It’s a day to celebrate the changes in media that have empowered us to stay connected to information in real time, the tools that have enabled us to communicate from miles apart, and the platforms that have given a voice to the voiceless and victims of protest injustice. It’s a revolution worth celebrating. Today, we celebrate Social Media Day and we hope you’ll join us.

So how do you participate? Being social, of course. You can do this online by tracking the social updates in various ways as listed below, or you can make some connections offline by attending an event near you. There are more than 600+ meetups in 93 countries today with thousands of attendees. As far as we know, there is no official holiday dedicated to social media. We think it deserves a day of it’s own, and what better way to celebrate than to connect with your local social media community?

There are lot’s creative events planned from panels, to charity fundraisers and even sporting tournaments. Below is a message from our very own Pete Cashmore explaining the idea, reasons for and goals behind Social Media Day…..

Read the rest Here

STORY:
n the spring of 2009, Blockbuster Video retained the services of Kirkland & Ellis, a law firm with a reputation for helping companies with bankruptcy filings. Rumors that the video rental chain was going to file for bankruptcy spread rapidly across social media. In the melee, one Twitter post used Blockbuster’s stock symbol, BBI, to report the rumor. Reading it, another Twitter user asked, “Is this Best Buy?”

Best Buy—its stock symbol is BBY—was listening and responded to the Twitter post directly, cutting short any rumor that the electronics’ retailer might be in trouble. The event exemplified the power of consumer conversations occurring online today. Blockbuster, which later said it hired the law firm to help it raise funds and didn’t file for bankruptcy for about another year and a half, saw its stock plummet 77% to 22 cents a share that day.

It was one of 15 Best Buy employees who are wholly dedicated to monitoring and engaging with consumers online who saw and responded to the potentially devastating tweet. The team has the web covered 24/7. “In a day when anyone can tweet, blog or post a video that may or may not be based in fact, brands have to be monitoring the conversations out there,” says Gina Debogovich, Best Buy’s senior manager of communities.

Read The Rest Here

“Bing and Facebook are making a bet – one that will marry the logic of search, with the recommendations and opinions of your social network and the masses – to extend search beyond just fact-based decision making, to decisions that are made with the power of people AND search,” wrote the company’s corporate veep Yusuf Mehdi in a blog post on Monday. ® source

Where to check it out > HERE <
and use it daily here:  http://www.bing.com/

They don’t have that button yet, but we all know that is the next logical step to make this addition to Google’s venture into social a more viable. Okay, here is the video followed by Google’s take on what they are offering up:

Sometimes it’s easier to find exactly what you’re looking for when someone you know already found it. Get recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want them, in your search results.

The next time you’re trying to remember that bed and breakfast your buddy was raving about, or find a great charity to support, a +1 could help you out. Just make sure you’re signed in to your Google Account.

Show +1′s

In order to +1 things, you first need a public Google profile. This helps people see who recommended that tasty recipe or great campsite. When you create a profile, it’s visible to anyone and connections with your email address can easily find it.

Your +1’s are stored in a new tab on your Google profile. You can show your +1’s tab to the world, or keep it private and just use it to personally manage the ever-expanding record of things you love around the web.

In addition to that revelation, another piece of critical data came via yesterday’s announcement:

Danny Sullivan: If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?

Read more at the source: Randfish

Groupon did NOT sell. Even if it was 6 BILLION dollars.

Google said, oh well so much for the easy way to get into this market space.

The Hard way, sort of, is to build and market their own deals website/network.

Enter Google OFFERS….surely to be tied into their maps and places.

Here come the competition Groupon and Living Social.

Read up on what is coming to an internet connection near you.

CLICK HERE

On November 15th, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook had acquired Fb.com from The American Farm Bureau Federation to use as the domain for internal email addresses now that the Facebook Messages were parked on Facebook.com. But what he didn’t reveal at the time? The acquisition price.

Today Reuters is reporting that the Fb.com  domain acquisition, which moved the 6 Million member Farm Bureau over to Fb.org, cost Facebook $8.5 million.

Read the full article source here

Next head on over to your iStore or Android Marketplace and look for the Vontage application.
The app is a mobile client allowing iPhone and Android users to make VoIP calls for free, as long as they’re calling a Facebook friend.

Here’s where I learned this -_-