Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “It’s Official: AOL Sells Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners”

It’s Official: AOL Sells Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners
Microsoft Kinect: Four Motion-Controlled Games [VIDEO]
Android Still Spread Out Over Three Different Versions
Swype Beta for Android Now Open, But Not for Long
New App Helps Charities Make More Money Online
What Do You Check First: Email or Facebook? [INFOGRAPHIC]
New Photo Site Presents Random, Anonymous Stream of Images
iTunes 9.2 Preps Users For iOS 4
Twitter Rolls Out New Ads in Trending Topics Section
TweetMeme’s Retweet Buttons Now Auto-Translate Tweets
PlayStation Plus: Better Online Gaming (For a Price)
Mayors of Sports Authority Get $10 Cash Cards on Foursquare
HOW TO: Run an Online Daily Deal
New iPhone 4 Pre-Orders Not Shipping Until July 14
Knight Foundation Awards $2.74 Million For Future News Tools
Leverage Your Social Networks to Effect Corporate Change
5 Teen Social Media Trends that Can Be Applied to Small Business
Many Facebook and Twitter Users Unhappy with Obama Speech on BP Oil Spill [STATS]
30+ Social Media Job Openings
Satirical BP Oil Spill Greeting Cards to Raise Money for Cleanup Efforts
Facebook Comments Getting a “Like” Button
5 Terrific Tools for Keeping Tabs on Twitter Trends
HOW TO: Send Digital Invites Without Being Obnoxious
Windows vs. Apple: The Future of Mobile Games
More than 600,000 iPhone 4 Pre-Orders Placed on First Day
Celebrities’ Twitter Followers Have Zero Influence [STUDY]
YouTube Launches New Video Editor Tool [UPDATED]
Internet TV Faceoff: Google TV vs. Boxee
England’s World Cup Gaffe Gets the LEGO Treatment [VIDEO]
Nintendo 3DS Hands-On: 3D Gaming Without Glasses

It’s Official: AOL Sells Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 05:09 AM PDT

Yesterday we broke the news that AOL has sold social network Bebo, later confirming from sources that the buyer is hedge fund Criterion Capital Partners.

Now, AOL has officially announced the news. According to the announcement, “CCP will assume the rights and complete operating control over the global social platform business.”

"The young, highly active user base, revenue history, presence in countries throughout the world and solid technical infrastructure make it an attractive media platform both as a standalone entity and in the context of our broader investment objectives," said Adam Levin, managing partner at CCP.

Exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we reckon that the AOL’s experience with Bebo was, on the whole, very negative. Bebo launched in 2005, quickly reaching an important market share, especially in the UK, and AOL acquired it in March 2008 for $850 million. Unfortunately, together with many other social networks such as Friendster and hi5, it got overrun by Facebook and is still not showing signs of recovery. AOL was probably lucky to find a buyer for Bebo, and we reckon that the selling price was far lower than the price of acquisition.

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Reviews: Bebo, Facebook, Friendster, Twitter

Tags: aol, bebo, social networking

Microsoft Kinect: Four Motion-Controlled Games [VIDEO]

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 02:47 AM PDT

This year’s E3 was all about motion control, and Microsoft kicked off this year’s announcements at their press event early Monday. Out on the show floor the company was showing off several of the 15 launch titles that will accompany Kinect when it comes to retail in North America November 4, and we take a look at them in the video below.

Kinect Adventures, Kinect Joy Ride, Kinectimals and Kinect Sports showcase the concept behind the Kinect system for the Xbox 360 console, which does away with the controller altogether and uses your body to interact with the games. In the four titles shown below, one or more players wave, jump, “drive,” bowl and more using only body motions. It’s similar to what Nintendo did with the Wii console, but obviates the need to hold anything in either hand.

Check out the Kinect video demos below and let us know what you think: is motion gaming a good new age for gaming? Or are you staunchly committed to your controller?

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Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: e3, E3 2010, games, kinect, microsoft, motion control, video, video games, xbox, Xbox 360

Android Still Spread Out Over Three Different Versions

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 01:14 AM PDT

Given the fact that Android 2.1 has been around for half a year, and that Android 1.5 is older than one year, you’d think that most Android phones now sport the latest version of the software.

