Earlier, we looked at So.cl, Microsoft’s new(ish) social network, which seems to be something of a testing ground for interactions between search and social media. While some of So.cl may look familiar to Bing users (or those who have read about the recent Bing redesign), and some of the features may one day make their way to Bing, So.cl currently has no impact on Bing’s current social features. Duane Forrester answered a user question on Twitter: .ditto204624161908330497 {background: #8F8D8E url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/446733975/NEW-twitter-bg.jpg) no-repeat;padding: 20px;}.ditto204624161908330497 a {color: #A5C53E;}p.dittoTweet {background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 22px !important;font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;line-height: 30px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;}span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding: 12px 0px;height: 65px;}span.metadata span.author {line-height: 20px;color: #333;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}.tweet {font-size: 24px;}span.metadata span.author img {float: left;margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;}a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}span.timestamp {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;margin: 10px 0 0 0;line-height: 25px;}span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;}span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image: url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;}span.timestamp a.twitreply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;}span.timestamp a.twitreply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;}span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;}span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;}span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;}span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;}p.indent {margin-left: 20px;}.at-name a, .at-name a:visited, .at-name a:hover {color: #999;text-decoration: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: normal;}.dittodownarrow {width: 0;height: 0;border-left: 20px solid transparent;border-right: 20px solid transparent;border-top: 20px solid #EEE;margin: 0 0 0 73px;} !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id))}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @mwilton13 Mike Wilton @mwilton13 @DuaneForrester will this so.cl thing impact the social graph of Bing search at all? 3 hours ago via Seesmic · powered by @socialditto  Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite .ditto204667736234803200 {background: #022330 url(http://a0.twimg.com/images/themes/theme15/bg.png) no-repeat;padding: 20px;}.ditto204667736234803200 a {color: #0084B4;}p.dittoTweet {background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 22px !important;font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;line-height: 30px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;}span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding: 12px 0px;height: 65px;}span.metadata span.author {line-height: 20px;color: #333;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}.tweet {font-size: 24px;}span.metadata span.author img {float: left;margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;}a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}span.timestamp {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;margin: 10px 0 0 0;line-height: 25px;}span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;}span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image: url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;}span.timestamp a.twitreply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;}span.timestamp a.twitreply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;}span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;}span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;}span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;}span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;}p.indent {margin-left: 20px;}.at-name a, .at-name a:visited, .at-name a:hover {color: #999;text-decoration: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: normal;}.dittodownarrow {width: 0;height: 0;border-left: 20px solid transparent;border-right: 20px solid transparent;border-top: 20px solid #EEE;margin: 0 0 0 73px;} !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id))}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @DuaneForrester duane forrester @DuaneForrester @mwilton13 So.cl is not included at this time. We focus on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Quora, LinkedIn & Google+ currently. 51 minutes ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto  Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite It is nice to see where Bing’s social efforts are focused. It’s just been a Duane Forrester kind of day. We also looked at some advice he gave regarding Google’s Penguin and Panda updates in a different article, as well as his suggestion that you should be using Pinterest. On that note, its interesting that Pinterest isn’t mentioned on Forrester’s list of Bing’s social focal points. Perhaps he was hinting at the future. A Pinterest-based image search integration could be cool.

Bing’s Duane Forrester, who for all intents and purposes, is the search engine’s counterpart to Google’s Matt Cutts (they sometimes speak together at conferences), posted to the Bing Blog over the weekend, to give some advice on recovering from Google’s Penguin and Panda updates. In addition to being one of the faces of Bing, he’s also “The Online Marketing Guy” according to the domain name of his personal blog. There is a section in his Penguin/Panda advice post called “Exercises in the Obvious,” and the first thing mentioned is Pinterest. “Pinterest,” Forrester writes. “It didn’t take long for the Pin It button to start popping up on websites. And it didn’t take a passing grade on the MENSA quiz to see it coming, did it? Rapid growth, huge adoption, media buzz, your friends recommending it, and so it goes. An exercise in obviousness that you’d better pay attention to this little gem.” This is only one of his “obvious” points, but it’s interesting that he would call out this social network as the first point of obviousness. There’s been a lot of buzz around the service, for sure. Last week, reports emerged that the company raised $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. Its monthly active user base is still trending upwards, though it looks like it might be losing some steam with the Facebook-connected user base. Perhaps that’s worse news for Facebook than it is for Pinterest.

