If you haven’t been following the case of RIAA vs. Jammie Thomas-Rasset, here’s a quick recap: RIAA sued her (like thousands of others) for infringing copyright, offering to settle, which she declined. Choosing to go to court, she lost; the jury found her guilty and awarded the plaintiff a ridiculous sum of 1.92 million dollars, or $80,000 per song. Now, I’ve discussed at length how crazy this verdict is, but it’s one thing when I say it, and another when it comes from the mouth of one of the artists whose copyrighted songs were involved in this case. Richard Marx’s song “Now and Forever” was one of the 24 tracks for which Thomas-Rasset was ordered to pay, and according to Ars Technica, he has spoken out against the verdict. His statement: “As a longtime professional songwriter, I have always objected to the practice of illegal downloading of music. I have also always, however, been sympathetic to the average music fan, who has been consistently financially abused by the greedy actions of major labels. These labels, until recently, were responsible for the distribution of the majority of recorded music, and instead of nurturing the industry and doing their best to provide the highest quality of music to the fans, they predominantly chose to ream the consumer and fill their pockets. So now we have a “judgment” in a case of illegal downloading, and it seems to me, especially in these extremely volatile economic times, that holding Ms. Thomas-Rasset accountable for the continuing daily actions of hundreds of thousands of people is, at best, misguided and at worst, farcical. Her accountability itself is not in question, but this show of force posing as judicial come-uppance is clearly abusive. Ms. Thomas-Rasset, I think you got a raw deal, and I’m ashamed to have my name associated with this issue.“ It’s a carefully worded statement, in which Marx makes sure, first and foremost, to show he’s against illegal downloading of music. He makes some very important points, though: first, he describes the actions of major labels as “greedy” and recognizes that, with their actions, they are responsible for the problems the music industry is facing today. Furthermore, he makes it clear that going after individual “offenders,” when it comes to illegal downloading, is counterproductive and abusive. I applaud Marx. It’s important that artists and songwriters, the very people whom RIAA is supposedly protecting, speak out against the abusive, unfair, greedy acts of the music industry. Yes, it’s his bread and butter, but he understands that between his tiny piece of the pie and the consumers there’s a huge industry that’s not looking at the best interest of either him nor them; it’s looking after itself, often at the expense of everyone else involved. [Image courtesy of EMI] Tags: Jammie Thomas-Rasse, piracy, riaa, Richard Marx

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Everyone loves Pac-Man, the crazy addictive 1980s joystick arcade game by Namco that spawned a million different modern versions. Most of us probably grew up begging our parents for just one more quarter so that we could beat our high score, outrun the deadly ghosts, collect those precious fruits, and eat up all those pac dots. Now someone has cleverly created a Pac-Man cartoon that puts the lovable munch-aholic into today’s Twitter obsessed world. We think the cartoon needs no explanation, but if you’re a little lost, just remember that PacMan’s deadly enemies are those nagging ghost followers. We hope you enjoy this as much we do, and if you ever want to refresh your knowledge on this pop culture phenomenon, the Wikipedia page is truly enlightening. [via TheNextWeb] Reviews: Twitter Tags: cartoon, games, pac-man, pacman, twitter

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As the social web has exploded in growth, so has the need for companies to respond and set guidelines. For large companies especially, these rules can be key to avoiding PR disasters. As we stated in an article on social media policy, “you have to contemplate what might happen if someone says or does something stupid.” However, a lot of media companies just don’t seem to get social media (i.e. The Wall Street Journal). But the venerable Associated Press seems to have crossed the line by asking its employees to not only control what they say, but what their friends say. Now its employee union is fighting back. Objections to AP’s Policy According to Editor & Publisher, the News Media Guild, which represents 1500+ AP employees and journalists, is speaking out about two items in the new AP social media guidelines, issued last Thursday. The first policy forbids any talk of AP internal operations. The second, more objectionable policy requires employees to delete certain things that their friends say on their Facebook page. Here are the two policies, taken directly out of the AP’s social networking guidelines: “Q. Anything specific to Facebook? It’s a good idea to monitor your profile page to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards; any such material should be deleted. Also, managers should not issue friend requests to subordinates, since that could be awkward for employees. It’s fine if employees want to initiate the friend process with their bosses.” ————– “Q. What are the general guidelines for such accounts? Employees must identify themselves as being from the AP if they are using the networks for work in any way. Posting material about the AP’s internal operations is prohibited on employees’ personal pages, and employees also should avoid including political affiliations in their profiles and steer clear of making any postings that express political views or take stands on contentious issues.” The News Media Guild’s administrator, Kevin Keane, focused specifically on the Facebook profile policy in his response: “It is making some people cringe. It is not appropriate for a company that heralds free speech.” Finding a Middle Ground Traditional media outlets have been all over the map with social media. While organizations like CNN, The New York Times and Gannett Co. have effectively utilized social media, other organizations are either catching up, haven’t been consistent, or just have made policies in fear of social technology’s repercussions. The new AP policy falls in the middle of the spectrum. At the beginning of the memo, the AP clearly states that they don’t want to quash the use of social media: “The bottom line is that the company supports social networking as a personal and professional tool, but expects employees to bear in mind how their actions might reflect on the AP.” And while both policies in question were made with the intention of protecting the AP brand, we’re pretty sure that telling employees that they have to control the content of others is going too far. What others post on your social profiles should not be grounds for punishment. You can control what you post, but not what others post. Asking for that is just too much. The best option for the Associated Press is to sit down with its employees and address these concerns and create a policy that takes everybody’s interests into account. Yes, social media can cause embarrassment, but the benefits of fast, direct communication are too much for even the AP to ignore. See Also: 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy Reviews: Facebook Tags: Associated Press, media, newspaper, social media, social media policy

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This post is part of Mashable?s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. Name: Meuzer Quick Pitch: Meuzer is a free web-based social music tool that allows for the discovery and sharing of music through song tagging and music feeds. Genius Idea: It’s clear that we’ve undergone a social music revolution over the last decade. From Napster to iTunes to Last.fm, we’ve been presented with alternative ways to find music for free. And while there are some tools that already help aggregate this sea of music (i.e. Grooveshark), Meuzer takes a slightly more social approach. Meuzer is a simple music browsing website that pulls from two primary sources: YouTube and Imeem. Although not required, the best thing to do is log in via Facebook Connect. This allows you to share music with your friends. Regardless, all you really have to do to start is search for music. Meuzer may not have much in looks, but it does a fine job at finding the music you’re looking for. When you pick a song, you have four options: play, rate, share, and playlist: - Play: This will open up a YouTube music video or the Imeem player - Rate: Add a thumbs up or thumbs down - Share: You can share the song via Twitter, Facebook, or a direct link. - Playlists: This allows you to create song playlists, see history, and utilize music tags to find music the next time you log in. In all honesty, Meuzer is very similar to Grooveshark. Meuzer’s interface is simpler, but not as well designed. Meuzer pulls from YouTube, which is actually quite nice. And Meuzer’s Facebook integration makes it easier to share music or to see what friends think. Overall, Meuzer is a nifty alternative to Grooveshark, although it could probably use a design upgrade and some more differentiating features to make it stand apart from its competitors. Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).? Reviews: Facebook, Grooveshark, Last.fm, PHP, Twitter, YouTube, imeem Tags: bizspark, Muezer, music, online music, social music

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More than 200 million of us are active Facebook users, but will that social networking addiction convert to a blockbuster movie? Columbia Pictures sure hopes so, as it advances its plan to bring Facebook’s founding story to the big screen. The movie, titled “The Social Network”, is scheduled to start production later this year, and Columbia is in advanced talks to put David Fincher, director of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in the director’s chair, reports Variety. “Scott Rudin and Michael De Luca are producing with Trigger Street’s Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti”, adds the industry mag, and Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The American President, Malice, Charlie Wilson’s War) wrote the script. The film will tell the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as he scaled the site from a Harvard dorm room to the world’s most popular social network. Will you be buying a ticket to the Facebook movie? And how long until Twitter graces the big screen? Reviews: Facebook, Twitter Tags: Aaron Sorkin, facebook, movie