This is now true, but just barely; according to the latest stats from Android Developers, 50% of active devices are now running Android 2.1, while 25% of devices are based on Android 1.6, and 24.6% of devices are still running the ancient Android 1.5.

I’m a firm believer that this fragmentation is bad for Android. Engadget has discussed this topic at length, and although I generally agree that version fragmentation won’t be the end of Android, it’s definitely confusing. Developers have to worry about several different versions instead of one, and consumers have to deal with the fact that their brand new Android phone may not be running the latest software (often, it never will) for some weird reason. Furthermore, manufacturers often release a shiny new phone with an old version of Android, which never happens to Apple’s iPhone – at least not in a way that’s transparent to consumers.

With Froyo (Android 2.2) around the corner, and Android 1.5 refusing to die, the chart above is about to get even more complicated. Hopefully Google and phone manufacturers will finally agree on a pace this platform should be upgraded, so we don’t have to sadly conclude that “new phone X” is running an old version of Android – at least not very often.

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Reviews: Android, Facebook, Twitter

Tags: android, Mobile 2.0, smartphone

Swype Beta for Android Now Open, But Not for Long

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 11:49 PM PDT

For just a few days, you can download Swype for Android.

Swype is the virtual keyboard user’s best friend. It eliminates the need to tap out individual letters when sending a message, writing an email or updating a social service. Instead, you let your finger glide smoothly from letter to letter, forming words without your fingertip ever leaving the screen.

It’s elegant and also quite fast; one Swype user even broke the Guinness World Record for fastest text messaging, a move that was famously documented in a recent Samsung commercial.

To give you an idea of how this amazing app works, here’s the first in an extensive demo/tutorial series:

Swype was previously available as a mostly closed beta program. The new version will be available for download for a limited time; we suggest all Android device owners get this app while the gettin’s good.

Swype is available now for English, Spanish and Italian with support for more languages coming soon. Limited support for users will be available through Swype’s forums. The software is available for all Android devices that don’t have Swype pre-installed from the manufacturer. The app “can’t and won’t” access any personal information, according to Swype’s website.

All you need to do to get the software is register with an email address; you’ll be emailed a link for the download shortly after registering.

Have you tried Swype yet? If so, did it help you increase your speed or accuracy while using a virtual keyboard?

For more mobile coverage, follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Reviews: Android, Facebook, Twitter

Tags: android, Mobile 2.0, smartphone, swype, Text

New App Helps Charities Make More Money Online

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 11:01 PM PDT

Mashable's Spark of Genius series highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, see details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Nadanu

Quick Pitch: Nadanu transforms the electronic giving into a simple, fun and accessible experience.

Genius Idea: Based on the ancient Sumero-Akkadian word for "giving", Nadanu seeks to make the currently complex setup, management, deployment and usage of electronic giving and interaction with donors into a faster, better experience for users and charities alike. It helps organizations reach out to individuals who care in order to secure the funding they need.

For donors, the process is as simple as dropping virtual “coins” into a custom receptacle; the service eliminates the long, prohibitively complicated donation forms we’re used to seeing. Donors can also create reminders to give and set recurring micro-giving schedules for themselves.

Nadanu's Push-K platform lets donors to give to their charity at anytime through a fun interface. With Nadanu, donors enjoy a simpler giving process, and non-profits or charitable organizations can deliver content such as video, audio and text messaging through a single system.

Here are some examples of the user-facing apps for iPhone, Facebook and desktop:

For charitable organizations, Nadanu also offers full access to donor contact information, transaction history and usage patterns; and automated, branded email receipt system; and granular campaign tracking.

The company is also strongly focused on mobile and social distribution and interaction; just today, they a range of mobile apps for Apple and BlackBerry devices as well as some interesting Facebook integrations. Android OS support is expected this fall.

Getzy Fellig, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said in a release "We want to change everything about the way people think, the way people give and the way organizations receive. The availability of our new mobile and Facebook apps blends the best parts of mobile giving 'any time from anywhere' with the fun, accessibility and enjoyment of social networking."