Remember Microsoft’s So.cl social network? It has now launched to the public. You can sign up and use it if you want. Socl was spotted back in November, originally under the name Tulalip, and then Microsoft officially announced it in December, as a way to give students a new way to learn. It was initially made available to students at the University of Washington, Syracuse University, and New York University. At the time, Microsoft said, “So.cl has been designed for students studying social media to extend their educational experience and rethink how they learn and communicate. They can build posts with many elements—photos, video, text, and more—and share them with colleagues. They also can find students with similar interests and build communities around specific educational goals. So.cl might even give students the ability to create their own social tool, customized for their own community.” To use the service, you can either sign in with Facebook or your Windows Live ID. When you go to sign in using Facebook, it says: So.cl is an experiment in open search. That means your searches on So.cl are viewable by other So.cl users and will also be available to third parties. So.cl does not automatically post your searches, comments, or likes to your Facebook stream unless you choose this option. Also, we don’t contact your Facebook friends unless you invite them. Then, you’re asked to choose interests (not unlike StumbleUpon) and follow the most popular users on So.cl: Then, you’re taken to your home page, where you can “explore the best of So.cl”. The top bar and notification counter looks somewhat like Google’s: If you click on one of the categories, you get a newsfeed for the category. This is comprised of searches that people have performed and posts that people have made to that category. For the ones based on searches, it tells you what they searched for, and then gives you a specific link (I’m not sure if this is the top result for the search, the one that person clicked on, or what). It’s a different experience. That’s for sure. If you search for something, you’re presented with a set of results from both Bing, and feed results from So.cl. You can add results to your posts, not unlike Bing’s social features. When you’re ready, click “done” and it will post your update, with results. They may still have some bugs to work out. When I tried to post the one from the screen cap above, it didn’t really give me any indication that it was actually posted. When I went to “My Posts” it was nowhere to be found. It’s also telling me that I have 0 interests. Then why did I accept all the suggestions it gave me at the beginning? It also says I am following 0, even though I also elected to follow the popular people it suggested. Another feature of the service is called “Video Parties,” which appear to be Microsoft’s version of Google’s Hangouts. Here’s what the site says about them: Watch videos with your So.cl friends in real time by creating a party in So.cl. Note: Video Party allows other users to see the videos that you have posted or viewed It appears that users get 10 invitations to start with. So, it seems this is about more than a tool for students now. It’s unclear whether Microsoft is really trying to build its own social network like Google has done with Google+, or if this is really just a testing ground for social Bing features. It seems like the latter. For one, they’re letting you sign in with Facebook from the get go. This could make the whole thing more useful, since everyone is already on Facebook. Think about how much more complete Google+ would be if it had all of your Facebook friends. Of course, if it has all of your Facebook friends, what’s the point in using both? That’s where things get a little hazy with Socl too. It seems to be largely about search, and BIng is obviously Microsoft’s baby in that department (complete with a fresh, socially-focused redesign, no less). Lili Cheng, one of Socl’s creators, reportedly said that they’re using Socl as “an experiment with the search + social networking experience from Microsoft Research,” and that we’ll see “other experiments in Socl over time.” Have you tried Socl yet? What is your impression? Let us know in the comments.