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Following in the footsteps of Wolfram Alpha, Web-to-TV service Boxee is planning to make a few significant product announcements tonight via live video on Justin.tv. Officially, the event is to announce the winners of a developer challenge that the company has been running since May, with host Veronica Belmont handing out the hardware (literally ? big screen TVs and 4TB Seagate hard drives) to the best video, music, and photo apps. But on their blog, Boxee also notes that ?during the event we will also launch (finally) our Windows version, announce new partnerships and share more info about the boxee beta.? Might one of those partnerships be a deal with Hulu to end the ongoing feud between the two companies? It seems unlikely, but tune in at 10pm ET/7pm PT to find out. The live video stream is embedded below: Reviews: Boxee, Hulu Tags: boxee, hulu

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There has been a very visible and public debate over how Twitter should generate revenue. Clearly, Twitter has to make money or it will fail, but which path is best? Everything from social e-commerce to premium accounts have been thrown around as potential business models. Now another voice is rattling the Twitter revenue cage: 140Mafia, the Twitter game built by the people behind the insanely popular Mob Wars Facebook game. In an interview with CNN Money, CEO Jason Bailey rails into Twitter for not jumping on virtual currency as a way to generate revenue. Is virtual currency really the path to Twitter profitability? And should it be implementing it now? Virtual Currency Criticism In the CNN Money article, Super Rewards CEO Jason Bailey essentially states that virtual currency is a huge opportunity for Twitter, but that Twitter shows no interest in revenue and is, in fact, run by a bunch of hippies. His quotes are very direct: “This is a tremendous opportunity for Twitter, and they can make a ton of money.” “Twitter seems content to not make money. It’s all about eyeballs with them.” “I don’t know who puts hippies in charge of these companies.” This harsh criticism of Twitter’s apparent lack of desire to generate revenue is balanced by comments from Ray Valdes, a social network analyst at Gartner. Here’s what he says about the elusive Twitter business model: “They are passing by the pennies on the path for the real dollars further down the road,” said Valdes. “As long as they provide opportunities for others to have an ongoing engagement with Twitter users, they can monetize later.” Overall, the piece is a back-and-forth debate on the Twitter business model. No need to rush In our opinion, Valdes nails it on the head. Twitter has raised tens of millions of dollars that allows them to focus on building the product. They do not need to rush into a business model, especially with their eye-popping growth. Prematurely implementing a business model could upset millions of users and put a halt to Twitter’s success quickly. It’s important to remember that other major companies have been battered by similar criticism. Even Google dealt with the criticism in the past. Is virtual currency a way to make money? Absolutely – Facebook is even experimenting with it through its Facebook Credits program. But Twitter doesn’t have to rush into any one business model just to make a quick buck. Twitter’s ambitions are much, much bigger. Reviews: Facebook, Twitter Tags: cnn, Mob Wars, twitter, virtual currency

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If you thought Facebook: The Movie was a stretch, close your ears to “Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books, Now Presented in Twenty Tweets or Less”, an upcoming title from Penguin books, penned by two 19 year-olds. Reports this week from the LATimes and Galleycat confirm that college students Emmett Rensin and Alex Aciman successfully sold the rights to the book to Penguin, the premise being that Tweets can refine literature “to its purest form”. The book is a “hipster?s Cliff Notes” and “the birthday, Christmas, Hanukah, and 4th of July gift for every hip young person between the ages of 18 and 35 in this country”, claims the website for the upcoming release, which seems oddly verbose for a book of Tweets: Like any good revolution, this one started in a college dormitory. Sitting in our suite at the end of another long day at the University of Chicago, we had an epiphany of the sort that many men wait for until their golden years, and which for too many others never comes before the grave. What, we asked, are the grandest ventures of our or any generation? And what, to give this a bit more focus, best expresses the souls of 21st century Americans? First, of course, is literature. Perhaps we are simply part of the effete corps of impudent snobs, but we concluded that no generation is complete without its high writing –and an appreciation for what had come before. Dante, Shakespeare, Stendhal, Joyce and J.K. Rowling?surely these names still meant something! The second is Twitter.More than any other social networking tool, Twitter has (at least for the last five minutes of Eonic time), refined to its purest form the instant-publishing, short-attention-span, all-digital-all-the-time, self-important age of info-deluge that is the essence of our contemporary world. As such, it demands our attention ? and gotten it. So what could be better than to combine the two? After all, as great as the classics are, who has time to read those big, long books anymore? Sincerest apologies to Shakespeare, Stendhal and Joyce: how were we to know it would come to this? Reviews: Twitter Tags: book, twitter, twitterature

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HTC’s big London event delivered another Android-based smartphone, but also a hint at what the next step of Android development might be, with HTC’s customized UI for Android called Sense. Customized UI overlays over mobile operating systems are nothing new, especially when it comes to HTC, which has been doing it with Windows Mobiles for years. However, this time it’s different, as Android is a far more exciting – for lack of a better word – mobile platform than any current iteration of Windows Mobile. Android is poised to appear on many different pieces of mobile hardware this year, but we can also expect many of those Androids to have completely different UIs. It’s somewhat like Linux – yes, there are many different distros and it can all confuse the end user, but once you get acquainted with the basic idea you can find the version that suits your needs perfectly. As far as the specifications of Hero go, it’s a fairly powerful mobile machine, with Qualcomm’s MSM7200A processor working at 528MHz, 512MB ROM and 288MB RAM, a microSD memory card expansion, a 3.2-inch TFT-LCD with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels HSDPA, 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, WiFi, quad-band GSM, GPS, digital compass and a 3.5mm audio jack. Hero’s specifications on paper look better than those of the Pre and iPhone 3G S, but how big a dent will it leave on the smartphone market remains to be seen. One thing is certain; Android is all about choice, and choice is a great thing on any market. Reviews: Android, linux

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Are social networks such as Facebook and MySpace doing enough to protect their users’ privacy? In the European Union, they might need to do more. A panel of European regulators has laid out operating guidelines for social networks, which will ensure their compliance with strict – albeit sometimes vague – online privacy laws in the European Union. These laws mostly stem from the European Union Directive on Data Protection of 1995, which, among other regulations, prohibits collection of personal information without consumers? permission, forbids employers to read workers’ private e-mail, and doesn’t allow companies to share personal information on users without their permission. However, according to data-privacy lawyer Jan Dhont at Lorenz in Brussels, these regulations aren’t always very clear. For example, the companies that collect personal information must use it for “legitimate purposes,” which can be interpreted in many different ways. Nevertheless, the guidelines that were laid out will require quite a bit of effort from sites such as Facebook and MySpace, who cannot neglect their European user base and will therefore surely at least try to comply to avoid clashing with the EU regulators. According to the guidelines, social networks must set security settings to high by default; they must allow users to limit data disclosed to third parties, and they must limit the use of sensitive information (race, religion, political views) in behavioral advertising. Furthermore, social networks must delete accounts that have been inactive for long periods, as well as discard users’ personal information after they delete their accounts; an interesting regulation in view of the recent Facebook scandal, in which Facebook claimed ownership of all the content you?ve ever uploaded even if you quit the service. Facebook later apologized and restored their previous Terms of Service, even letting users be part of the decision process in creating the new ToS. However, it must be noted that even if this sounds like democracy, it’s a frail one, as Facebook still sets up the stage and has the last word on every decision. It is therefore good that there’s an overseer, looking over our online privacy and security. These latest guidelines from the European Union will definitely make life harder for social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, but will most likely have a positive impact on user privacy in the long run. You can read the entire set of guidelines created by the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party in PDF format here. Reviews: Facebook, MySpace Tags: eu, facebook, myspace, privacy, social networks