What’s your opinion: Could this no-speedbumps approach help raise more money for good causes online? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Pick The Right Day

First, choose your “deal” day of the week wisely. Consider when the deal will take place and when you should advertise. Many of the local businesses that post deals report that Fridays always bring in customers, but so do early days like Monday and Tuesday. Further, my company analyzed a database looking at over 1,200 deals that were sold in the last six months and found that deals that ran over the weekend actually generated the most volume.

When you're setting up your deal with the daily deal site, try to specify what day you want to advertise.

How Much Can You Handle

Pick the deal service that delivers the right volume for your business. Based on internal stats from my site, If you're looking to sell on one of the biggest site, Groupon, expect to sell over 1,000 units per deal advertised, so make sure your business is outfitted to accommodate that kind of volume. If not, try a boutique or locally oriented daily deal site, which typically sells about 123 units per deal advertised.

Toscana European Day Spa in Boston has set up daily deals using both large and small sites, each with unique results. According to one spa staff member I talked to, "We like Groupon because it's more well known, but we also like smaller sites because we find that we're more likely to retain those customers."

Up-Sell, Up-Sell, Up-Sell

A daily deal is a chance for a new customer to try your business, so don’t sell yourself short. Always look for a chance to up-sell your higher end product. Deals may get them in the door but it can be more challenging to get them signed on as a regular customer or full-time member.

Gold's Gym in Arlington, Mass. recently ran a deal for a discount trial membership and only two users actually upgraded to full-time members, according to the gym’s manager.

Instead of giving your customers too much at once, offer them an introductory service.

Find Your Niche

Groupon and LivingSocial are great places to start because they advertise deals for everything, but if you're looking for a smaller crowd that wants specifically what you sell, consider using a niche site.

If you own a restaurant, consider Village Vines or BlackboardEats, for example, or for a hair salon, try Lifebooker or 25 Tuesdays. Because the readers of these sites are expecting certain types of deals, having your deal on a niche site provides a sense of credibility and lets them know you’re not just some random business they’ll be taking a chance with.

Maggie Nemser, founder of BlackboardEats says that because they are comprised of seasoned food editors, and because they handpick all featured restaurants, businesses feel safe using their services. “They know that we will send an active diner through their doors,” she said.

Connect with Customers

These are customers who like deals, so encourage them to sign up for your mailing list, follow you on Twitter, “Like” you on Facebook, and check in via Foursquare as a way to get additional discounts.

In addition to using daily deals, Tavern 99 in Atlanta sends out e-mail blasts to its customers and encourages them to "Like" them on Facebook. "We see a lot more customers come in as a result," said manager Dana Greene. By converting customers from one-time deal seekers to fans you can build repeat business.

For more business coverage, follow Mashable Business on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

More business resources from Mashable:

- 6 Tips for Effective Recruiting on Social Media Sites
- 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team
- How Venture Capitalists are Using Social Media for Real Results
- 5 Surprising Social Media Business Success Stories
- HOW TO: Market Your Small Business With No Budget

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Petrovich9

Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: advertising, deals, discounts, group buying, savings, shopping, small business

New iPhone 4 Pre-Orders Not Shipping Until July 14

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 03:00 PM PDT

More than 600,000 iPhone 4 units have been pre-ordered by customers over the last 24 hours, leaving both AT&T and Apple sold out of initial shipments. While units will be available in retail stores on June 24, users looking to have the latest iPhone shipped to their homes from Apple.com may wind up waiting until July 14 for their devices to arrive.

While Apple.com’s estimated “Ship By” date was July 2, 2010, earlier this morning, the pre-order page now indicates that it shipments will go out “by July 14th.” That date could be moved up, depending on how quickly Apple is able to get its supply chain adjusted, but this is just another sign that the demand for the iPhone 4 is outpacing even Apple’s own expectations.

If you were unable to pre-order or reserve an iPhone 4 yesterday, thanks in part to the AT&T meltdown, you may not be completely out of luck.

Although Apple is no longer taking reservations for the iPhone 4 at its Apple Store retail locations, stores will be opening at 7 a.m. on June 24, 2010 and phones will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. AT&T retail locations will also have phones, although historically they have smaller quantities available than Apple retail locations.

