Twitter Topics:

Numerous current events were discussed on Twitter this year, some of which even broke on there first (such as the Osama bin Laden announcement). Here are the news items that topped the Twitter trending list:

1. Japan earthquake and tsunami
2. Royal Wedding
3. Libyan conflict
4. May 21^st/Oct. 21^st Rapture
5. Death of  bin Laden
6. Egyptian protests
7. Venezuelan protests
8. Brazilian politics
9. Gabrielle Giffords shooting
10. England riots

See Twitter’s year in review here.

IPO Mania:

This was the year of IPO buzz. Social media companies that went public in 2011:

• LinkedIn
• Zynga
• Pandora
• Groupon

Speculations circulate that the IPO trend will continue in 2012 with the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

Top Tech Stories:

CNN selected their top picks for tech stories in 2011. Here are their 10:

1. The death of Steve Jobs
2. Social media’s role as a tool for protesters
3. Hackers
4. Tablet market gets dozens of new entrants
5. Facebook and partners add ‘frictionless’ sharing
6. Patent wars
7. Google+
8. Apple becomes the most valuable company in the world
9. IBM’s Watson beats human champs on ‘Jeopardy!’
10. Spotify and Facebook take on digital music

Click here to read the full article.

The 2011 Social Media Timeline:

Social Media Today put together a timeline that makes it easy to recap social media accomplishments throughout the year:

What’s next?

Tech Guru’s share their opinions on what they think the online future holds:

Next year – from CNN:

1. Touch computing
2. Social gestures
3. NFC and mobile payments
4. Beyond the iPad
5. TV Everywhere
6. Voice control
7. Spatial gestures
8. Second-screen experiences
9. Flexible screens
10. HTML5

In 5 years – from IBM (Covered by techworldnews):

1. Personal energy
2. The end of the password
3. Mind reading
4. The end of the digital divide
5. The end of junk mail

2011 has been an innovative year and 2012 looks as if it won’t disappoint. Happy New Year!

-Anna (@alucas9)

Active Tweeters
At the Web2.0 Summit Twitter CEO Dick Costolo shared statistics on active users. Twitter now has 100 million month active users, and of those 50% log in everyday. Twitter isn’t catching up to Facebook just yet. Facebook has more than 800 million active users, and of those 50% log in everyday.

iPhone 4$:
With a dual-core AA5 chip, new camera and optics, iCloud and Siri (Apple’s voice recognition app), the iPhone 4S is pretty impressive. Sales for the newest iPhone are pretty impressive as well. Let’s look back a bit: it took 74 days to sell the first million iPhone’s and it took three weeks to sell three million iPhone 4′s.

Drumroll, please.

It only took one weekend to sell 4 million iPhone 4S’, making a new iPhone sales record.

Now, for those of you who don’t have it yet, the question is “To upgrade or not to upgrade?”

Social & Mobile
Highlights from a recent ComScore Study:

Those using social networks from their mobile device grew 37% in the past year and more than half accessed social networks almost every day.

Facebook’s mobile audience is approaching 60 million users. In the past year, mobile posts grew by 50% on Facebook,  75% on Twitter and 69% on LinkedIn.

70% of mobile social networkers posted a status update from their phone and the majority of them read posts from brands from their device.

“Social Jobs”
Facebook and the Department of Labor are working together to connect job-seekers and employers through Facebook. Called Social Jobs,  “The partnership’s goal will be to facilitate employment for America’s jobless through the use of social networks.” Social Jobs aims to provide job postings and resources for job-seekers and recruiters. Like “Social Jobs Partnership” on Facebook to learn more: https://www.facebook.com/socialjobs. (With never-ending privacy issues, I wonder if people will be weary of “Social Jobs” as many don’t want potential employers seeing any part of their Facebook life.)

Are You LinkedIn with your Classmates?
While Facebook was adding features to help users find jobs, LinkedIn was busy adding a feature to help users expand their network. “LinkedIn Classmates” is a new feature that makes it easier to connect with alumni from your college/university. As LinkedIn described,  “In the years since college, your classmates have become experienced professionals, industry experts, potential clients and trusted colleagues – in short, people who can help you expand your horizons.” This new tool allows you to see where alumni work, what they do, and where they live. You can also see what you have in common now, making it easier to network and connect with them.

