In case you’ve been too busy enjoying the long weekend, a lot has happened in the Social Media world over the past week. Below is a recap of some of these recent events.
1. Yahoo! Mail Turns Social – Yahoo! has decided to pretty much copy what Google has done (with Google Buzz) by implementing a platform that will allow e-mail users to share content and comments with others in their address book. There will likely be more negative than positive with these changes as you are automatically opted into this service instead of indicating whether or not you want your address book to be able to share content with you. Given the backlash Facebook has received with it’s privacy issues, this is really bad timing on Yahoo’s part (although they do plan on giving users a week’s “heads up” so they can opt out pre-roll out). I can’t see how this will differ from Google Buzz, but it’s at least worth exploring to see if there are any benefits in utilizing this new feature.
2. Pennsylvania Uses FourSquare to Spark Tourism: FourSquare has partnered with VisitPA (Pennsylvania’s official tourism website) to entice FourSquare users to visit the state and its attractions. With the partnership, FourSquare has rolled out some new Pennsylvania-specific badges and has included a number of travel tips to educate and inform Pennsylvania FourSquare users. This partnership shows the continued growth of FourSquare and how it remains the top mobile location service. It will be interesting to see how other states (and even countries) respond to this partnership.
3. Facebook Launches U.S. Politics Page – Remember when Barack Obama and Ron Paul were considered innovators as politicians due to their usage of Social Media? As expected, Social Media usage among politicians will likely soon become the norm. Facebook has rolled out a U.S. Politics Page that will track how officials are utilizing Facebook to connect with citizens. George W. Bush has also recently joined Facebook and has acquired over 79,000 likes in a short period of time.
4. Mock BP Twitter Account Donates $10,000 to GRN - It started out as a joke, but BPGlobalPR quickly evolved into a force to be reckoned with after quickly acquiring over 100,000 followers. One of the “jokes” implemented by the account were the constant push of “free $25 BP Cares t-shirts”. The account was apparently extremely successful in selling these shirts as it was able to donate $10,000, strictly from t-shirt sales, yesterday to GRN. What’s fascinating about this whole ordeal is that somebody (the person remains anonymous) took an extremely troubling situation (BP oil spill), was able to successfully mock it and provide comfort in the form of humor, and made $10,000 in a short period of time that was donated to better the situation. This is one of the more fascinating usages of Twitter in recent memory. The real BP account has less than 10,000 followers by the way.
5. TwitPic Incorporates “Events” Feature: I’ve always been a fan of TwitPic over TweetPhoto and other Twitter image services due to its overall simplicity. TwitPic has added a small feature to it’s site that could impact the way users organize their photos. The website rolled out an “Events” feature that lets you list photos in a particular “event” (category). This makes organizing photos a lot easier as it basically allows users to create their individual albums on TwitPic. It also might entice people to look at photos through an entire album as opposed to checking out photos individually, therefore increasing view count on image content.
6. LinkedIn Sharing – LinkedIn has rolled out a new feature that makes distributing news articles, job offers, and other content a lot easier. By adding a button to your toolbar, you can share content to your status, individual connections, or groups. While this will serve as an effective time saver, I think this will flood LinkedIn with a lot more useless content. LinkedIn has always seemed a lot more professional and personal than other Social Networks. I have some concerns that there could be an overwhelming amount of spam distributed as a result of the new feature which would really compromise LinkedIn’s value.
7. Twitter Testing New Feature – Twitter has been testing a new feature that allows you to see followers you have in common with someone else. The feature is called “you both follow” and is very similar to Facebook”s mutual friend feature. I know many people personally who feel more comfortable connecting with someone on Facebook and LinkedIn if they have at least one mutual friend. It would be interesting to see if the acceptance rate of Twitter connections increase because of this.
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