Additionally, retail chains like Best Buy and Wal-mart will also be getting phones, although what impact — if any — increased demand will have on how many units those stores get is unclear.

In other words, if you’ve just got to have an iPhone 4 on launch day and you weren’t able to get a pre-order or reserve in on time, it might be a good idea to start scouting which Apple Store to camp in front of.

Here’s a Mashable Pro Tip from an Apple launch day veteran: Try Apple Stores that are inside shopping malls. Lines for the stand-alone locations can start really early and get long fast. However, most malls lock the doors after a certain period of time and don’t open up the doors until 4 a.m. in the off-holiday season. Good luck!

For more Apple coverage, follow Mashable Apple on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Reviews: Apple Store, Facebook, Twitter

Tags: apple, iphone 4, iphone pre-orders

Knight Foundation Awards $2.74 Million For Future News Tools

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 02:41 PM PDT

So what’s the future of news? A Local Wiki platform that allows citizens to easily maintain news about their community? A tool for that would allow news organizations to create real-time ads? Or is it mapped news integrated with social sites? These are just a few of the examples that were named winners of the The Knight Foundation News Challenge today at the Future of News Conference at MIT.

The Challenge awarded 12 winners $2.74 million in grants who submitted innovative open-source, digital pitches that can create better “informed and engaged communities.” Though many of winners included elements of social media, perhaps some of the most interesting ideas are ones that attempt to solve some of the business model problems of journalism, including NowSpots, which enables news organizations to create and sell real-time ads and PRX StoryMarket, which is partnering with Spot.us to allow “anyone to pitch and help pay to produce a story.”

Real-Time Ads With NowSpots

The Pitch: “To create software that allows news sites to generate revenue from a new kind of ad.”

The project is being led by Brad Flora, the founder of the WindyCitizen, who has tested the concept of real-time ads on his site by creating a widget that features a business’s social updates (i.e. Twitter and Facebook updates). The project would scale this idea to other news organizations that want to integrate it into their sites.

“Display ads suck,” Flora said in his acceptance of the News Challenge Award. “It’s hard to make money with online banner ads.” Flora explained that although small business have not really taken advantage of banner ads or online ads in general, they have jumped to create a social presence with Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and more. Real-time ads meet them halfway, he said.

What is clever about this idea is that the ads function as a paid social widget that refreshes each time a business updates its status. It’s also interactive, so that users can click to follow the business or retweet or reshare that update, which makes the ads feel different from the traditional banner ads we are used to. Because social updates are not all about promotion, the ads have the potential to add more value.

However, the site could have some competition in getting publishers to use their platform over that of Minnpost.com, which is already selling Real Time Ads on its site and plans to offer it to other publishers for use.

Crowd-funding With PRX StoryMarket

Pitch: “To take the software from Spot.us and adapt it for public radio.”

Public Radio Exchange is going to take the crowd-funding idea of Spot.us and extend it to public radio stations, enabling loyal listeners — many of whom are already supporting the station — to fund local content by donating to stories that they find important.

With Spot.us, readers see pitches for stories from freelance journalists and are able to fund the cost of that story by contributing. This project will extend the crowd-funding idea to a medium, and one that is already thriving through user donations.

Reporting Using Social Media With One-Eight

Pitch: “To interactively chronicle the new uses of social networks by the military.”

Afghanistan recently passed Vietnam as the longest American war. At that time, T.V. was the medium that is often credited with informing the public, which eventually resulted in its end.

Because the Department of Defense opened social media use to soldiers, social media has the potential to be the new media that results in the end of this war, said Teru Kuwayama, the award winner of $202,000 for One-Eight, which will document a Marine battalion in Afghanistan by combining reporting with the Marine’s own use of social updates.

You can see the full list of News Challenge winners here or view the video with a 10-second pitch from each winner. What do you think of these ideas?

Image Courtesy of Knight Foundation.

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Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: journalism, knight foundation, media, new media, News

Leverage Your Social Networks to Effect Corporate Change

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 01:18 PM PDT

Quick Pitch: Consumer Reports meets Yelp for the purpose of creating buying alliances on behalf of the consumer.