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Casting searches are already underway for the upcoming Facebook movie, “The Social Network” (a working title), says one report. Today CNet News fleshes out the details, claiming more insights into the potential cast…in particular, the question of who will play Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg: An entertainment industry source tells CNET News that early casting searches are under way and that the list of young actors being eyeballed to play Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg includes both Michael Cera (”Superbad,” “Arrested Development”) and Shia LaBeouf (”Transformers”). They aren’t the only ones, and it’s not clear whether either of those two in-demand actors would want to take a turn away from comedies (Cera) or action movies (LaBeouf) to play Zuckerberg. Cera is, according to the source, a top choice because audiences find him particularly likable. Rumors about the plot of the book “Accidental Billionaires” hint that Zuckerberg is going to be portrayed rather unfavorably–basically, as an obnoxious nerd–and obnoxious nerds are not the world’s biggest box-office sell. Cera could make the part a little bit more sympathetic. The tale is almost too good to be true: CNet already joked that Cera would fit the role, his likeable dorkiness making him the oh-so-obvious choice. As we mentioned yesterday, David Fincher, director of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Fight Club, is being sought to direct the film. The script, meanwhile, is by Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The American President, Malice, Charlie Wilson?s War). What we do know for sure, and from multiple sources over the past year, is that Facebook is displeased about the film and staff are unwilling to talk about it: the book it’s based on, Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires”, is not favorable to Mark Zuckerberg. And indeed leaked passages from the book seem to spice up the story to make it more captivating: were it truthful, of course, it may be a bit of a snoozer. Reviews: Facebook

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Let’s call a spade a spade: it’s no secret that file hosting service Rapidshare has long been a haven for distributing copyrighted content. However, it’s a question of principle: must a file hosting service, essentially unrelated to the actual content of the files it hosts, also act as a policeman, actively seeking and removing content that violates copyright? German court says – yes. In recent years, Rapidshare has become much more vigilant about protecting copyright, quickly removing content on request of copyright holders. This, however, wasn’t enough for GEMA (German collecting society, responsible for collecting copyright-related fees and distributing the money to the artists), which sued Rapidshare for copyright infringement. The German court has ruled in GEMA’s favor, ordering Rapidshare to pay a 34 million dollar fine to GEMA, and to start actively filtering and removing the files it hosts for copyrighted content. From the official GEMA statement: “The judgment states that the hosting service itself is now responsible for making sure that none of the music tracks concerned are distributed via its platform in the future. This means that the copyright holder is no longer required to perform the ongoing and complex checks.” There are, however, many problems with this decision. First of all (having in mind that we’re talking about different courts in different countries, of course), it seems ridiculous compared to the recent case of Jammie Thomas-Rasset, who has been sentenced to pay 1.92 million dollars for 24 copyrighted songs. On Rapidshare, tens of thousands of songs are uploaded and downloaded every day; by the same measure, it should pay billions or even trillions. Furthermore, the argument that a torrent tracker, a search engine, or a file sharing/hosting service must also police the content it hosts or links to is inherently flawed. By similar logic, everyone who holds a copyright over anything could ultimately sue Google which makes most of the content out there available through its search engine. Bobby Chang, COO of RapidShare AG in Cham (Switzerland), is aware of this, and seems to be quite certain that this sentence will be changed or completely overthrown at the court of appeal. “We do not consider the court’s decision to be a breakthrough. As other proceedings in similar disputes with GEMA have shown, there is considerable disparity amongst the individual courts in some cases. Our experience is that the courts of appeal tend to restrict the scope of the decisions made by the lower courts. For this reason, we think that it would make more sense to work together to provide music fans with the right services at the right price and to open up a new source of income for music-markets on the Internet,” he said. Hopefully, the music industry knows this too, and this lawsuit phase we’re currently going through is just a part of their carrot and stick tactics which will one day be abandoned in favor of creating new business models for distributing music online. Reviews: Google, Rapidshare Tags: copyright infringement, rapidshare

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We’re in the midst of a mobile video revolution. A new generation of phones led by the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry offer ample storage space for videos, full-length touchscreens, and most of all, the convenience of being portable. While there is a lot of video content available on the social web, a vast majority of it isn’t available in a mobile format. About the only options are videos made for the iPod or YouTube clips. However, video industry titan RealPlayer is jumping into social video arena with a media player designed specifically for mobile interactions: RealPlayer SP. The player is not only designed to quickly transcode videos for mobile phones, but has Facebook and Twitter integration as well. The new RealPlayer focuses on two primary aspects: mobile conversion and social integration. The SP player will convert video automatically into mobile video forms, with support for BlackBerry, Nokia N60 phones, Palm Pre, and the iPhone, among others (thus, it supports multiple video formats). This makes it easy to take your TV shows and movies and stick it on your phone in an ideal format – one that is high quality but not overzealous on space. The other major aspect of RealPlayer SP is its Facebook and Twitter integration. The player has a one-click option to post your video to Facebook or Twitter. It can even download videos from YouTube (although we’re still not clear about whether this is a true downloadable file or streaming video). The “SP” in Realplayer SP stands for social and portable, and we see why they chose the name. Making video more accessible on the most popular smartphones around makes perfect sense for both the user and for RealPlayer. The RealPlayer SP download is free, although a more advanced version with DVD support costs $39.99. Reviews: Android, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Tags: facebook, mobile video, Realplayer, twitter, video

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Market research company iSuppli has pulled apart the iPhone 3G S and estimates its parts cost around $179 – $5 more than the 8GB iPhone 3G. The phone starts at $199 with a two-year contract. More specifically, iSuppli claims the parts in the 16GB iPhone cost $172.46, with a further $6.50 required for manufacturing, leading to a total cost of $178.96. Given the significant costs for shipping, packing, distribution, research, additional accessories supplied (cables etc), staffing and the rest, it’s probable that Apple is reliant on the heavy subsidies from AT&T to stay in the black. iSuppli adds that adding features like video and more memory didn’t greatly affect the iPhone’s costs: By leveraging this commonality to optimize materials costs, and taking advantage of price erosion in the electronic component marketplace, Apple can provide a higher-performing product with more memory and features at only a slightly higher materials and manufacturing cost. The strategy is working, as Apple continues to grab market share: 1 million of the new phones were sold during the first 3 days after the 3G S launch. Tags: 3gs, iphone, iphone 3g s

