan sometime in the next couple of weeks, but well before the ad breaks on February 7, the day after the Super Bowl. The Procter & Gamble brand will not be advertising during the game…” Welcome back to the man who smells like a man, man.

LinkedIn Goes Public

LinkedIn is going public! This week, LinkedIn filed the initial public offering (IPO) paperwork. The price, date for the offering, and number of shares has yet to be disclosed. However, the corporation is hoping that selling public stock will raise them over $175 million dollars. To learn more about LinkedIn’s financials and their IPO plans, See this article.

Deck.ly

This week, Tweetdeck unveiled deck.ly, a platform that allows users to post more than 140 characters to Twitter. Apparently, Tweetdeck users have been requesting this for a while:

“From day one [of Tweetdeck], it was one of the things almost everyone was screaming about,” says Mr Dodsworth. “I’ve been very protective of the fact that [140 characters] is a platform limitation of the services we sit on top of and we have to have an element of respect for that. Going around that core tenet of Twitter could be a sensitive move. We don’t know how they feel about it. But we are tailoring to an audience that wants functionality the general user of Twitter doesn’t care about.” (Via FT Techhub blog)

-Anna (@alucas9)

Facebook Accidently Releases Page Updates:

Yesterday, Facebook accidentally released an overhaul of Pages. The Pages have since been reverted back to the previous state, but the screen grabs and articles provide a sneak peek at potential new features. Features include:

• A tab free Page – with navigation on the left hand side of the Page
• A login button for admins – including a “Switch Accounts” feature
• Removal of comment button – as we’ve recently seen with Profile Pages
• Memories on Profile Pages – giving a snapshot (with photos, status updates, etc.) of each year on Facebook
• Lightbox UI – When you click on an image, the background around the image will become a black box to allow for better concentration on the image.

YouTube Trends:

This week, YouTube released Trends, which emphasizes the most popular videos on YouTube. Trends allows you to view the most popular videos of 2010, trending videos, and even narrow popular videos down by demographics and geographic areas. You can narrow by age, gender, and explore the most popular videos in dozens of U.S. cities and more than 20 countries. Check it out at http://youtube-trends.blogspot.com/.

Facial Recognition Feature:

A Facebook feature we can keep a look out for is Facebook’s Facial Recognition feature. The facial recognition software will make tagging photos easier by using software to pick the person out of your friend network.  It was reported this week that we can expect this feature to begin rolling out as early as next week.

Zuckerberg Named Time’s Person of the Year:

The Social Network, The Movie. Zuckerberg Signs The Giving Pledge. Oh.. and that Facebook thing that keeps growing. Zuckerberg has certainly been a topic of conversation throughout the year , and Time has named him Person of the Year. As Time Magazine writes: “For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them, for creating a new system of exchanging information and for changing how we live our lives, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year.”

Twitter Ads Easier:

If you ever wanted to look into buying advertising on Twitter, you may be happy to know that it just got easier. This week Twitter launched an online ad buying form. The form lets you choose between purchasing Promoted Accounts, Promoted Tweets, and Promoted Trends, and lets you select one of 5 monthly ad budget options – ranging from $10-$100K.

-Anna (@alucas9)

New Facebook Profiles:

Facebook profiles got a makeover this week. Profiles now include a snapshot with a brief summary of who you are and recent photos. You also now have the option to highlight your interests, give a more complete picture of how you spend your time, as well as highlight your closest Facebook friends. For more information, click here.

Tumblr Took a Tumble:

This week, Tumblr went down for over 24 hours. Planned maintenance on Sunday unintentionally brought the entire network down. A very apologetic blog post from Tumblr staff stated “Frankly, keeping up with growth has presented more work than our small team was prepared for — with traffic now climbing more than 500M pageviews each month. But we are determined and focused on bringing our infrastructure well ahead of capacity as quickly as possible.”

Google’s Most Searched of 2010:

This week, Google released their Search Zeitgeist for 2010, which highlighted the most popular search terms during the year. So what did the world Google? As Mashable explained,

“Chatroulette, the iPad  and Justin Bieber were the three fastest-rising search terms in 2010; Twitter and Facebook also made the list, at numbers eight and 10, respectively.”

New search terms that made the list were Haiti, Chile, “earthquake”, Lady Gaga and the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. Other top searches included world cup, iPhone 4, and Olympics. For a full list, go here.

World Map of Social Networks – December 2010:

Vincenzo Cosenza’s latest world map of social networks is out. Trends for web traffic data from Alexa and Google during the month were mapped out. The map shows that Facebook is ever increasing in their dominance. Other social networks on the rise include LinkedIn and Twitter.

Meme of the Week:

(Note: I am including this because I am a geek about my town and who knows when the next viral video will come from #RVA.) What started as a local YouTube video has turned into a national viral video. Last weekend at a Christmas parade in Richmond, Virginia, a Rudolph float went down after being punctured by a stoplight. It is hilarious.. er.. I mean tragic. The video now has over 500,000 views, and has been featured on The Today Show, Jimmey Kimmel, Tosh.0, Perez Hilton, Metro, and more.

Gowalla 3.Whoa!

Check-in at one of the biggest location based services, check-in at them all? The newest version of Gowalla’s iPhone app was released on Thursday, and had some pretty big updates. Gowalla has unified check-ins, allowing users to check-in to Facebook Places, Tumblr, Twitter, and competitor Foursquare when they check-in to Gowalla. Download Gowalla 3.0 here.

Rumor Alert: Google to Buy Groupon?

Rumor has it that Google may buy Groupon for a whopping $6 billion dollars. Groupon is rapidly growing in popularity, and is set to exceed $500 million dollars in revenue this year. Sources say that Google wants to make this purchase to extend their online dominance through local advertising dollars, and to fend off competition like Facebook, who recently announced their own deal service.

One Hangover (Badge), Coming Right Up:

Badges! Foursquare announced new badges this week, including Dog’s Best Friend (“for frequenting dog parks”), Great Outdoors (“for getting out to parks to breathe in some fresh air”), Swimmies (“for the aquatic minded”), 9 to 5 (“for those of us in the weekly grind”), Hangover (“we’re not encouraging hangovers, but are happy to salute people who keep on trucking!”), and Ski Bum (“to commemorate your trips up the mountain”).

Social Networking for Social Good:

This week, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes officially launched Jumo, a social activism social network. You can connect with Jumo via Facebook connect, and then select to follow any of the 3,500 charity organizations (in 200 issue areas) you support.

Netflix To Offer More Streaming Options:

Recently, Netflix began offering a streaming-only subscription, and beginning in 2011, we may have more instant options. This week, Netflix announced a deal with FilmDistrict that will allow first run movies to be streamed. The New York Post also reported that Netflix is in talks with production studios, possibly paying upwards of $100,000 per episode for first-run TV content.