Genius Idea: Groubal is an advocacy platform that enables U.S. consumers to create online petitions and recruit others to their causes.

Find your bank’s late payment fees unfair, or upset that you weren’t compensated by an airline for a three-hour flight delay? Create a post on groubal and leverage your networks on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere to build support and demand action.

Each month, groubal picks the highest-ranked petitions and brings them to the attention of corporations and industry leaders in the hopes of creating effective group buying alliances. It’s the site’s willingness to champion its users’ causes that sets it apart from other online petition sites. It’s not just a tool for formalizing complaints; instead, it helps users carry those complaints to achieve reform and develops a site community in the process.

What do you think of the platform? How do you generate support for your causes and complaints online?

Listen to Gossip

When you were a teen, one of the topics that was probably of upmost concern among your social circle was what other people thought about you. Hell, there’s entire controversial websites dedicated to campus gossip and the rumor mill of youth. Well, we’re suggesting that you take this relatively negative juvenile trend and use it to your advantage. The web is basically one big comment card for your business — people have taken the time to fill it out, so you should read it.

“Small businesses are increasing the use of social media monitoring to help understand their own brand, industry, product etc.,” says Mike Rynchek, president of Spyder Trap Online Marketing. “Originally larger brands used social media monitoring as a means of judging engagement, customer service, etc., however smaller brands are learning this can be a great tool to gain a competitive advantage and develop means for differentiation. Now we generally use social media monitoring as a business intelligence tool.”

There are two ways by which you can tap into the consciousness of your customers: 1). By asking them for feedback, and 2). By lurking.

Heidi Carney, vice president of consumer marketing for True Lemon, a crystallized lemon flavoring, puts a lot of stock in customer opinion. “Even though we’re a very small company, we spend a huge amount of time knowing who our customers are,” she says. “We do a lot of customer surveys, we talk to our customers every single day… Almost everything that we’ve done as we’ve grown as a company has been reflective of the feedback that we get from our customers. As we’ve grown we’ve changed our packaging, our customers have always been a part of that process. We’ve changed our messaging, our customers have always been a part of that process. As we’ve introduced new products, they’ve always been a part of that process. Social media gives us a forum to solicit that kind of feedback,” she says. The True Lemon packaging even features Facebook and Twitter “Like” buttons, which encourage customers to go online and weigh in on the product.

Others merely lurk on the Internet, using tools like Tweetdeck and Google alerts to see what consumers are saying about them or to find potential clients. According to Spark, this kind of monitoring is crucial. Let’s say you’re dealing in a market that’s not yet down with social media. “You have the opportunity to be the one guy, the one company that is the most social media savvy,” Spark says. By finding out what people are saying about whatever realm your business falls within, you can then tailor your interactions and business accordingly. You can also drive people to your site or business.

Eliot Sykes, creator of the website MissedConnections.com (which is basically an independent, dedicated version of the the Craigslist version — although it’s not affiliated), uses TweetDeck to follow hashtags and phrases on Twitter to connect with people who are interested in the phenomenon of the Missed Connection. “A popular relevant tweet is ‘Do missed connections actually work?’” he explains. “Which usually gets a response like ‘@Asker: Yep, it’s a long shot, but many people do reconnect, HTH.’” It’s simple actually — Sykes is merely directing a willing audience toward his site.

Twitter and other social platforms should also be used for customer service. Lauren Drell, who runs the social media campaign for the eatery Luke’s Lobster, scours the web for mentions of the eatery. “We repost and retweet every mention and every blog post about us, even if it’s not particularly flattering, because I feel like everyone’s opinion is valid,” she says.

Share Content

Facebook and the like are so popular among teens and the younger set because they allow kids to document their experiences and share content, something we learned from College Humor Co-founder Ricky Van Veen at Mashable’s Social Media Summit. What he means by documenting experiences is as simple as a status update or a link shared on ones wall: In the online realm, we are defined by what we share, and by hitching your wagon to a certain kind of content, you’re reaching a specific audience. For example, Van Veen and College Humor recently made a partnership with SoBe to create branded videos, thereby publicizing the drink as well as creating kick-ass new vids for the website’s fans to pass around.