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Michael Brito is a social media strategist and community builder at Intel. You can catch him writing in his social media blog, Twitter or Facebook at all hours of the day/night. These are his thoughts and opinions and do not reflect that of his employer. Having a Twitter profile doesn?t mean you?re a social media master, but it is a great tool for conversations, building community and finding the latest industry news. That’s why Hollywood is on Twitter, athletes are on Twitter, your competitors are on Twitter, and hopefully you are on Twitter too. But for brands, there’s an art to using Twitter, and the most successful at it follow an unwritten set of rules. The following are 10 important practices for brands to follow on Twitter; these are lessons that I have learned while working in the enterprise. 1. Do your research before engaging customers Know how your customers use Twitter. It takes only a minute to go to Twitter Search and find out if there are any conversations happening about your brand, product, service or industry. Know what your customers are saying about you. If your search yields zero results, don’t worry: there may still be an opportunity for you and your brand to establish a presence and start a conversation on the service. However, Twitter may or may not be the right tool for you to engage your consumers. 2. Determine organizational goals Not all brands utilize Twitter in the same way. Some, like @ComcastCares, use Twitter to provide customers with support. Other branded Twitter accounts, such as @DellOutlet, have utilized the service to sell products. It’s important to think about what you are trying to achieve using Twitter before devoting your time and resources to it. You’re likely to get more out of it that way. 3. Utilize either a branded or personal profile You have two options: you can either use a branded profile with your company’s logo, or you can opt to create a more personal profile that unites your own personal brand with that of the company. If employees are using Twitter to primarily engage with people on behalf of the company, they should have a branded profile. A branded profile is one that clearly identifies the user as an employee of the company; usually through a username (i.e. @Intel_Eric, @synopsys_roy, @MelfromSymantec, @AMDOpteronPhil, @RichardatDELL to name a few) or has a branded background picture and bio. Whichever option you choose, there has to be a level of balance. Branded profiles are great for certain things – for example, industry news, contests, investor relations, etc. Personal profiles are more beneficial if your organization wants to leverage the employee?s personal micro-community or wants to have a more human presence. 4. Build your Twitter equity and credibility To be a successful brand on Twitter, you have to build credibility and equity. That doesn?t necessarily refer to the number of followers, tweets, or retweets you may have, although these are important factors. Rather, it’s more about developing a reputation as a trusted source of information or being seen as an expert in a particular subject. You won’t succeed in building your Twitter equity by pushing out one way marketing messages about your product. Instead ask questions, be personal, and engage people naturally within the Twitter community. Otherwise, customers won’t listen to what you have to say. I usually follow the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of my tweets are conversational and personal, 20 percent are about the company I work for. I’ve found that this has really helped build customer engagement and link click-through rates. 5. Track metrics and conversation trends Any enterprise or medium sized business should invest in a paid tracking service like Radian6 or Nielsen to better track Twitter conversations, identify trends, measure sentiment, and to get a quantifiable picture of what is going on in the social web. One metric you absolutely must track: how much money Twitter has saved your brand. How many issues did you solve, leads did you create, and dollars did you save through Twitter engagement versus traditional resources? If your goal is to handle customer support issues via Twitter, it’s wise to check if there is any decrease in the call volume to your support center. And if you are selling products via Twitter (as Dell is doing), you should of course measure your sales via that channel. 6. Don?t go overboard; less structure is better Your Twitter use can appear disingenuous and inhuman if you’re too structured with your approach, to the point where your community may be turned off. Treat your Twitter relationships the same way you would any other relationship. Honestly, how much planning or structure is needed before spending the evening out with friends? Your Twitter experience will change and evolve over time, because the community that follows you will help shape what you say and how you respond. Remember to always use the 80/20 rule, but be flexible with your approach. I’m not saying that you should let your employees run wild on Twitter, though. Planning, training, coordination and integration with social tools is imperative — just don?t go overboard and create a social media policy that is too restrictive. 7. Listen and observe before engaging Don?t just start tweeting assuming that the Twitter community is going to accept you with open arms. It?s important that you spend some time just listening and observing the behavior of those who are talking about you or your company. Understand how your customers behave and adjust accordingly. You don?t have to follow everyone that mentions your company to listen in on the conversation. In fact, this may irritate some people. Instead, when you’re ready to start answering questions, @reply them. In my experience, nine times out of ten, they’ll end up following you. Let the relationship grow from there. 8. Be authentic & believable Authenticity is the golden rule in social media. We’ve known this for years, but there is another, related rule that is just as important: you and your brand need to be believable. This means spending time listening to your community, observing it, and learning about the dynamics of that community. Your will become believable only after you have established trust among those in your community. Because I am trusted by my followers, if I tweet that my new netbook is amazing and fits my mobile lifestyle, people will believe me and perhaps even buy one (it is amazing, by the way). 9. Track, measure, and iterate If there?s one thing that bugs me about working in the corporate environment, it?s the amount of time needed to execute. Sometimes it?s better just to launch a product or initiative, track it, measure the results and then iterate. I learned this concept working at Yahoo for Mike Speiser, who was the VP of Community Products (and founded ePinions and Bix). This was his philosophy at Yahoo, and it worked, especially in the competitive landscape of social networks. The great thing about the social web is that it?s not difficult to track the results of Twitter engagement, assuming you have determined what your organization’s goals are. It?s even easier to change course if you find that your efforts aren’t working according to plan. 10. Don?t just strategize: execute! Multiple daily conference calls are the norm in corporate America. Strategy sessions and meetings to plan strategy sessions are also constants. While this may be fine when planning a new product launch or corporate initiative, it is the wrong approach to using Twitter. We spend too much time strategizing with little to no execution. When you have too many ideas and not enough people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get stuff done, you are going to find yourself late to the game. Or, in the case of Twitter, late to the conversation. By spending too much time trying to think of the best strategy, you are going to miss priceless opportunities to fix problems, answer questions, turn sour situations around, and create brand affinity with customers. With Twitter your mantra should be: just get out there and try it. More Twitter resources from Mashable: - 5 Habits of Successful Executives on Twitter - HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter - HOW TO: Build Your Thought Capital on Twitter - 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them Image courtesy of iStockphoto, cogal, francisblack Reviews: Twitter Tags: business, corporate, enterprise, Lists, social media, twitter

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Chances are you might have woken up this morning to see a popular retweet make its way across your Twitter feed. That’s because Orbitz is doing a Twitter giveaway for a chance to win a round-trip coach ticket good for a flight in the United States. Not surprising this has put the Twittersphere abuzz. Who doesn’t want a free round-trip ticket to anywhere in the US (other than International folks that is)? So, what does it take to win? You’ll need to follow Orbitz on Twitter and retweet their daily contest message. Simple, right? Full details on the contest can be found on Orbitz’s blog, and you’ll want to retweet this message to win, but we’re more interested in the trends surrounding Twitter giveaways and the fact that Orbitz has hopped on to the Twitter social media marketing train with spontaneous alacrity (they currently only have upwards of 2,000 followers). As we discussed, trending Twitter giveaways have become the hit marketing tactic for savvy marketing departments. The combination of a Twitter specific giveaway, with a super cool prize, and the distribution opportunities available through retweets, make this a winning formula. As you may recall, Maggianos and Squarespace have proven the formula works, and now more mainstream companies like A&E and now Orbitz have taken note and started campaigns of their own. So while to most of us earlier adopters, Twitter giveaways may have jumped the shark, the reality is that these buzzworthy campaigns are just starting to get traction from the larger brands. Don’t expect these to go anywhere anytime soon. Reviews: SquareSpace, Twitter Tags: orbitz, retweet, twitter, twitter giveaway, twitter trends

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In what may be one of the most successful Twitter campaigns in recent memory, more that 16,000 Twitter users have grouped together to “Twitter petition” Microsoft about their lack of web standards in Outlook 2010. The site FixOutlook has organized a movement against the Microsoft decision to use Word to render HTML emails, which will make designers’ lives a misery due to its failure to display these mails properly. They’re hoping to change Microsoft’s mind before Outlook 2010 is released…and breaks email yet again: After testing the latest beta of Outlook 2010 and seeing the same poor standards support as 2007, a senior member of the Outlook team confirmed they plan on continuing to use Word to render HTML emails. Not only that, but early tests indicate that HTML support in the Word engine has not been improved in any way. Same bugs. Same quirks. To demonstrate just how bad the Word rendering engine is in Outlook 2010, here?s exactly the same email rendered in Outlook 2000, and then Outlook 2010 [below]. The cause is helped significantly by the supremely well-designed FixOutlook site, which makes retweeting the message a breeze. Could the Twitter movement actually push Microsoft to reconsider? With 20,000+ Twitter participants likely by the end of today, it would seem a tough movement to ignore. Reviews: Twitter Tags: twitter