There’s been a whole lot of chatter about the Facebook IPO today. However, there’s not been much from the Winklevoss Twins, the Harvard duo that founded ConnectU, and made cinematic history in The Social Network with Armie Hammer’s portrayal of them. The twins are regularly engaged on Twitter, giving the world a glimpse into their TV viewing habits and animal preferences: .ditto199650353006911488 {background: #11152B url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/230323381/twitter_background_2_4.jpg) no-repeat;padding: 20px;}.ditto199650353006911488 a {color: #3F5BE3;}p.dittoTweet {background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 22px !important;font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;line-height: 30px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;}span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding: 12px 0px;height: 65px;}span.metadata span.author {line-height: 20px;color: #333;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}.tweet {font-size: 24px;}span.metadata span.author img {float: left;margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;}a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}span.timestamp {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;margin: 10px 0 0 0;line-height: 25px;}span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;}span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image: url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;}span.timestamp a.twitreply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;}span.timestamp a.twitreply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;}span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;}span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;}span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;}span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;}p.indent {margin-left: 20px;}.at-name a, .at-name a:visited, .at-name a:hover {color: #999;text-decoration: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: normal;}.dittodownarrow {width: 0;height: 0;border-left: 20px solid transparent;border-right: 20px solid transparent;border-top: 20px solid #EEE;margin: 0 0 0 73px;} !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id))}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @winklevoss Cameron Winklevoss @winklevoss #gameofthrones is hands down the best show on television. Absolutely mesmerizing! (Full disclosure: Just watched 3 episodes in a row) 10 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto  Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite .ditto203297023057858560 {background: #C0DEED url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/230320467/tyler_twitter_background_5.jpg) no-repeat;padding: 20px;}.ditto203297023057858560 a {color: #0000FF;}p.dittoTweet {background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 22px !important;font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;line-height: 30px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;}span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding: 12px 0px;height: 65px;}span.metadata span.author {line-height: 20px;color: #333;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}.tweet {font-size: 24px;}span.metadata span.author img {float: left;margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;}a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}span.timestamp {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;margin: 10px 0 0 0;line-height: 25px;}span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;}span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image: url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;}span.timestamp a.twitreply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;}span.timestamp a.twitreply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;}span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;}span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;}span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;}span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;}p.indent {margin-left: 20px;}.at-name a, .at-name a:visited, .at-name a:hover {color: #999;text-decoration: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: normal;}.dittodownarrow {width: 0;height: 0;border-left: 20px solid transparent;border-right: 20px solid transparent;border-top: 20px solid #EEE;margin: 0 0 0 73px;} !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id))}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @tylerwinklevoss Tyler Winklevoss @tylerwinklevoss @Animal_Aisha everyone knows dogs are better than cats…come on now! 19 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto  Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite However, they have not had much to say on this historic day for Facebook, the company founded by their arch-nemesis Mark Zuckerberg. Tyler did retweet a couple of related posts: .ditto203508281199702018 {background: #9AE4E8 url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/376919855/desk.jpg) no-repeat;padding: 20px;}.ditto203508281199702018 a {color: #0000FF;}p.dittoTweet {background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 22px !important;font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;line-height: 30px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;}span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding: 12px 0px;height: 65px;}span.metadata span.author {line-height: 20px;color: #333;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}.tweet {font-size: 24px;}span.metadata span.author img {float: left;margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;}a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}span.timestamp {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;margin: 10px 0 0 0;line-height: 25px;}span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;}span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image: url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;}span.timestamp a.twitreply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;}span.timestamp a.twitreply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;}span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;}span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;}span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;}span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;}p.indent {margin-left: 20px;}.at-name a, .at-name a:visited, .at-name a:hover {color: #999;text-decoration: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: normal;}.dittodownarrow {width: 0;height: 0;border-left: 20px solid transparent;border-right: 20px solid transparent;border-top: 20px solid #EEE;margin: 0 0 0 73px;} !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id))}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @nichcarlson Nicholas Carlson @nichcarlson FIRST FACEBOOK TRADE $42.05 http://t.co/9DmNHaE5 5 hours ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto  Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite .ditto203508557247819776 {background: #131516 url(http://a0.twimg.com/images/themes/theme14/bg.gif) no-repeat;padding: 20px;}.ditto203508557247819776 a {color: #009999;}p.dittoTweet {background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 22px !important;font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;line-height: 30px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;}span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding: 12px 0px;height: 65px;}span.metadata span.author {line-height: 20px;color: #333;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}.tweet {font-size: 24px;}span.metadata span.author img {float: left;margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;}a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}span.timestamp {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;margin: 10px 0 0 0;line-height: 25px;}span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;}span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image: url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;}span.timestamp a.twitreply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;}span.timestamp a.twitreply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;}span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;}span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;}span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;}span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;}p.indent {margin-left: 20px;}.at-name a, .at-name a:visited, .at-name a:hover {color: #999;text-decoration: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: normal;}.dittodownarrow {width: 0;height: 0;border-left: 20px solid transparent;border-right: 20px solid transparent;border-top: 20px solid #EEE;margin: 0 0 0 73px;} !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id))}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @WSJ Wall Street Journal @WSJ Breaking: Clarification: Facebook shares open at $42.99, up about 13% from offer price of $38 a share. http://t.co/u62kj5Ri 5 hours ago via WSJ.com · powered by @socialditto  Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite But no actual commentary from the twins. Granted, the day is not over yet. Nothing from ConnectU partner Divya Narendra either. The Winklevoss Twins, however, recently started their own venture capital company, and are apparently on the lookout for programmers.