According to Rick Burnes, who leads the content production team at HubSpot, a marketing software firm that produces the Inbound Marketing Blog and Inbound Marketing University, “The most important thing is content. What I mean by content is just creating interesting, useful information on all sorts of media about things your business is interested in. Blogging is the easiest format. You can created content on your site, and then share it on Facebook. You can also create photos and videos and share those on Facebook.”

When it comes to content, you can either create your own or get your fans in on the game. Sammy Davis, a young Internet entrepreneur who runs her own vintage business — Sammy David Vintage — creates content in the form of a blog, as well as her own branded online TV series. Davis was no stranger to social media when she struck on her own to launch her business — she quit her job producing Esquire magazine’s website to follow her dream, which began with selling clothing at local flea markets and progressed to owning her own showroom. Much of this business was grown through her blog and website, on which she educates her customers about how she and others shop and wear vintage clothing. Davis’s business is more than simply an online shop — it’s an online tutorial/experience.

User-generated content is also great for reaching a wider web of people. True Lemon has grown its Facebook Page from 1,034 fans to 7,000 in three months by asking fans to interact and share content — for example, they launched a game on Marilyn Monroe’s birthday in which they asked fans to submit pictures of themselves with Monroe-esque moles. By submitting such pictures and appearing on the site, fans feel a connection to the brand.

In line with the practice of submitting pictures comes tagging. The practice of linking people to pics — which has spread to Twitter recently with the addition of tagging to TwitPic — allows a brand to spread virally around the web. For example, Bridget Smith, marketing director and manager of the Tattoo Factory in Chicago, plans to tag customers’ tattoos in Facebook galleries (a lot of parlors have online portfolios on Facebook displaying the artists’ work, but few actually tag the customers behind the tats).

She even plans to do real-time updates by taking photos of the tattooing process with her iPhone and uploading them to Facebook and Twitter. This is a great way to spread the word about businesses that often rely on recommendations — like tattoo shops and bridal stores. When you tag a customer in a pic, that photo appears in his newsfeed, and is then seen by his friends, who will be more likely to check a business out once they see their friend’s virtual seal of approval.

Have an Attitude

From the early days of Friendster, to MySpace to Facebook — teens and 20somethings have always been into creating a personality on the web — a facet of the Internet culture a lot of small businesses have yet to tap into, relying too much on RSS feeds, generic newsletters and professional websites to get the word out.

“When it comes to social media, the ability to have the owner of a company directly involved with online conversations about the brand is what gives small businesses a huge advantage over larger corporations, who often (for liability or anxiety reasons) must run all messages past law and PR firms before posting,” says Jill Felska, co-founder of POP! Social Media, Inc. “When this is the case, tweets are days, weeks or even months old by the time they are posted –- and many times no longer relevant to the customer. The ability to be proactive and interactive in this digital age serves small business owners perfectly –- which is why it is to their advantage to get educated and involved on the platform.”

Probably the most important thing a small business can do is to have an engaging, dynamic online persona. No one wants to read a Twitter stream that only deals with menu updates or sales — people want to engage with a brand. In fact, a recent study titled "The Value of a Facebook Fan: An Empirical Review" estimates that someone who has Liked a brand will spend an average of $71.84 more each year on that brand's products or services than will someone who has not Liked it on Facebook, for a total average annualized value of $136.38.

As Dallas Lawrence says, “Small businesses should be thinking of [social media] as the new town square. It’s where they can engage in a sustained and regular dialogue. Just as a small businessman knows, you can’t talk to someone one time and close the sale for a lifetime. You need to transfer what you know in the offline space to the online space.”

Therefore, take your in-store personality online. Audrey Marshall, VP of Online Marketing and PR for Somebody’s Mother’s Chocolate Sauce uses Twitter to develop the company’s brand image. “We try to focus on/follow our main demographics (Moms, Food Bloggers, the Specialty Food Industry) and develop conversations with these potential customers or reviewers,” she says. “We tweet things they’d be most interested in hearing, such as mom quotes, our president’s (Lynn Lasher’s) experiences with her children, specialty food news, and other relevant news items that pertains to moms or the food industry.”