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This is the third post in Mashable?s Summer of Social Good series on #FindingTheGood, a week of posts dedicated to profiling charitable initiatives using social media. WWF is one of the four Summer of Social Good charities. There’s no way to sugarcoat it: the fate of all life on Earth will be determined by what we do over the next decade to preserve the planet’s health and biodiversity. Halting and reversing the degradation of our planet’s natural environment is one of the most pressing and important concerns facing the world, and the WWF is at the forefront of that issue. Founded in 1961, the WWF is the world’s largest environmental charity organization. They focus on conserving the planet’s biological diversity and natural habitats, promoting sustainable uses of renewable resources, reducing pollution and wasteful consumption, and changing the way people think about the planet and humanity?s impact on it. Using social media Social media has played very well into the goals of the WWF. “These tools have provided us with the opportunity to engage supporters and reach new audiences in a way we have not ever been able to in the past,” said Claire Carlton, who is the Social Media Manager for the WWF’s Climate Policy Campaign. Tools like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have allowed the WWF and its individual campaigns to increase engagement by doing things like post status updates from the field, share information about environmental conservation, link back to the WWF web site, and speak directly with supporters. “Social media allows us to open dialogue with multiple people at once and respond to their interests,” says Sarah Desilets, who manages social networking outreach for the WWF in the US. For example, after a Facebook poll revealed that nearly a third of fans named dolphins as their favorite marine animal, the WWF was able to appeal directly to those people by pointing them to a recently developed report on endangered Mekong dolphins. By creating that more personal connection, the WWF is able to get more people engaged and grow awareness of their agenda. “By educating people about how we can preserve our environment, we can grow support for our organization and the cause,” said Desilets of the WWF’s social media use. “We need members and support to be able to achieve our mission, and social media allows us to appeal to a new, broad audience.” Seeing results “I see our web site as our home base, the blog as our podium and Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn as our mega phone,” said Carlton. “[Social media] provides us with the opportunity to mobilize thousands more people in getting the message to world leaders that they must take action on climate change now so that we have a sustainable future for everyone.” According to Carlton, the response to their social media activity has been greater than expected, as has user engagement. Carlton said they now have double the number of followers on Twitter than she expected to have by this time. Meanwhile, Desilets told me that Facebook status updates have “greatly increased” traffic to the WWF web site. Building a community When Carlton joined the WWF Climate Witness in Action Programme in 2007, one of the main goals was to build an online community. By embracing social media, they’ve been able to work toward that goal and create an engaged online community. Blogging and Twitter have become daily activities, and Carlton says she is active on other social media sites multiple times per week. “I have found that to be successful in social media it requires a strong commitment and an understanding that it is a daily activity which means we must provide the staff resources to ensure that happens,” she said. On the whole, the WWF uses social media to increase awareness, build community, and engage with followers. “We are engaging followers by providing diverse content and various opportunities for them to get involved with WWF,” said Desilets. “They can take actions via our advocacy network, donate, get RSS feeds, post banners on their social pages, view WWF videos and photos, and start discussions. We also invite them to take polls and comment on our stories so we can learn about what they find relevant and important.” Social media tools have allowed the WWF to connect with and reach out to people in ways not previously possibly, and to create a platform for people to get involved with saving the planet and preserving the earth’s natural environment. See also: How Livestrong Uses Social Media for Good #FindingTheGood Participate in #FindingTheGood From now until Thursday, June 25th, we encourage you to participate in a #FindingTheGood scavenger hunt. Tell us about how individuals, organizations, or even you, are using social media for a good cause by leaving us more information in the comments of our #FindingTheGood announcement post or tweeting to us at our @SocialGood account with the hashtag #FindingTheGood. This Friday, we?ll feature some of our favorite finds in a round-up on Mashable. Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Mashable, Twitter, YouTube Tags: environment, findingthegood, social good, summer of social good, wwf

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President Obama?s inauguration was a huge event online. Much of the traffic went to CNN, and specifically to its integration with Facebook to provide live chat side-by-side with streaming video. Essentially, the feature let you login with your Facebook credentials and broadcast your chat messages as status updates. Since then, the feature has been used in other big events, for example, the NBA All-Star Game and by pop trio The Jonas Brothers. Starting today, however, the feature is available to any website as a copy and paste widget. In other words, you can now enable an experience just like you?ve seen elsewhere side-by-side with your own content and live video streams. Facebook explains more on their developer blog: ?With the Live Stream Box on your website, users log in using Facebook Connect and share updates that appear both within the Live Stream Box and on their Facebook profiles and in their friends’ home page Streams. Each post includes a link back to the Live Stream Box on your site so users can discover the live event and immediately join based on their friends’ recommendations. The Live Stream Box includes a tab to see updates from everyone who is posting on the event from across the Web as well as a filter for a user to view just their friends’ updates.? Both UStream and Justin.tv already include a Facebook Chat option with their video streams, but Live Stream Box makes it possible to enable the experience on any content platform. And as we?ve seen with major events, because it leverages status updates, chat sessions can go extremely viral and produce huge numbers. Turning it into a copy/paste option should be a boon to web publishers, and also to Facebook, who desperately wants status updates to be posted both frequently and publicly. Reviews: Facebook Tags: facebook, facebook chat, justin.tv, ustream

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The rise of premium content on the web has been a great boon for online TV, with Hulu and Boxee being shining examples of what innovations the web can bring to television. Of course, there are some that are unsettled by this trend. Enter two of the major cable companies, Comcast and Time Warner. Earlier today, they unveiled a program called “TV Everywhere, a set of guidelines for bringing TV shows online, starting with programs from TNT and TBS. Sounds good, right? Of course, with every good thing comes a catch. This one: you can only access it if you pay for Comcast or Time Warner cable TV. The Problem Facing the Cable Companies Time Warner and Comcast do face a real problem: people are increasingly turning towards the web for their content. This means less eyeballs on television screens and more on the Internet. This also presents a bandwidth problem: as HD video becomes more accessible online, the cable companies have to pay more for the cost of transferring that data. That’s partially why Comcast set up a monthly bandwidth cap. Their solution to this problem is their TV Everywhere initiative. It’s essentially a set of guidelines that say the companies want to bring more TV content online, starting with a trial run with TNT and TBS at no additional charge. Here are the key tenets, word-for-word: - Bring more TV content, more easily to more people across platforms. - Video subscribers can watch programming from their favorite TV networks online for no additional charge. - Video subscribers can access this content using any broadband connection. - Programmers should make their best and highest-rated programming available online. - Both networks and video distributors should provide high-quality, consumer-friendly sites for viewing broadband content with easy authentication. - A new process should be created to measure ratings for online viewing. The goal should be to extend the current viewer measurement system to include advertiser ratings for TV content viewed on all platforms. - TV Everywhere is open and non-exclusive; cable, satellite or telco video distributors can enter into similar agreements with other programmers Authentication is the key word in these guidelines, something that Comcast and Time Warner spoke more in-depth about this morning in a conference call. Essentially, to access any of their TV content on the web, you must be authenticated. Primarily, this means that you have to be paying for cable television. If you’re not, this content is blocked. Making TV Accessible to All Some of TNT is already online. How will it be affected? Plain and simple: Comcast and Time Warner are losing money to the web. Cable television channels are bypassing the cable distributors by placing their content on the web and running ads. Shows on Hulu or MTV.com are starting to eat at revenues from cable companies. Combine this with increased bandwidth usage and less eyeballs on TV sets, and you can understand why the cable companies are responding. The Comcast and Time Warner initiative is similar to what Paramount, Lions Gate, MGM and doing with movies. They have created a “Hulu for movies,” EpixHD, that is only accessible to cable subscribers as well. Our thoughts on EpixHD are the same for the TV Everywhere initiative: bringing content online is the right thing to do, but offering more options for access is better. Having an ad-supported or subscription version of TV Everywhere content could not only prove to be an additional source of revenue, but it will help prevent disgruntled users finding workarounds to your content. Let’s be clear: Comcast and Time Warner have a right to make money off of their content and their distribution network. But they should do more to make TV Everywhere live up to its name. Reviews: Boxee, Hulu Tags: cable, comcast, hulu, onlien video, time warner, video

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Facebook’s Publisher – aka, the “What’s on your mind?” box on your homepage, was recently overhauled to support smart links, video, photos and other options. Today, however, Facebook is announcing even more updates to Publisher, which will let users control the privacy settings around each status update they post to Facebook. Beta testers, and eventually the rest of us, will now be able to specify whether they want to update the world or just a select group of friends. The new Publisher will now have a lock icon in the lower right hand corner, where users can select to share updates with everyone, friends and networks, friends of friends, just friends, or a custom list. It’s important to note that the share with everyone option is essentially going to make your Facebook status updates public domain, and this has major implications for the upcoming release of Facebook Search. So, why the changes to Publisher? According to Facebook’s blog post, “You may have some posts you want to share with a wide audience, such as whom you voted for or how great the weather is today. Other times you may have more personal updates like your new phone number or an invitation to join you at your favorite restaurant for dinner that are meant for only close or nearby friends.” But we think the reality is that this is part of the groundwork being laid for the roll out of Facebook Search. By giving users the option to share content publicly, privately, or semi-privately, Facebook can ensure that there’s no unnecessary backlash from unwanted search results, and, even more importantly, subtly encourage more Facebook users to share their content openly. The more users who share openly, the better their search product will be. And it’s going to need to be great if it is to compete with Twitter search. Reviews: Facebook, Twitter Tags: facebook