Facebook is now officially listed on the NASDAQ. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the bell, and had his own status updated to say: “Mark Zuckerberg listed a company on NASDAQ. — with Chris Cox and 4 others.” According to TechCrunch, “Some savvy Facebook engineers rigged the NASDAQ button” to update it for him. If you look at Facebook’s company timeline, however, there’s no update. I have to say, that’s somewhat surprising. This is the biggest moment in the company’s history, and no update? In fact, Facebook hasn’t posted an update since the Organ Donor thing at the beginning of the month. Has Facebook stopped using Facebook? Just kidding. Hopefully users are following Zuck. Otherwise, how will they ever find out about the IPO? On a related note, since we’re looking at Facebook’s timeline, it’s worth noting that only 66 million “like” Facebook. You’d think there would be more, with over 900 million users.

Have you ever been around a group of people who start talking about social media, leading you to mention the hilarious picture you put up of your cat playing with a ball of string. This in turn leads to everyone laughing at your comment, exposing your naivety towards social media. Yes, those people are most likely pretentious douches, but if you want to keep up with their conversation, Promojam is here to the rescue, with – The 2012 Social Media Cocktail Handbook. You can download the handbook on the Kindle, Nook, iBook, or the PDF version. Promojam is also giving away a Kindle Fire if you tweet their handbook to your followers. So what can you expect to find in such a handbook? First, if you really want to impress those people who were laughing at you previously, you can talk about all the big changes in the world of social media. Promojam claims email marketing is going to make a big push, along with the unification of online and offline social media fluidity. You can also talk about how Google+ has a good chance of growing, which will really throw a wrench in those knuckleheads’ so called expert conversation. If you happen to find one of the people in the group attractive, but can’t find a way start up a conversation, Promojam provides some social media related ice breakers. Here are a couple of examples. Either you’re best friends with Kevin Bacon or I could swear to God that we’re already connected on LinkedIn. What are you doing three months from now? Because my Facebook Timeline could really use with a relationship status update… In these kinds of conversations, it’s generally good to know people and in this case, people who are relevant in terms of social media. Be careful though, these people laughed at your cat photo, so they’ll really have fun at your expense for bringing up a Kardashian. Here’s a preview of people to mention in social media conversation, according to Promojam. Of course, no party would be complete without some tasty beverages. They’ve provided a good assortment of mixed drinks, for all sorts of occasions. If you want a hard hitting drink for the Facebook IPO, you can try the ‘Zuckerpunch’… If you find yourself having to walk away from the party because of a couple of important emails hitting your inbox, you can try ‘The Rusty Email’… After reading the entirety of Promojam’s handbook, you should have all the tools necessary to turn yourself into the life of the party. Instead of being the person who brings up their cat pictures when talking about social media, become the one who points and snickers at the rube who still uses MySpace.

