Social Media: The Swine Flu Vaccine

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is experimenting with social media sites to connect with the rest of the world to encourage people to get vaccinated for the Swine Flu. The CDC which has partnered with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has created accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, along with offering text message services, widgets for your personal website and several other ways of e-communication. 

The CDC has said they want to inform as many people as they can about possible outbreaks of the Swine Flu, and other future diseases.  Dr. Anne Schuchat, member of the CDC said, “We might see another wave after first of the year. It’s going to be important for people to take steps to protect themselves. We can’t predict what’s going to happen.” (more…)

Twitter Favors Democrats

Twitter is in some hot water in California, after the Center for Governmental Studies realized the popular social networking site was suggesting members of the Democratic Party, who are expected to run for California’s governor next year, over the Republican Party candidates.  When someone signs up for Twitter, the company suggests certain celebrities, politicians and other high profiled citizens for new users to follow.  A random list of 20 out of the 500 high profiled users is shown and users can choose to follow as many or as few of those recommendations. 

Some of those 500 high profiled recommended users include San Fransisco mayor Gavin Newsom, and California Attorney General Jerry Brown, who both have either announced or expressed interest in running for California Governor next year on the Democratic ticket.  The two, both have a huge following, as Newsom has over 1.2 million followers, while Brown has close to 966,000 followers.  Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner, and Tom Campbell who are all plan on running for governor on the Republican ticket are not suggested users and all have under 4,500 followers.  (more…)

Can Apple Overcome Past Tablet Troubles?

In a recent New York Times piece, Brad Stone and Ashlee Vance lent some much needed perspective about Apple’s maybe-kind of-sort of-impending Tablet. Depending on which vague rumor or piece of conjecture you decide to believe, the Apple Tablet will either “redefine print,” “bridge the gap between laptops and iPhones,” or save the planet from a catastrophic asteroid strike.

OK, so I made up that last possibility. Still, the level of hyperbolic publicity surrounding the device is astounding. While I don’t question the claim that Apple has revolutionized both the cell phone and mp3 player markets, I’m not yet willing to award them another success by default. As Stone and Vance point out, tablet devices have been attempted before and the results have been middling to put it kindly. (more…)

Google Your Social Networking Friends

Last week, both Google & Microsoft announced they were teaming up with Twitter to bring real time search updates to their sites.  While Google still has yet to release the real time updates, the search engine site did launch it’s Social Search feature yesterday afternoon on Google’s Experimental Search.

Google created the Social Search because they know that your friends and contacts are an important part and influence on your life and wanted to make it easier to help you find your friends.  Many surveys have said that personal reviews of items from friends which are frequently posted on social networking sites influence a person’s decision if they want to purchase or obtain that specific item.  However, when you have hundreds or thousands of social networking friends, it can be a little hard to keep up with what everyone is saying. (more…)

Facebook & Myspace Teaming Up?

What seems like a bizarre move, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, told The Telegraph, a British newspaper that Facebook and MySpace are in talks about teaming up and letting users share videos and music content.  This would also mean, that users could sign into their MySpace using their Facebook account information. 

Sandburg said to The Telegraph, “Facebook is focusing on building the best technology which helps people share content, while at MySpace they are focusing on more a content-led strategy. We would like to have their content, as we already do with many other sites, shared across our network because it is good for our users.” (more…)

Social Networking Steals $2.25 Billion From UK

A recent survey came of the UK and has estimated that the use of social networking sites by office workers during office hours is costing over $2,250,000,000 a year in England alone.  1,460 office workers who work for Morse, an IT services and technology company, were surveyed and found out that over half  used social networking sites for personal use during the working day.  Those that admitted to using those sites during the work day, also confessed that they spent an average of 40-50 minutes a week surfing the web during work time. 

If you break it down and said that one worker took 9-10 minutes everyday to check social networking sites while on the clock, by the end of the year, they would accumulated more or less than about a free week of paid vacation.  (more…)

New Facebook Feature May Help Businesses

Last week, we told you about some of the new changes coming to Facebook and now a new feature, which opened today, may be appealing to businesses who have profiles on the popular social networking site.  Facebook has said that nearly 2 billion items are shared each week through the site and the newly expanded share option will  include a live counter and analytics for shared items.  This means that when a user clicks the new share feature, they will be able to look at the number of views, shares, likes, and clicks to from that site. 

An unidentified spokesperson for Facebook, who spoke with Web Pro News said, “Share analytics bring new opportunities to show how content is being shared on Facebook, such as Techmeme for selecting top stories and bit.ly for analyzing URL traffic.  The new Share button is among the easiest Facebook Connect widgets to install and can be added to any website with just a few lines of code.” (more…)

This Week In Social Media – October 23, 2009

iePlexus “Week in Social Media” October 23, 2009 from iePlexus on Vimeo.

iePlexus “Week in Social Media” October 23, 2009 from iePlexus on Vimeo.

-The Web 2.0 Summit took place this week in San Francisco. Some of the biggest news from the event came out on Wednesday.  Both Microsoft and Google announced they would be teaming up with Twitterto bring real-time search updates to the search engines.  Microsoft’s Qi Lu first announced that Bing.comwould be getting get the real time twitter searchs updates, up on their site, which happened just minutes after the announcement.  Twitter’s blog said that they want to make twitter a search tool to help find people what they need in current time. Surprisingly, just a few hours after Microsoft’s big announcement, Google announced they would also be teaming up with Twitter to bring real-time search.  Neither of the companies would release the financial terms of their deals but are expected to bring more traffic to the search engine sites. There are also rumors the sites are trying to team up with Facebook as well. To watch the announcement’s in their entirety, visit Web 2.0 Summit’s website. (more…)

Retailers Gearing Up For Holiday’s With Social Media

The National Retail Federation (NRF) released a survey this morning which stated that more online retailers are gearing up for the upcoming holiday season, and will be using social media too attract consumers.  This comes after the NRF reported on Tuesday, that they anticipate holiday shoppers to spend about 3.2% less than they spent last year, averaging about $682 a person.

The new survey said that over 47% of online retailers who were polled stated they would be increasing the use of their social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, realizing that shoppers are continuously on those sites, and that using these tools could be more effective.  Just over 60% said they have created or beefed up the companies Facebook page, while 59% have done that with Twitter.  And 66% of online retailers have added and improved on their company blog. (more…)

Microsoft’s Bing.com Teams Up With Twitter

Qi Lu, Microsoft’s Online Services President, announced at the Web 2.0 Summit today, that Microsoft’s new engine, Bing, has stuck a non-exclusive deal with Twitter.  The deal is an important one because it will be the first search engine to bring in real-time updates.  It is also important because there have been reports that Google, Bing’s biggest competitor, has been in talks with the social networking site, and hasn’t been able to come up with a contract.  Many Internet users are saying that this is a “big-blow” for Google.

Twitter updates have been available for search on Bing for quite awhile now, but today will be the first time, Bing users will be able search keywords and watch real-time tweets from Bing’s website.  Lu also said that this will open up many opportunities for future business deals among business’s world wide.    (more…)