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Ashton Kutcher might be the only Twitter user with 2 million followers (although Ellen will soon join him), but on Facebook, numerous celebs have fan counts in the 7 digits. Today, while doing an interview with ESPN, tennis champ Roger Federer actually crossed the 2 million Facebook fans mark live on-air. In the interview, we learn that Federer is adding about ?2 fans per second? and also maintains his own site at RogerFederer.com, where he claims there are another quarter million users signed up (he also writes about it on his blog). Federer talks Facebook around the 6 minute mark in the video below (the rest is devoted to his arguably more important pursuit of his 15th Grand Slam title): Like other engaging Facebook celebs (see: Why is Vin Diesel So Popular on Facebook?), Federer?s social media success is due not just to his fame, but also the way he uses the site. His page is full of personal updates ? including videos ? that provide his fans with a behind the scenes look at what it?s like being one of the world?s most successful athletes. Reviews: Facebook, Twitter Tags: facebook, roger federer, wimbledon

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In some of the worst hashtag spam we’ve seen in a long time, European furniture maker Habitat has been caught spamming Twitter to increase signups to its customer database. More specifically, the retailer was caught adding topics from the trending topics – from #iphone to #Mousavi – to the front of Tweets trying to get people to sign up to a customer database. One Tweet read: “#MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card.” The cheap trick has led many Twitter users to ask: what does selling furniture have to do with the situation in Iran? It wasn’t just Iran: Habitat appeared to simply pick its hashtags off the trending topics list last week, with other tags including #mms #Apple and #Poh (a former Australian Masterchef contestant). From what we can tell, the blog DigitalTip was the first to pick up on the spam on Sunday. Today that blog received an apology from Habitat: I know people have been waiting for a response tweet from us; we are treating this very seriously and wanted to offer a longer message. We have been reading everyone?s comments carefully and would like to make a very sincere apology to any Twitter users who were offended. The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat. We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that was caused. This is totally against our communications strategy. We never sought to abuse Twitter, have removed the content and will ensure this does not happen again. It has been really valuable to hear how users would like us to use Twitter and we are determined to do better for the Twitter community. Claire Habitat Head Office London Habitat isn’t the only one to abuse the Twitter trending topics, of course – the list of top discussed terms on the service is also being used by malware distributors attempting to extort money out of their victims for a fake anti-virus program. Reviews: Twitter Tags: twitter

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Twitter has been all over the mainstream press (moreso than usual) over the past couple weeks because of its role in the Iran election fallout. Thus, it?s not too surprising that today we find the microblogging site getting The Onion treatment, in an article titled ?Twitter Creator On Iran: ‘I Never Intended For Twitter To Be Useful? Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, offered the following satirical quote: “Twitter was intended to be a way for vacant, self-absorbed egotists to share their most banal and idiotic thoughts with anyone pathetic enough to read them. When I heard how Iranians were using my beloved creation for their own means?such as organizing a political movement and informing the outside world of the actions of a repressive regime?I couldn’t believe they’d ruined something so beautiful, simple, and absolutely pointless.” The brilliant bit of Twitter mockery goes on to say that Dorsey is ?already working on a new website that will be so mind-numbingly useless that Iranians will not even be able to figure out how to operate it.? We can?t wait to hear about it and write about it incessantly Reviews: Twitter Tags: the onion, twitter

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Now that the new iPhone does video, we’re likely to see a smattering of apps push out updates to support video upload to the web. Twitterlator Pro (iTunes link) was the first Twitter app to support video record and upload to Twitter, via yFrog, and just yesterday we learned that Posterous will process 3GS videos via email (regardless of whether they’re shot in landscape mode or not) and post them to your favorite social sites. Now, Kyte is announcing that their mobile app can publish video to the web too. Kyte’s Mobile Producer (iTunes link), which was previously free, now comes with a $4.99 price tag ? the same price as Twitterlator Pro ? and supports video recording and upload to your Kyte Channel from the iPhone 3GS. It’s important to note, however, that the app doesn’t support live streaming to the web. To use Mobile Producer, simply open the app and select to take a video or choose one from your library. If you record video from inside the app, you can also trim or retake as needed. As usual, you can add a show name and append photos and links to the episode. Once you’re done, you can click to broadcast, and the app will upload the video to your Kyte channel. Plus, if you have Twitter enabled in your account settings, the mobile upload will be automatically tweeted to your Twitter network. On the issue of live streaming to the web, Kyte’s CMO Gannon Hall says that there are currently no plans to support that feature in the iPhone app. According to him, Apple’s SDK has yet to make that feature available, so it’s technically impossible. And unlike Qik, they’re not open to creating a video streaming app that requires an iPhone jailbreak. Even though live streaming isn’t supported, we do think this is an important development for iPhone video producers already using Kyte, or ones in search of a mobile video provider with support for the iPhone. We’re not sure if it’s going to lure people away from the competition, but it certainly does give Kyte a slight advantage over the other video broadcast services who have yet to create apps that support easy mobile upload. Reviews: Twitter Tags: iphone 3g s, iphone app, kyte, video, video recorder