Twitter announced that it is conducting some personalization experiments for users. Specifically, Twitter is trying to tailor user suggestions (suggestions for people to follow) to people’s specific interests. “These tailored suggestions are based on accounts followed by other Twitter users and visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem,” explains Twitter’s Growth and International Director, Othman Laraki. “We receive visit information when sites have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets, similar to what many other web companies — including LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube — do when they’re integrated into websites. By recognizing which accounts are frequently followed by people who visit popular sites, we can recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last ten days.” Apparently this is only the first in a series of experiments Twitter intends to run. Twitter will show new users a list of suggested accounts on one side of the screen, and a timeline of tweets from those accounts on the other: For current users, the experiment comes in the “Who to Follow” section: If you don’t want Twitter to track your habits to personalize your suggestions, you can turn the feature off. “As the Federal Trade Commission’s CTO, Ed Felten, mentioned earlier today, we support Do Not Track (DNT), which is reflected in our privacy policy as one of the ways you can indicate your preference,” says Laraki. “If you have DNT enabled in your browser settings, we will not collect the information that enables this feature, so you won’t see any tailored suggestions. We hope that our support of DNT highlights its importance as a privacy tool for consumers and creates even more interest and wider adoption across the web.” .ditto203133041160364033 {background: #ACDED6 url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/378245879/Twitter_1544x2000.png) no-repeat;padding: 20px;}.ditto203133041160364033 a {color: #038543;}p.dittoTweet {background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 22px !important;font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;line-height: 30px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;}span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding: 12px 0px;height: 65px;}span.metadata span.author {line-height: 20px;color: #333;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}.tweet {font-size: 24px;}span.metadata span.author img {float: left;margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;}a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}span.timestamp {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;margin: 10px 0 0 0;line-height: 25px;}span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;}span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image: url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;}span.timestamp a.twitreply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;}span.timestamp a.twitreply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;}span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;}span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;}span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;}span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;}p.indent {margin-left: 20px;}.at-name a, .at-name a:visited, .at-name a:hover {color: #999;text-decoration: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: normal;}.dittodownarrow {width: 0;height: 0;border-left: 20px solid transparent;border-right: 20px solid transparent;border-top: 20px solid #EEE;margin: 0 0 0 73px;} !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id))}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @twitter Twitter @twitter The Federal Trade Commission’s CTO, Ed Felten, just mentioned Twitter now supports Do Not Track. We applaud the FTC’s leadership on DNT. 5 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto  Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite More on Twitter and DNT here. Earlier this week, Twitter announced that it would be sending out personalized emails with summaries from your Twitter timeline.

Wajam recently released a new and improved version of its browser add-on that brings a more social experience to Google. The company has now released the counterpart for Bing and Yahoo. Since Wajam released the Google version, of course, Bing has unveiled its own major social overhaul. Wajam thinks it can do it better though. The company put together the following video and chart showing the differences: It’s interesting to see Wajam get the edge on product recommendations, given that Bing has always touted shopping as one of its highlights. Of course, if you use Bing’s regular search and search for products, Bing will still show the social bar, with Facebook likes, and Twitter results if applicable. The new Wajam is currently rolling out for Yahoo and Bing. For more on Bing’s new features, read here.

If you enjoy being creative, are all about Pinterest, and have a techie streak in you, chances are, you’ll be interested in a new lifestyle brand founded by Brit Morin. The brand, simply called Brit, puts a new spin on domestic living. It is geared toward the younger, tech savvy generation and offers innovative ideas for categories such as food, style, weddings, and living that can be applied both online and offline. “Brit is a new lifestyle brand that teaches the digital generation savvy shortcuts and creative living ideas for their online and offline lives,” Morin tells us. Morin, who was formerly employed by both Apple and Google, explained that she had always had a love both for making things and technology. With Brit, she combines these two areas but does so in a way that others can learn and be inspired by it. “I learned that I loved making things online and offline, and yet there is no one who’s really teaching this new generation that grew up with technology how to do things in both of these worlds,” she said. Brit includes ideas for styling outfits, cleaning house, cooking, decorating and much more. What makes these ideas unique, however, is the fact that they all have a ”tech flair.” For instance, in light of the recent Mother’s Day holiday, the company not only offered 20 DIY gift ideas for mom and 10 gifts available for 2-day Amazon Prime shipping, but it also provided a list of apps to give people the option of sending their mothers virtual gifts. For this ingenuity, many people are calling Brit the “Martha Stewart of tech” or “Martha Stewart 2.0.” Morin told us she is “totally flattered” to be compared to Martha Stewart but pointed out that Brit was primarily focused on building tools for domestic living. “We’re combining a media and software company together into one,” Morin said. “I know people are busy, and I want to help them simplify their lives in a smart way,” she added. As Morin explained to us, Brit is trying to create “lifestyle technology.” The company plans on developing apps for each of its categories and recently debuted the first of the series – Weduary. This app was inspired after Morin’s experience with planning her own wedding. Last year, she married Path founder Dave Morin but was shocked to find a lack of social software in the wedding category. Weduary is an attempt to fill this void. The app allows couples to create their own wedding websites. It also includes special features for ensuring that guests have an enjoyable time at their wedding. For example, a feature called “Flirt” is geared toward bringing together single guests with similar interests. Brit also recently announced a $1.25 million seed round of funding from investors such as Marissa Mayer, Seth Goldstein, General Catalyst Partners, and the Founders Fund. According to Morin, this funding will be used to scale the company’s team as well as its features.

