Twitter adds lists, Geocities is no more, and Google…well…does what Google does: adds a variety of new features and products for us to swoon over (or complain about).

Twitter Lists Launched

If you use a 3rd party application for twitter (like I’d imagine most tweeps do), then you probably have little reason to go to the actual site.  This week, however, Twitter launched a new feature called Twitter Lists.  Essentially, it’s a way to organize your tweeps into categories.  You can create up to 20 lists and add 500 people to each list.  While 3rd party tools already had similar features, this is certainly a nice way for people to organize their twitter feed on twitter itself.  Another nice bonus is the ability to see how many lists each user is on and what categories they belong to.

Yahoo! Closes Geocities

The long time running (since 1994) free web page service Geocities closed its doors this week.  The announcement has spurred a number of “retro internet” jokes the likes of: animated construction and email gifs, terrible backgrounds, and the “marquee” and “blink” html elements.  Goodbye Geocities, I already miss you!

Google changes this week (just the notable ones)

Google had a busy week this week adding a number of new changes and new products to their long list of features…and products.  Here are the most notable:

• Google adds turn-by-turn directions to Mobile maps.
• One box Music Integration are now included in search results including song previews.
• New search features added to Google Custom Search including Wikipedia Integration.
• Google Social Search launches.  Video by Matt Cutts:

The Lighter Side of Social Media:

• What if Tom from Myspace Tried out Facebook?
• A lesson to be learned about talking about Twilight too much.
• As if parents needed another reason not to let their kids play football, here’s another.  Poor guy…
• Finally, if you need some last minute Halloween recipes, these might gross you out.

HAVE A HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!!

Hello everyone, we just wanted to do a quick post to let anyone that checks out the blog that we are here and things are going well. We have really been slacking on the blog, but for good reasons.  The fact of the matter is that we have been REALLY busy with work for clients, and they come first even before our own blog. We are going to try to be sure we start getting at least a post a week, and we will also be back doing the social media weekly wrap as soon as possible. If you do see this thanks for coming back, and we hope you keep coming back because we will be getting some new stuff up on here very soon.

Social media is amazingly powerful and social networking sites have been growing at unbelievably fast rates, and they are also starting to replace some mainstream news sources and even the search engines for some people. The fact of the matter is that many social networking sites, mainly Twitter and Facebook, are breaking many news stories before the news networks are. A perfect example was a couple weeks back when the news of the Jakarta bombings broke on Twitter because a user was staying in one of the hotels and tweeted right after the explosion. The power of the social web just keeps growing and is becoming a force that can overtake many traditional media outlets, it will also to continue to hurt the search engines. Here are some of the top stories of the week in the world social media.

Twitter

There has been some interesting news regarding Twitter, and one of the biggest things that is potentially very scary is the Twitter lawsuit. The Chicago woman had 20 followers on Twitter and she made a Tweet that Horizon Realty claims was damaging to their business. Horizon Realty has filed a $50,000 lawsuit against Amanda Bonnen for the Tweet that only a small group of people would have seen, that was until Horizon filed the lawsuit and now it is getting so much publicity that millions will hear about it and it will cause them a far bigger reputation problem that the tweet. If Horizon does win the lawsuit it will definitely change social media as we know it because people will start being scared of what they can and cannot say. Twitter also unveiled a new homepage this week, and the new homepage makes the site look and perform more like a search engine. This is just another reason that the search engines should start to worry or else they need to up their game if they want to stay around for the long haul. Real time search is the way of the future and Twitter plans on being right at the center of it all.