In short — every tweet doesn’t need to be shilling your product. In fact, you should keep advertising-esque tweets to a minimum, and keep social interactions in the fore. That’s the way Sammy Davis does it. “I realized in live-casting my excitement, and my energy and my perspective and my personality, I was getting really positive feedback from the digital outlets — whether it was Twitter, Facebook, most recently Foursquare,” Davis says. “When I first started my Facebook fan page I decided I was going to overshare. I try to limit it so that it’s always relevant and entertaining, of course. I want my market to know what I’m doing because they get excited and they feel like they have control over my product.”

Hang Out

As we all know, social media is a great way to facilitate RL interactions, which can, in turn increase business. Tweet-ups — or social gatherings organized via Twitter — are great method by which to interact with your fans and customers. You can even get more creative with social media meetups, like Joe Sorge, owner of AJ Bombers, a burger joint in Wisconsin, did. Sorge has built AJ Bombers on the foundation of social media, utilizing everything from YouTube to Foursquare to grow his business. One of his most successful efforts involved the latter (in fact, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley mentioned Bombers during his presentation at the Mashable Media Summit).

“When our customers using Foursquare started making comments in the tips or to-dos section, we noticed increasing sales of the items they were speaking about,” Sorge says. Driven by an interest in the medium and the success he was seeing, Sorge decided to delve even more deeply into Foursquare. He became particularly fascinated by the Swarm Badge, which requires 51 checkins in one location at one time. Sorge put together a Twitvite and started to invite folks to a Foursquare flashmob at the restaurant in an effort to attain the badge. The event was scheduled to take place at 3 p.m. sharp, but the restaurateur invited people to show up at 2 p.m. if they wanted to learn how to use the tool. By 3:02 p.m., the attendees had scored the swarm badge. According to Sorge, 161 people attended, 56 people signed up for Foursquare and it was the biggest sales day ever.

Play Nice with Others

Yeah, OK, so teens are more likely to foster online feuds that to forge alliances, so this is more of a call to action than a trend. Yes, competition is healthy when it comes to business, but you can also work together to reach even more effective results.

For example, small businesses can learn from each other. “I think that there are a lot of small businesses that are just getting started with social media — they definitely know about it and they might have already set up a Twitter account or set up a Facebook page, but they don’t really know how to use it — it kind of seems very overwhelming,” says Sarah Cooley, community manager of Postling, a tool that lets you manage all your social media account in one place. “At Postling we’ve been doing social media meetups for small businesses called ‘Sidewalk Collectives,’” she says.

In addition to giving fellow business owner a hand when it comes to mastering new tools, you can also band together for greater success. Sites like Groupon and Scoop St. are all the rage nowadays — Groupon features daily deals, which are only attainable if consumers get enough friends to agree to partake in them.

Luke’s Lobster, along with a cadre of other restaurants — Caracas Arepa Bar, Porchetta, Butter Lane Cupcakes and Xoom — got together during New York’s Taste of 7th Street food crawl to offer a deal on Scoop St. for a selection of menu items. “They’re all kind of along the same street — so one would think, in kind of a normal, more traditional business environment they’d be very competitive and kind of not talk to each other,” says Cooley. “But instead they use social media to retweet each others’ specials all the time. They realize that when it comes to small businesses, they’re greater when they band together to take down larger corporations than when they try to stick on their own.”

Drell, of Luke’s Lobster, commented:

“Group-buying models — especially for food crawls like the Scoop St. Taste of 7th Street — help businesses merge and share all of their fans, exposing all the businesses to a new cohort of potential customers. These customers get to “test” the business with friends at a discounted price, and are often active on social media, so we can track their steps on Foursquare and Twitter and get real-time feedback on the event and the food.
The food crawl was a great way to lure fans of our neighboring niche eateries like Caracas, Xoom and Butter Lane to try our food, and vice versa, so it was a fun, collaborative environment that celebrated our awesome block. We saw a ton of love for 7th St. and Luke’s Lobster on social media sites throughout that weekend, and we fed a lot of newbies who have since become regulars, so it was a successful event for us.”