Earlier this week, actor/Internet celebrity Wil Wheaton posted a pretty interesting rant about Google on his blog, and on his Tumblr. Specifically, it was about a feature he spotted on YouTube, which placed a Google+ like button in the spot where the YouTube thumbs up button would normally be. It would prompt users to upgrade to Google+ when not signed in. We asked Wheaton for some additional thoughts on the subject. He seemed somewhat eager to oblige, saying that “this whole thing has struck a nerve”. Do you want to see more or less Google+ across Google’s various products? Let us know in the comments. Wheaton, probably best known for his roles on Star Trek: The Next Generation and in the film Stand By Me, currently has a show called Tabletop on the Geek and Sundry premium YouTube channel. The feature was only a Google experiment, and it’s very likely that only a few people actually saw it. We spoke with a Googler about the feature. Here’s the official statement: “We’re always experimenting to help users find, watch and share the videos that matter most to them, on YouTube and across all of Google’s products including Google+. Depending on user feedback, some of these experiments may become options for users and some may not.” Here’s that it looked like: Google does run experiments all the time. That’s nothing new, but we also know that Google is very serious about making Google+ a much bigger part of the larger Google. As CEO Larry Page described Google+ during the company’s latest earnings call, Google+ has two parts: the social destination (what most people think of as Google+) and the social spine (the social layer that is spread across most of Google’s products). While the former part will no doubt grow and get more feature-rich as time goes on, the latter part is the one that seems really crucial to the company, and with its recently consolidated privacy policies, Google should have more freedom to use users’ data from product to product. Like say, from YouTube to Google. So, while this particular experiment may never see the light of day as a full-blown feature, it seems likely that Google will continue to look for more and more ways to integrate YouTube (or for that matter every other Google product) and Google+. I found Wheaton’s rant about the feature interesting for various reasons. For one, he’s an avid Google+ user. It would be one thing if he wasn’t, but he is. He has 1,377,525 followers. He likes Google+. It’s not about that. Another reason is something he said in his blog post about how this could cost his video upvotes on YouTube. It’s a pretty good point. Not all YouTube users use Google+. YouTube has established itself quite well over the years. It’s often cited as even being the second largest search engine, after Google itself. A whole lot of people use YouTube every day. A lot more than use Google+, the social destination. “The only reason that matters is because it’s part of how Google will decide who gets another season of the shows they’re sponsoring,” Wheaton tells WebProNews. “I want to be very clear about this: when I made my post on Tumblr, I wasn’t even thinking of that. I was thinking about how Google is forcing people who don’t want or need Google+ to sign up and use it.” We asked Wheaton what are some ways he thinks Google could integrate Google+ and YouTube without pissing people off. “Give users an option, and respect their choice,” he says. “Make G+ so incredibly amazing, people don’t want to ignore it, but if they do, leave them alone and quit messing with their existing user experience.” “G+ and YouTube are both great on their own. They don’t need to be integrated,” he says. Still, when asked about what Google+ features he’d like to see on YouTube, he says, “More meaningful and intelligent comments from users. I have a G+ circle that’s called Smart People, and it’s one that I have a hard time keeping up with. It would be nice if ‘YouTube comment’ wasn’t a punchline.” We asked Wheaton more generally, if Google should push Google+ more into its other products. “Only if they want to alienate even more users,” he says . “There’s a reason so many people use browser extensions like Disconnect; not everyone wants to be social on the Internet.” “This is where Google is making a huge and annoying mistake,” he adds. “You can’t force people into something that’s social; it’s like telling someone, ‘I know you were going to enjoy a quiet night at home reading this book, but before you can turn the page, you must go to this party and mingle with people, whether you want to or not.’” This seems more like a comment on the increasingly social nature of the web at large, but there’s no question, Google is pushing this kind of social mentality. “I was infuriated by this thing I saw on YouTube because it was yet another example of Google forcing people who use its products — which are great products, by the way — to join G+,” Wheaton tells us. “As I’ve made clear, I love G+, and I love a lot of Google products, but if Google wants people to join, embrace, and enthusiastically use G+, they should make G+ awesome and compelling. What they’re doing now — forcing people to sign up by crippling a user experience with an existing product — is just going to make people resent G+, and never give it a chance. That’s a shame, because G+ is a great product that doesn’t need to be force fed to people.” Again, the feature was only an experiment, but it’s not like Google is going to stop looking for ways to increase Google+’s presence throughout its products. You can already see a lot of the integrations, if you go here. YouTube integrations, specifically, include: seeing videos your friends like, watching videos together in hangouts, sending videos to Circles, and +1ing videos. Search integrations include: personal results, profiles in search results, and the related people and pages feature. With Gmail, there’s: finding emails from people in your circles, sharing photos, and seeing things shared by people in your circles that you got emails from. With Google Maps, you can send directions to people in your Circles. With Google Earth, you can send images of places to Google+. With Blogger, you can share posts to Google+ whenever you publish them and use the +1 counter on the dashboard. With Android, there’s: Instant Upload of photos, group chat, video hangouts, and the nearby stream. With Chrome, theres: the Google +1 button extension for recommending sites and pages, and the Google+ Notifications extension to check Google notifications off of Google properties. With Google News, you can keep up with specific authors by following them on Google+, as they’re displayed in News results. You can also see articles people in your circles have +1′d in the Spotlight section. Just this week, they announced that they’re showing content from your Google+ circles in “Top Stories” and in a new realtime coverage section (a far cry from the realtime search feature they used to have, I might add, which included realtime tweets). Clearly, there are a lot of useful ways Google can integrate its “social spine” into its various products, and there will no doubt be plenty of more, but as the experiment Wheaton wrote about shows, it’s all in the implementation. “I’m thrilled at the opportunity that I have as a content creator to release videos on YouTube,” Wheaton tells us. “I couldn’t do Tabletop without Google, and I’m grateful for the opportunity the company has given me. As a user, and as a creator, I want Google to keep making awesome products and making it possible for people like me to work outside of the traditional mainstream. I don’t want Google to turn into another Facebook that just feels icky and intrusive.” Speaking of Facebook, that wasn’t all he had to say on that. We asked Wheaton if he think Google+ is capable of achieving Facebook-like user numbers. “Probably not, but that isn’t Google’s fault,” he says. “Facebook has a significant head start, and has effectively captured a generation. Facebook is also demonstrably evil, though, so if Google offered a truly non-evil social network — a real and meaningful alternative to Facebook — it could probably attract huge numbers of people.” “Just think of the free publicity every time Facebook does something that intrudes on the privacy of its users, when Google can say, honestly, ‘yeah, over at G+ we don’t do that.’ Unfortunately, as an advertising company, I don’t see Google ever embracing that idea.” And Google is already facing pressures in advertising after two quarters in a row of substantial CPC declines. Revenue, however, was up 24% last quarter. It’s also worth noting that Google hasn’t even put ads on Google+ (the social destination) yet. Do you think Google+ is making Google’s products better or is it being forced? Let us know when you think.