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If you’re seeking a job in social media, we’d like to help out. For starters, Mashable’s Job Lists section gathers together all our resource lists, how-tos and expert guides to help you get hired. In particular, you might want to see our articles on How to Leverage Social Media for Career Success and How to Find a Job on Twitter. But we’d like to help in a more direct way, too. Mashable?s job boards are a place for socially-savvy companies to find people like you. This week and every week, Mashable features its coveted job board listings for a variety of positions in the web, social media space, and beyond. Have a look at what?s good and new on our job boards: Mashable Job Board Listings Copywriter at Carroll Enterprises, Inc. in Worcester, MA. Write and edit copy for online marketing communications including but not limited to business letters, web site content, sales letters, email and direct marketing campaigns. Develop and update content of marketing materials and collateral. Establish strong relationships across departments with an understanding of marketing strategy and operational capabilities. Able to consistently deliver high quality work with attention to detail and correct form. Read more about this opportunity here. Proof of Concept Engineer at Bazaarvoice in Austin, TX. Bazaarvoice is hiring a full time developer for its Proof of Concept Engineering group here in Austin. This group is responsible for launching customer driven product pilots. In addition to launching pilots, Proof of Concept Engineers are responsible for exploring new social technologies and will be involved in advanced data mining and web analytics projects. Read more about this opportunity here. Digital Media Strategist at Vanguard Communications in Washington DC. Vanguard is looking for a full-time Senior Account Executive with a strong background in digital strategies and social media who can weave their work into public education and social marketing campaigns for our clients. Read more about this opportunity here. Tech Evangelist at Gigya in Palo Alto, CA. This is an outward-facing position covering partner community outreach, community support, product integration, and plug-in and application development. This individual will be expected to represent Gigya at in-person meetings, conferences, product demonstrations, meet-ups, and other events. Also, he or she will promote Gigya through forums, articles, tutorials, and online communities. Read more about this opportunity here. Java Mobile Engineer at Loopt in Mountain View, CA. You will be responsible to design, build and support mobile client application on a variety of mobile platforms, develop new mobile products and features for existing products using Java, port Loopt J2ME mobile client to a wide variety of handsets, work closely with QA to ensure quality of the J2ME client, and work with UI designers to deliver the best possible user experience Read more about this opportunity here. Server Engineer at Loopt in Mountain View, CA. You must understand how computers, algorithms, memory, concurrency and data structures work, be willing and able to learn new things every day, have opinions, be confident enough to ask questions and challenge false assumptions, be creative, and have a degree in Computer Science or related field. Read more about this opportunity here. Digital Strategist at Ketchum in New York City. We?re looking for a Digital Strategist to join our ranks, an individual deeply ingrained in media culture, ?pull-not-push? marketing and the dynamics of on- and off-line community-building. This individual will play a critical role at Ketchum, helping clients monitor and interact with enthusiast communities; playing an active role in business development; helping develop and evangelize a company-wide perspective on the use of emerging media; and building new products and services for the agency. Read more about this opportunity here. iPhone Application Engineer at Loopt in Mountain View, CA. To be considered, you must understand how computers, algorithms, memory, concurrency, and data structures work and be able to debug them; have experience with Cocoa and Objective-C; be a Loopt user and tell us your ideas and complaints; and have a degree in Computer Science or a related field. Read more about this opportunity here. Web Designer at Domain Development Corporation in Hermosa Beach, California. DDC.com, a leader in domain development and monetization is seeking a strong, full-time web designer with a high-end aesthetic to help build out our prime website properties of top-level domain names such as Divorce.com and SkiResorts.com, among others. Ideal candidates will be independent creative thinkers who possess both strong technical abilities as well as a keen eye for polished, compelling web design and UI. This is a great opportunity to work on all aspects of web development from design to launch. Be part of a fun and fast-paced development environment with quick feedback and turn-around. Read more about this opportunity here. Director of Online Marketing at Metierlink in New York, NY. Metierlink is looking for a strategic and results-driven Director of Online Marketing for our client, located in Northern New Jersey. You must have several years of Online Marketing experience including heavy expertise in Site Analytics/Conversion, SEM, SEO, Email Marketing and Affiliate Marketing. Previous experience with a subscriber modeled site and social media a huge plus. Read more about this opportunity here. Chief of Party at Internews Network in Armenia. Please pass this on to anyone who might be looking for an interesting, challenging job overseas (specifically in Armenia). They’re looking for someone who can help some very talented (especially TV and documentary production) traditional media folks use new tools, including finding creative ways to reach folks in low-bandwidth environments. Also, to help them reach out to citizen media communities. An amazing opportunity for the right tech-savvy but also journalistically rigorous person. Read more about this opportunity here. Javascript Engineer at Meebo in Mountain View, CA. Meebo is seeking top-notch JavaScript Engineers with strong CS fundamentals who feel at home developing high-quality web products that reach millions of users. Read more about this opportunity here. Junior Software Engineer at Simply Hired in Mountain View, CA. We have openings for entry level software engineers for our Content Engineering Team to play a key role in making Simply Hired the best job search engine on the planet. Read more about this opportunity here. Senior Web Specialist at Alliance Defense Fund in Scottsdale, AZ. ADF is seeking a full-time and highly professional Sr. Web Specialist responsible for developing and executing creative concepts for all online marketing communication initiatives and the construction of all emails and landing page. The Sr. Web Specialist is responsible for increasing the quality, quantity and turnaround time of all ADF online marketing communications. As a result, there will be an increase in team capacity-allowing ADF to respond to a greater number of requests and opportunities for growth. Other responsibilities include managing and updating all content on the ADF websites. Read more about this opportunity here. Social Media Director at Alliance Defense Fund in Scottsdale, AZ. ADF seeks a full-time Social Media Director responsible for developing and executing plans in social networking, video sharing, web communities and on other social media sites. Responsibilities include developing and executing quality web content and messaging that will drive appropriate traffic to specific ADF websites. You must love being personally/professionally active in social platforms and blogging and be an early adopter who is always the first to discover the latest on-line buzz. Read more about this opportunity here. Vice President of DialogueMedia at in New York City. Some duties entail leading enterprise-wise social direction, via creation & execution of vision and mission statements, for areas such as: Social (general), Social Technology & Communities, Social Media, enabling and enacts social media strategies, campaigns, and ensures the optimal use of in-house technical and community platforms, and maintaining awareness of social technology & related trends, and communication of this aspect throughout the enterprise. Read more about this opportunity here. Marketing Communications Specialist at Simply Hired in Mountain View, CA. Want to be a part of a growing Web 2.0 company that is gaining market share and media attention? Are you a marketer who enjoys using creative guerilla tactics to gain awareness? Help us get the word out! Join us in promoting pay-per-click advertising in the recruitment vertical. You can make a direct impact to the bottom line. Read more about this opportunity here. Producer Internship at The Branding Farm in Los Angeles, CA. A Strategy Intern will work closely with our Creative Director, Art Director and Executive producer to help research background data for business pitches and internal initiatives and will play a supporting role on research and development. He/She will also assist Producers with active projects ? sometimes this may involve QAing a new site, other times it might involve working with the team to add Social Networking value to existing projects. Read more about this opportunity here. Marketing Manager at HarperCollins Publishers in San Francisco. You’d collaborate in the development and implementation of online marketing plans for all titles, create and execute social networking strategy for HarperOne, our imprint, authors and product lines, possess the ability to regularly build new networks and groups to facilitate community around key authors, brands and books, keep on top of and test new applications, websites and online tools for promoting authors and book (stay on the lookout for Web 3.0), and more! Read more about this opportunity here. Director, Social Media at Reprise Media in New York, NY. Currently seeking Director to lead the growing social media arm of our business. This person will manage all parts of the social media department, including sales, execution, reporting, training, and departmental growth. Read more about this opportunity here. Manager, Online Publishing at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory seeks a highly gifted, creative individual with strong leadership skills and organizational abilities to manage JPL?s online publishing, including JPL?s World Wide Web home page site. Read more about this opportunity here. Manager, Online Marketing at Marketwire in El Segundo, CA. Marketwire is looking for an ambitious online direct marketer to be responsible for developing and executing demand generation campaigns to drive new leads to our products as well as programs to nurture existing prospects and retain our customers. The online marketing and lead generation manager will develop integrated online marketing programs designed to drive traffic, leads, high response rates and quality opportunity conversions. Read more about this opportunity here. Web Developer at LOLapps in San Francisco, CA. Lolapps is seeking engineers to work on a full spectrum of web development from front end through back end. You should be entrepreneurial, proactive, and love software development. Read more about this opportunity here. Director of Social Media at Anthropologie in Philadelphia, PA. We?re interested in someone who has extensive social media experience?someone who is active in the blogosphere and all forms of social media; someone who has developed and managed mobile and online symmetrical communication strategies. You must know how to facilitate conversations and empower others to talk about our brand. You must be dually focused on today?generating actionable social media deliverables?as well as tomorrow?thinking strategically and conceptually about long-term business needs and opportunities. Read more about this opportunity here. Associate Account Executive at IRME in Sparks Glencoe, MD. Our ideal candidate will be a dynamic, creative and fun college graduate with a degree in communications or other related field. Must love the internet – frankly, maybe even obsessed with it and regularly access social networks, blogs, forums, and consumer reviews. Candidates must be a self-motivated and detail oriented team player and can often be found making YouTube videos just for fun. Read more about this opportunity here. PHP and Social Networking Guru Developer at Giantnerd in Boulder, CO. Ideal candidate is extremely hard working, extraordinarily talented, entrepreneurial, THINKS OUTSIDE THE BOX, has great problem solving skills excellent intuition for user interface, and is extremely passionate about open source applications, web 2.0, mobile applications, social networking and social commerce. If are looking for a cutting edge and entrepreneurial dotcom company in silicon valley but would rather work with products which you are passionate about in an eco friendly industry in entrepreneurial Boulder, CO than this is the position for you. Read more about this opportunity here. Online Business Marketing Manager at The Wing Girl Method in Los Angeles, CA. I need someone to help me take my online business to the next level by means of further product development, viable lead maintenance and marketing strategy. Read more about this opportunity here. VP Advertising at Everywun in San Francisco, CA. Our ideal candidate has a wealth of experience in the online advertising and/or sponsorship world. He/she has experience interacting with online ad agencies, has a deep understanding of SEO/SEM and affiliate advertising, marketing, and lead generation, and feels comfortable implementing a wide range of strategies and tactics to test and iterate on a fast developing business model. He/she is also extremely well-spoken, well organized, competent writer, self starter, and excited to use expertise to lead a big part of a small socially conscious startup. Read more about this opportunity here. Senior Web Developer at OpenCrowd in New York City. OpenCrowd is looking for highly motivated individuals who thrive on challenging work in a startup environment with a strong dedication to delivering innovative applications utilizing the latest technologies. Our technologists need to be very delivery oriented and be able to pick up new technologies quickly. Read more about this opportunity here. Account Director at 360i in New York City. 360i is looking for an entrepreneurial-minded Account Director with an MBA, Digital Agency Experience and at least 2 years of CPG Client Side Experience to serve as the strategic client services lead and business development contact for a host of Fortune 500 clients in the Consumer Packaged Goods vertical. Read more about this opportunity here. Web Pioneer at ROBLOX in Redwood City, CA. ROBLOX is looking for talented web engineers for a new team that will create, build, and enhance our social gaming / social networking functionality. As part of this team, you will innovate social networking features particular to 3D gaming, explore current and emerging social technologies (e.g. OpenSocial, Facebook), and internationalize our website in ways that allow seamless play between everyone. Read more about this opportunity here. Web Developer/Designer at Sloshspot, Inc. in San Jose, CA. You have a number of developer/designer blogs that you like and frequent often. You stay on top of current design/development advancements and you can distinguish between a passing fad and a true step forward for the developer community. You are passionate about your work and often pick projects based on how much it interests you rather than just the paycheck. Looking and using developer libraries is great but you recognize the benefits in developing your own and wouldn?t be afraid to do so if necessary (especially in PHP and JS). Read more about this opportunity here. Mashable has a variety of web 2.0, application development, business development, and social networking job opportunities available. Check them out at Mashable?s Job Board. Got a job posting to share with our readers? Post a job to Mashable today ($50 for a 30 day listing) and get it highlighted every week on Mashable.com (in addition to exposure all day every day in the Mashable marketplace). Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, PHP, YouTube Tags: careers, jobs, mashable