-Anna (@alucas9)

LinkedIn, the social media heavy-hitter geared toward professionals that recently hit 100 million profiles, has announced a number of improvements to its development platform. Most notably, I draw your attention to the “inShare” button, which grants users the ability to share affinities and finds with their LinkedIn connections, as well as an improved authorization function that allows users to log in to sites using their LinkedIn identity and profile.

This announcement comes on the heels of Google announcing that it would be implementing a similarly social “+1” button to its search and advertising offerings.

The logo for LinkedIn, which has some blue and black in it. Yeah, this caption could be better but it's all we could come up with right now.

You can expect to see “inShare” in line with “Tweet this,” “Digg This,” or “Share on Facebook” all across the web in the near future.

LinkedIn also has a few other interesting offerings that may be coming soon to a website near you, including a plugin gallery that gives opportunities for bloggers and companies to give a professional context to their site with easy-to-implement coding that draws from information from LinkedIn, whether it be a company or personal profile or even the viewer’s connections to the people affiliated with the site or company.

All of this is a homerun from LinkedIn. You have to believe people who are serious about their business, their careers, their personal brands and professional online presence will be taking advantage of this added functionality as often as possible.  It will also lead to an increase in the number of people who make a choice each time they fire up their web browser: Am I surfing as personal/ Facebook me, or is this professional/LinkedIn me? And for those people who don’t make that choice, they just might have a reason to do so.

What do you think? Do you have room in your heart for another social sharing button? Are you a fan of keeping work & play separate on the Internet? Do you think you will spend more time on LinkedIN and less time on Facebook on account of this development?

- Thomas (@thomasmcdonald)

I’m presently putting a new social network, Quora, through its paces. So far, so good. It’s all part of my interest in seeing what works for people and businesses/clients -and what doesn’t.

I recently reviewed a social network called Path that bills itself as an “anti-social network” of sorts wherein it limits a user to 50 friends. I like it and continue to use it, and recommend you do, too. And after a few weeks of use, I’ve come to realize that digital services that require a user to selectively limit their friend list to a small number of connections must be getting the idea from other networks, where such friend-limiting activity happens naturally.

At Feedback, we call this phenomenon “Selective Connection.” Take LinkedIn, for example.

Where Facebook has now become the primary network that enables friends to find each other after losing touch with one another over time, LinkedIn has become a quiet network for business professionals.

Most users typically keep their personal profiles on other social networks separated from their LinkedIn profiles for good reason: it’s a professional network for the purpose of being professional. Nowhere on LinkedIn do you ever anticipate that photo of you doing a kegstand to appear. Instead, it’s the place where you can share your talent and skills, learn more about others, and make recommendations and engage in meaningful professional discussion.

The limitations that a user has come to expect on LinkedIn were welcomed in business world much faster than Facebook’s more casual usage and customs. Sure, LinkedIn has integration with Twitter accounts to allow for cross-posting of content that might have something to do with your job. But overall, LinkedIn is kept pretty civil.

So you might start to wonder, why hasn’t Facebook come in and taken command of the online business networking scene? Can’t Facebook flip a switch and do that?

Of course not. Well, not presently, anyway.

A recent conversation that I had on Twitter concluded with the revelation that the social graph online has been replicated from what has long existed outside of the Internet: Some people keep work at work, while some might want to keep home at home.

How Facebook operates right now on a fundamental level is drawn straight from the actions of promoting someone that you just met to a level of friendship. As Facebook continues to grow, the assumed action and reaction of sending and accepting a friend request is slowly solidified as the proper etiquette.

A separate network, LinkedIn, exists for those who feel that they don’t want to share what might appear on their Facebook profile with those at their workplace or potential employer. For those who don’t want to share every particular photo with all of their Facebook or Twitter followers, there is a network like Path.

And there will be more to come, as closed-circle networks and selective connection becomes one of the latest darlings of the new media industry. While it seems like a niche market, closed-circle social networks continue to grow and become successful. LinkedIn might be a closed or specialized network with the most amount of visibility, but smaller online venues could influence the direction that networks are taking in 2011 and beyond.

-Brad (@bcarr)

Seth Godin, author, blogger and CEO of Squido.com, recently blogged about the “Coming Meltdown in Higher Education” (as Seen by a Marketer).”  Some of his insights certainly provide food for thought:

• Most undergraduate college and university programs are organized to give an average education to average students
• Accreditation isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.
• One reason to go to college was to get access.  Today, that access is worth a lot less.