Don’t Stress

So you’ve joined Twitter, put up a Facebook fan page and created some content for your blog. At this point, you may be tearing out your hair, wondering, “Where the hell is my ROI?” Well, take it from Lawrence: “Social media isn’t like Kevin Costner’s field of dreams — just because you build it doesn’t mean people will come.” Having a social media presence doesn’t necessarily mean your business will flourish overnight: In order to have any quantifiable effect, you need to keep it up and figure out works best for you.

Your demographic might be more into Facebook than Twitter — no customer base is exactly the same. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try out a range of mediums and see what sticks — afterall, being a teenager is all about experimentation, amirite?

image courtesy of iStockphoto, Renphoto ,image courtesy of iStockphoto, Brasil2 , image courtesy of iStockphoto, webphotographeer, image courtesy of iStockphoto, aldomurillo,image courtesy of iStockphoto, AnitaPatterson

[img credit: ♪♫PSICO--MOD♪♫]

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Series supported by Bantam Live

Bantam Live is a web-based collaboration workspace for small business teams that combines “Social CRM” with project/task management and microblogging communication – all centered within a real-time activity stream. Business teams can share an address book and track contacts and conversations, track prospects and sales pipelines, and organize projects and tasks to get work done. With integrations to social networks, team members can search for keywords and reply to and import new contacts and their real-time profiles into Bantam Live.

Reviews: Craigslist, Facebook, Foursquare, Friendster, Google, Internet, Mashable, MySpace, TweetDeck, Twitter, YouTube, iStockphoto, twilight

Tags: business, facebook, Food, foursquare, MARKETING, money, social media, twitter, youtube

Many Facebook and Twitter Users Unhappy with Obama Speech on BP Oil Spill [STATS]

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 12:51 PM PDT

For the most part, Twitter and Facebook users were underwhelmed by U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech last night with regard to April 20’s massive oil spill on the Gulf Coast.

Opinion analytics company Crimson Hexagon analyzed approximately 83,000 tweets and public Facebook comments from 8 p.m. EST Tuesday though around 5 a.m. EST Wednesday that included mention of President Obama, the Oval Office speech or the oil spill, which occurred after a BP oil rig exploded. As people have been getting more and more dissatisfied with the way the spill has been handled (see: @BPGlobalPR and the veritable storm of reactive parodies it has spawned), the fact that most commenters had a bad case of the grumbles is not surprising.

Here’s a breakdown of public opinion, courtesy of social media:

27% of viewers were not content with the plan that the president outlined during the speech.
11% of people thought that Obama’s public speaking skills were lacking: i.e. he used too many hand gestures, he looked like he was reading from a tele-prompter, and — oddly — he had graying hair (heyo, trolls).
15% of folks were mad that they were missing their programs: So You Think You Can Dance, etc.
14% of comments came from people who just generally don’t like the president as a president.
Compared with the 13% who expressed support for him…
…and the 15% who agreed with the president’s main points: That BP should pay for the damage it has caused (7%), and that clean energy technologies should be implemented (8%).
Finally, 5% of users chastized others for not caring enough, and for being more concerned with basketball (another facet of entertainment that was being delayed due to the broadcast) than the environment.

Social media outlets are increasingly becoming a gauge for public opinion, with sites like Facebook and Twitter serving as a kind of town square or water cooler, and others like YouTube as a channel by which to reach the public, and vice versa. Last night White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs answered citizens’ questions via the video-sharing site, and earlier this year the president addressed inquires via YouTube after the State of the Union.

Granted, the above numbers are based solely on what people chose to say on Facebook and Twitter — one might be more apt to gripe about missing a ball game via social media than during an official poll — but public opinion with regard to the speech has largely complained about lack of details. So while we suspect that more than 7% of viewers are ticked off with BP, and more than 8% dig clean energy, the stats seem telling.

What do you think of these findings? If you missed the speech, we’re embedding it below. Check it out and let us know in the comments: What would your Facebook status or Twitter feed read after seeing what the president has to say?

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Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

Tags: facebook, News, Political, social media, stats, trending, twitter, video, youtube

30+ Social Media Job Openings

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 12:48 PM PDT

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 of 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: