Anna’s Social Media Picks of the week

Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest and coolest social media tools? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place. (& if the answer is yes, leave a comment with your favorites). I have searched the World Wide Web for social media information all week, and stumbled upon a few favorites along the way.

Here are my picks of the week:

Facebook Pages & Google Real-Time Results:

This week, Google has started including Facebook Pages in their real time search results. Google announced this via status update on Wednesday, stating that “Public status updates from Facebook Pages now in real-time search: http://bit.ly/6YpCdy More about Facebook Pages: http://bit.ly/aYnAxf 04:10 PM Feb 24, 2010.” As of now, Facebook’s public user updates are not displayed on Google, but Twitter and MySpace updates are.

Rickroll Removed—and Brought Back:

This week, the original Rickroll video was removed…and then brought back. Earlier this week, the original “rickroll” video was removed from YouTube due to a copyright violation. The removal of the ever so popular (with over 30 million views) video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” caused a bit of a stir over the internet. But not to worry…it’s back! It was mistakenly flagged by someone and is back of for your viewing pleasure…or displeasure

Facebook Patents the News Feed:

Facebook has patented the news feed! The patent, which was awarded to Facebook on Tuesday, gives Facebook executives the rights to “dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network.” This could have serious implications for other social networks. Read more about the patent and what it could mean in this ReadWriteWeb article.

What Not to Do with a Twitter Account:

If you’re going to invite people to follow your company on Twitter, you might want to make sure you give them the right Twitter handle. As Mashable reported this week, Denny’s Restaurant Chain made this mistake on their eat-in menus by inviting customers to “Join the Conversation” and follow @dennys on Twitter. The problem? @Dennys is the Twitter handle of a Taiwanese Twitterer named Dennys Hsieh, not Denny’s official restaurant account. Oops!

Who’s Using Social Media?

Well the largest 100 of Fortune 500 companies are. As Mashable reported, a new study completed by PR firm Burson-Marsteller, found that 79% of Fortune 100 companies use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs. 2/3rds have a Twitter account, over 50% have a Facebook fan page, 50% have a YouTube channel, and 33% have a corporate blog. The article also stated that There are a bunch of other interesting stats in the study — including proof that consumers actually do like to engage with companies via social media, making all those channels worthwhile.

-Anna (@alucas9)