His article has sparked lively conversation online and with those on both sides of the fence. The conversation has been, at the very least, interesting and entertaining to read.

Dubbed the “most comprehensive university social marketing campaign seen to date” – OSU’s “Power of Orange” campaign

OSU built a strategic social media presence on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn and multiple Twitter accounts. What’s “Powered By Orange?” Here’s the answer from the PBO website:

“It’s you – the network of alumni, students, faculty, staff, friends and fans connected to Oregon State University. It’s the positive impact you make every day in Portland and beyond – on the economy, the environment and the community. Use this Web site to tell your story and connect with the other practical idealists who are Powered by Orange.”

Since the campaign’s launch, enrollments have soared, first-time donations by alumni are up and visits to the OSU website have grown exponentially. Luanne Lawrence, OSU’s vice president of university advancement said that they are letting social media drive their decision making,

“We stripped our budget and rebuilt it. It was the hardest thing we had to do. Fifteen to twenty-five year-olds are rebuilding every aspect of the industry, and I’m listening to them.”

Watching the Web Watch the UVa Murder Case

In a time of tragedy and a lot of questions left unanswered regarding the death of UVa’s women’s lacrosse player, Yeardley Love, social media seems to have found a way to respond with patience and maturity. The sports blog, Deadspin, known at one time for its vindictive and unprofessional posts, proved a firm and respectful grasp of the situation by shutting off comments on the UVa story when they veered towards bad taste.

Editor, A.J. Daulerio said, “It was more a message to think a little bit more next time around.”

There also wasn’t a single negative comment to be found when a Facebook page was set up in Yeardley’s memory. Instead, there has been an outpouring of compassion towards Love.  The number of likes on the Facebook page jumped from 4000 to 13,000 within 14 hours … and two weeks later, there are over 66,000 likes.

Social media addiction: Worse than you think

One student blogged the following: I started to feel isolated and lonely…By 2:00 pm I began to feel the urgent need to check my email, and even thought of a million ideas of why I had to. I felt like a person on a deserted island…. I noticed physically, that I began to fidget, as if I was addicted to my iPod and other media devices, and maybe I am.

Two hundred University of Maryland students agreed to live 24 hours without any social media – no cell phone, iPods, or computers. The results of this study actually found that students suffered from the same physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms as alcohol and drug addicts when they went without social media and their cell phones for 24 hours.

Self proclaimed middle-aged, balding college President learns valuable social media lessons

President Brian Rosenberg of Macalester College has never blogged, tweeted, and he’s not on Facebook. However, as he stated, he learned first-hand how new forms of social media “have more potential to connect audiences across both generational and geographic boundaries than do virtually all previous forms of communication.”

After a seemingly innocent, self-parodying video on YouTube, “President’s Day at Macalester College” initially designed to engage alumni reached over 40,000 viewers on YouTube and annual fund donations spiked, the self non-technology savvy college president has had a change of heart:

“I have begun to learn about the nature and power of the social media that are reshaping the way we communicate with one another and should be reshaping the way organizations of all kinds communicate.” – President Rosenberg

-Heather (@HMillar13) and Anna (@alucas9)

Here are my social media picks of the week:

Embeddable Tweets:

This week, Twitter released a new feature which makes it much easier to add a tweet to a blog post. Instead of pasting in an image, or writing out a tweet, you can embed them. Twitter now generates static HTML tweets that you can use in your posts.

Happy Birthday, LinkedIn:

Although LinkedIn was founded in December of 2003, it didn’t launch until May 5, 2003. So, Wednesday marked LinkedIn’s 7^th birthday. That makes LinkedIn older than YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. LinkedIn now has over 50 million users and is worth an estimated 1.3 billion dollars. Happy Birthday, LinkedIn!

Google Search Update:

On Wednesday, Google rolled out some pretty substantial search result updates. Changes include left hand navigation, which allows you to search by content type (news, images, books etc.), a cleaner look, and the option for related searches. & you can expect more; as ReadWriteWeb wrote, “Google’s Wiley says a whole lot more change like this is coming, based on testing and user feedback.”

Facebook Wants to be our Homepage:

Facebook wants to be your homepage. This week, Facebook began prompting users to set the social networking site as their homepage, stating “We’ve noticed you use Facebook regularly. Set Facebook as your homepage to make getting here faster for you.”