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Give Microsoft some credit: they quickly took note of the campaign to ?Fix Outlook? that went crazy viral on Twitter this morning, and have issued a response. In case you missed it earlier, the Fix Outlook campaign is essentially a protest ?against the Microsoft decision to use Word to render HTML emails, which will make designers? lives a misery due to its failure to display these mails properly.? So far, nearly 20,000 people have tweeted the link to the movement’s homepage, fixoutlook.org. Microsoft?s addresses the issue in a post this afternoon to the Outlook Team Blog, where the company notes that it ?appreciates the feedback? but defends its position and makes clear that it has no intention of making the changes that the Fix Outlook movement seeks. The reasoning? William Kennedy, VP of Microsoft Office?s Communications and Forms Team writes: ?While we don?t yet have a broadly-available beta version of Microsoft Office 2010, we can confirm that Outlook 2010 does use Word 2010 for composing and displaying e-mail, just as it did in Office 2007. We?ve made the decision to continue to use Word for creating e-mail messages because we believe it?s the best e-mail authoring experience around, with rich tools that our Word customers have enjoyed for over 25 years. Our customers enjoy using a familiar and powerful tool for creating e-mail, just as they do for creating documents. Word enables Outlook customers to write professional-looking and visually stunning e-mail messages.? Continuing, Microsoft does say that it is all for standards, just not for the ones that Fix Outlook is proposing they adhere to: ?Microsoft welcomes the development of broadly-adopted e-mail standards. We understand that e-mail is about interoperability among various e-mail programs, and we believe that Outlook provides a good mix of a rich user experience and solid interoperability with a wide variety of other e-mail programs. There is no widely-recognized consensus in the industry about what subset of HTML is appropriate for use in e-mail for interoperability. The ?Email Standards Project? does not represent a sanctioned standard or an industry consensus in this area. Should such a consensus arise, we will of course work with other e-mail vendors to provide rich support in our products. We are constantly working to improve our products and the experience that they give to our customers.” In other words, we hear you, but we?re keeping things exactly the same as planned in Outlook 2010. Not surprisingly, commenters on Microsoft?s post are quickly taking issue with the response. That said, the response is not at all surprising. On the scale of Microsoft, 20,000 tweets are hardly enough to drive product changes. But judging from today’s activity, it’s unlikely the Fix Outlook campaign will die quietly, and could remain a thorn in Microsoft’s side in the immediate future. Reviews: Twitter Tags: microsoft, microsoft outlook, twitter

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Digsby has been a rising star in instant messaging. Its social client can not only link to your Gtalk and AIM, but to your Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Gmail. But it faces stiff competition from services like Meebo, Trillian, Pidgin, and dozens of other web and desktop-based IM clients. Today, Digsby released a major upgrade to its desktop IM software. While many of the features, like performance optimization, bug fixes, and improved file transfers for AIM and MSN, the combined group of features significantly improves Digsby and addresses some of its biggest weaknesses (i.e. hogging too much RAM). The core of the new Digsby update is its streamlined build. Its CPU usage is supposedly 50 percent lower, which seems relatively accurate given that my Digsby RAM usage has dropped significantly (it was well over 100,000 kb of RAM before, but is between 60-70,000 now). On top of the big performance improvements, Digsby now supports MySpace status updates, Twitter retweets (it’s a popular Twitter client) and invisible status in Gtalk. One other big update: buddy list search, which allows you to Ctrl + F to find anyone on your friend lists. This was a badly needed timesaver. Digsby is carving a strong market presence since its release last year. Whether that’s due to its integration with social networks or the Digsby ads you can find on trash cans all around New York City, we may never know. However, the space is very competitive and business models are still tough to come by, so we look forward to seeing how Digsby deals with both problems in the future. Reviews: Digsby, Facebook, Gmail, Gtalk, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pidgin, Twitter Tags: digsby, im, instant messaging, meebo, pidgin

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Have you ever noticed that some YouTube channel pages were a little different than others? A bit cleaner? The White House, Citizentube, the University of Phoenix, and Lisa Nova all are different than the channels of popular YouTubers Fred, nigahiga, and Smosh. Their videos are wider. They’re left-aligned. The content is better compartmentalized. Profiles information is pushed below the fold, and better organized. The entire layout is centered around playlists. And the differences go on and on. Well all of these changes have been part of a quiet beta for YouTube Channels 2.0, a new look and feel for one of the website’s most important aspects. It’s been in testing for months, but starting today, all new users will have the new channel design. Above: New design, Nalts YouTube has been testing and adding iterations to this Channel redesign. In fact, there’s a “Secret” YouTube Channels Beta Blog that provides updates based on beta user feedback. Everything from video alignment to whether ratings stars are clickable is addressed by the YouTube team. Personally, we’re big fans of the new design. Just take a look at what YouTube Channel 1.0 looks like to understand why we think having a cleaner interface focused on the video content is the right thing to do: Above: Old design, Fred Can we please just switch everybody else to the new channel design already, YouTube? Reviews: YouTube Tags: youtube

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Google loves the cloud. Primarily I’m referring to the Internet and how more and more we access our favorite programs, files, and tools through the web rather than from the desktop. Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter all exist in the cloud. In fact, Google loves the cloud so much that it took this metaphor literally today in a worldwide competition, Day in the Cloud, which asks you to go on a virtual scavenger hunt in order to win free laptops, Virgin America flights, and more. The kicker? Google launched the competition by throwing a ton of people onto two Virgin America flights at 6 AM PT this morning to try and solve these puzzles. And while I was on the plane, I interviewed Google and Virgin America execs 30,000 feet in the air on how they use social media. The Contest The Google Apps/Virgin America challenge is a 60 minute game with 10 rounds — 9 standard rounds and 1 creative round. Every task you complete increases your “altitude,” which is essentially your score. While you’ll know your score on the first nine rounds immediately, the “creative” round is judged by Google judges on the following metrics: Accuracy, Creativity, Internet Navigation Skill and Googliness (Googliness?!). The creative serves as the tiebreaker. I won’t quite give away what each challenge entails, but they all involve Google Apps in some way (i.e. Gmail). And what if you are one of the people to win? Google and Virgin America are giving away a netbook, a TB of Google storage, and 12 tickets for Virgin America flights (plus wifi). You can play the game either on any Virgin America flight, or on the ground. The competition ends at 11:59 PM PT tonight, so there’s still time to win yourself a netbook! Interviews: I conducted three interviews while I was suspended over California (the flight was from San Francisco to Los Angeles). Each interview focused on how they used social media and Google Apps for better business and better customer relationships. Here’s all three short interviews: 1. Porter Gale, Virgin America’s Vice President of Marketing, on how Virgin America uses social media and her advice for how a business should utilize it: 2. Tom Oliveri, Director of Product Marketing for Google Apps, chatting about the relationship between social media, Google Apps, and businesses, as well as practical tips for how to utilize them effectively: 3. Noah Dorrance, Marketing Director of Crushpad, explains his company’s unique take on wine and how they harness social media for the business: Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, Google, Google Docs, Twitter, YouTube Tags: Google, mashable, mashchat, social media, video

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