Twitter Off The Twitter Plateau

A few months ago, Twitter CEO & co-founder, Evan Williams talked at the Web 2.0 Summit about how Twitter’s growth was slowing.  Since then, Twitter’s growth had actually declined.  At least until this new year. 

Twitter’s numbers in January hit record numbers, meaning that Twitter’s growth could be continuing to climb very soon.  First the numbers of tweets was actually record breaking.  Twitter users posted more than 1233.8 million tweets  in January.  And as high as that number is, it’s not that surprising, since the number of tweets each month has been constantly growing month after month.  However, in January 2009 there were only 76.6 tweets posted.  (more…)

iePlexus Social Media News Brief: Jan. 29, 2010

From Twitter users split on Apple’s new iPad, to which social media and search engine’s Kathy Griffin likes, this is a look at iePlexus’s Social Media News Brief. (more…)

Obama & The Social Media World

It’s not really news that President Obama is for social media, since many say his presence on social media helped him get to the White House.  And although he maybe for it, he’s still just learning how to use it.  Last week, when the President visited the Red Cross headquarters to learn what they were doing in effort to help Haiti, the President hit the Twitter ‘submit’ button for the very first time.  Although he has his own Twitter account, he’s never actually personally used it.

Tonight, President Obama is expected to give his first State of the Union address to the nation.  And for the first time ever, social media has already begun to play a role in the president’s State of the Union speech.  First the Rethink Afghanistan organization has started a widespread war protest on the White House’s Facebook page.  What started as an effort to obtains 20,000 signatures on Rethink Afghanistan’s website, moved to the social media world after they had reached their goal.  (more…)

Can Twitter Be The News?

A few weeks ago when I talked about the future of social media, one of the things I mentioned was how Twitter was going to become our news source.  Next month, five journalist are actually going to test out the method of only getting news from only Twitter and Facebook.  The “Behind Closed Doors on the Net” experiment’s goal is to see if the journalist can actually write articles based on facts mentioned on the social networks.  The only way to do that, is take away and block all other communication technologies.  That means no phone, radio, or clicking on links attached to the social networks. 

I’m looking forward to seeing how the journalist do in the experiment.  Can anyone really just get their news from Twitter and social media alone?  I say “Yes & No.”  I think Twitter is a great tool for overviews, and for discussion.  However some stories are best told by social media.  The Iran election from last summer is a great example.  Although journalist were banned from covering it, the citizens of country took our their cameras, and shared what was happening with the rest of the world.  While this was everyone’s only option to learn about developments, it opened the doors to citizen journalism, allowing anyone to tell a story, and in some cases, like this situation, made the story more real.  (more…)

Even The Pope Knows To Blog

I think, no matter your religion, if Pope Benedict XVI says something important, everyone listens.  Over the weekend And the 82 year old shockingly sent out a message to most specifically Catholic priests over the weekend saying they must no longer just have a website sharing the word of God, but they also need to blog and use social media. 

A few years ago, the 265th Pope of the Catholic Church started to embrass social media with his own YouTube channel, and most recently released both a Facebook and iPhone app.  (more…)

Sunless-Tanning Advocates Accomplish Global Success in Partnership with iePlexus

One in 58 men and women will be diagnosed with melanoma – the most aggressive, and often deadly, form of skin cancer – during their lifetime, according to the American Melanoma Foundation.

While such a dismaying statistic is a blindsiding truth to many, Andrea Licata-Bernath knows about the dangers of melanoma all too well.

A longtime resident of the sunshine state, she became an avid tanner – soaking up the luminous Floridian rays – at the early age of 15. Regular trips to the tanning bed soon followed, almost replacing her outdoor sunbathing by a three-to-one ratio, as she discovered the convenience and nearly instant results it produced. (more…)

iePlexus Social Media News Brief: January 22, 2010

From the social media world continuing to help with the relief efforts in Haiti, to Hilary Clinton stepping in between Google & China, here’s a look at what happened this week in the social media world. (more…)

Getting Tweets Ranked In Google

A few months ago, both Google & Bing launched deals with Twitter that would allow tweets to appear in real-time search results.  And while many of us try to compete to get our websites ranked higher for the search engines, now we must also fight to get our tweets ranked higher too. 

Luckily Google is no longer keeping that a secret.  In a recent article, journalist David Talbot scored an interview with Google’s Amit Singhal.  Singhal admitted that like Bing, ranks are based on the number of followers you have, however, it’s not necessarily how many actually followers you have, it’s how reputable those followers actually are. (more…)

Your Twitter Account Could Go Bye-Bye

If you don’t log into your twitter account often, you may want to change that. At least if you want to keep your Twitter user name.  Martin Bryant, writer for The Next Web, contacted Twitter’s headquarters, and the company says they plan to recycle all inactive accounts soon. 

“We reached out to Twitter for comment…and a spokesperson for the company told me that the company plans to release all inactive user names and deleted user names in the future but doesn’t have a date set yet,” said Bryant. (more…)

How You Should Use The New Social Media

Can you believe we are getting close to February? This year is flying by but I think by years end, we will advance so far and some of it is already starting to bloom. Just the other week, we  got a preview from some of the latest technology at CES,  and also  learned where social media is going to be shifting.  In one of my first blog posts for 2010, I talked about where social media will likely go within the next year and decade, and one of the key components that I talked about was location.   

If you’re asking yourself how location can become a social media, and are confused by it, it’s alright.  It can be a bit intimidating and scary because you are basically letting people know where you are. However, like any social media services there are privacy settings to take a hold of.  And these localized social media networks are going to come in hand in the real world, for both consumers and producers.   (more…)