ROFLcon Meme Pick of the Week:

Since we recently returned from ROFLcon, I’ve decided to add a “know your memes” of sorts to my picks of the week. This week I’m recommending something you’ve probably already seen, but it’s funny either way. My meme pick is David After Dentist, and their favorite spoof on their video, Chad After Dentist (David was even wearing a Chad Vader shirt during their panel).

-Anna (@alucas9)

iPad:

On Wednesday, Apple had their much anticipated press conference, where Steve Jobs introduced apple’s latest product, the iPad. Here’s the facts:

• 9.7 inch display
• Runs iPhone apps
• Can be used as an eReader
• Holds music, photos, and movies
• Has Wi-Fi capabilities
• Comes in 3 different memory sizes
• Starts at $499

The verdict? Well, according to Twitter, it’s split down the middle. A study from Trendrr revealed that 48% of tweeters reacted positively to the iPad unveiling & 52% did not.

Twitter’s Local Trends:

After a test roll out last week, Twitter has finally made local trends available to all. As of now, everyone can view trending topics for 15 different cities and 6 different countries. So, if you want to see real time results of what’s trending in D.C., or even Brazil, now you can. Worldwide trending is still available, and Twitter is working to get more locations added to the list.  Learn more from Twitter’s Blog spot here.

The Facebook Friend Study:

An interesting study documented this week says our brains can’t keep up with the amount of friends we have on Facebook. It’s similar to a study done in the 1990’s known as Dunbar’s number, which concluded that the human brain is only capable of managing friendships with 150 people. The study is now in the process of being done again, and this time it’s taking online relationships into account, such a Facebook friends. The preliminary findings are out, and the interesting thing is that it appears nothing has changed…our brains are still only capable of maintaining 150 relationships- be it online or offline.

Data Privacy Day:

Yesterday, January 28, 2010, was International Data Privacy Day. Data Privacy Day is a day used to raise awareness and promote online privacy education. Many social media publications “celebrated” by providing a bit of privacy education. AllFacebook has an article on the 5 Facebook Privacy Tips You Need To Know Now, Wired has an article discussing the necessity of safe passwords, and a ReadWriteWeb wrote an article on some of the issues with privacy online.

LinkedIn’s Connection Browsing Updates:

It was announced this week that LinkedIn will soon be rolling out new ways to browse connections. LinkedIn is adding a panel that makes it easier to browse contacts by location, company, or industry. The social networking site  is also tagging connections with keywords, such as “colleague”, “classmate”, and “friend,” and has added an option to browse by recent activity.

-Anna (@alucas9)

Here are my picks of the week:

Google’s Holiday Gift

Whether you’re traveling for business or pleasure this holiday season, the Internet provides a great way to kill time at the airport, especially when it’s FREE. This holiday season, Google is giving the gift of wifi. On Tuesday, Google announced that they were offering free wifi in 47 airports across the nation, November 10, 2009 through January 15, 2010. View the full list of participating airports here.

Tweet on LinkedIn

Last week, LinkedIn was testing out a redesign. This week, they’ve forged a partnership with Twitter. Now you can update your LinkedIn status on Twitter, or update your Twitter status on LinkedIn. View some tips from Mashable on how to get more out of LinkedIn here.

Gaming Gets Social

We’ve heard news that social networking features were in the process of being integrated into Xbox Live. In fact, the new Facebook and Twitter feeds will be available for Xbox Live next Tuesday, November 17, 2009. View a preview video here. What we didn’t know until it was leaked this week was that social networking features are most likely coming to PlayStation 3 as well. Although Sony declined to comment, there are still claims that Facebook may soon be available on PlayStation 3.

Follow & Wave

What was a Twitter trending topic for part of Thursday has become one of my picks of the week. On Thursday, Google added a “follow” feature to Google Wave. Now, you can follow or unfollow public waves you’re interested in and receive updates as they happen. Learn more from the official Google Blog here.

Control Your Groups

I have a few issues with Facebook Groups. First off, deleting a group is a hassle. If you want to delete a group you created, you have to remove all admins other than yourself, delete every member of the group, and then leave the group. Second of all, if you are the only admin and you leave a group, anyone can swoop in and take over admin responsibilities. The second scenario was proved all to well when hundreds of Facebook groups were highjacked. Luckily, they were only temporarily taken over by Control Your Info. Their goal: to stress the importance of controlling your information on Facebook.

-Anna (@alucas9)