Charity in Social Media

This is an awesome story and shows how charitable the social media crowds can be, and this was all done by an amazing musician by the name of Josh Charles. Josh is from The New Orleans area and he was there when Katrina came through. He was evacuated like everyone else and when he returned he saw the devastation that Katrina left in one of the greatest cities in the country. It has been a few years and New Orleans is still in bad shape in many places, half of the population of the city is gone as well. So what Josh did is wrote a song about it that is called Healing Time. What makes this story even better is that Josh is selling the song for 99 cents via Amazon and every penny of that goes to charity to help rebuild New Orleans. Josh paid to record the song out of his own pocket and Amazon also agreed to not take a penny from the sale of the song through there site. This is one of the most amazing things a musician could do and I also gained a lot of respect for Amazon for being very cool about the whole thing as well. Kudos to both Josh and Amazon. Be sure to go download the song at Amazon – Healing Time by Josh Charles, every penny raised goes directly to a great cause. The Social Blade Show also played a part in giving this story more exposure on Thursday night by having Josh on and helping to bring more awareness to the cause socially.

MySpace Mail

MySpace is making the news again all over the web for their next move in trying to stay alive, this time it is in the form of an email service. MySpace decided to launch its own email service and this means you can now have your own myspace.com email address. Since the site has been losing so many users who are abandoning the social network they are doing everything in their power to stay relevant. They already plan on focusing on artists and gaming and this email service is their next offer to the community. The email service has a lot to offer since you will have unlimited file storage, one click embedding of pics and vids, and also an address book that automatically saves your contacts.

YouTube

Last week, the JK Wedding Entrance Video was an instant YouTube success generating over 13 million views in little more than a week.   Yesterday, the Official Google Blog showed how they “help[ed] rights holders [of Chris Brown's song: "Forever"] control their content on [youtube].” by placing “buy” links to itunes and amazon music stores.  The song is reported as “reaching as high as #4 on the iTunes singles chart and #3 on Amazon’s best selling MP3 list.”  As of today it’s #23 on itunes, and #7 on Amazon….sadly, cracked.com’s Official: “Worst Song Ever” is #1.

The Lighter Side of the Social Web

Here are some of the funnier stories that were hot over the last week. One of my favorites was seeing the kid get owned by Mentos and Diet Coke. I am sure that he will think twice about doing that again, but we know there will always be plenty of other people doing stupid things. William Shatner has been one of the nations top actors and entertainers for years now, and this week he delivered once again for us on Conan O’Brien. If you have not seen it then be sure to check out Bill reciting Sarah Palins speech as a poem. Here are some unbelievable pieces of artwork that were drawn with ball point pens and measure up to 10 ft. tall, these are just awesome and I am sure creating them is very time consuming. This costume is an instant classic and had to have easily been the best costume at Comic Con.

This week was no different than any other week in the world of social media, so that means there was a lot going on and lots of big news. With so much going on every week it is impossible to list everything, so here is a list of some of the social media news that I feel is most important as well as some of the stuff that had people laughing throughout the week.  We all know how popular social communities and how powerful they can be when used properly, and this is exactly the reason many Universities are taking advantage of social media. Let’s face it, any company or large brand not taking advantage of it better start soon or else you will be left in the dust. People are realizing this though, as well as many companies large and small, now even popular content management systems are integrating social media, as is the case with Drupal.

Digg Hijacking Links?

This was a huge story this week in the social media world, and many people became very angry over the fact that Digg appeared to be stealing traffic, or pulling a bait and switch. The diggbar seemed to be a url shortener at first, and many people used it for this. The problem came earlierin the week when people noticed that if they were not logged into digg they got redircted to a digg landing page rather than the actual story. There was a large uproar over the change and Kevin Rose said he would look into it since he had been out of the country. Well he did and they said that they were keeping the diggbar the way it was now and it was not to be a url shortener anymore, but exclusive for digg. They did say that any old links would be reverted to the old way but anything from when the change went live going into the future would redirect to a digg landing page unless you were logged in.

A New Era for MySpace?

Last week I mentioned how MySpace has been losing followers left and right, mainly due to people switching to Facebook because of the cleaner design among other things. MySpace knows they need to do something, especially after being called the ghetto of social networking sites. MySpace is still popular with bands and musicians, so this is the main area they should focus more on in my opinion. They have also decided to embrace gamers and News Corp announced that they are going to try and expand into a stronger online videogame platform. This will be interesting and I will be watching closely to see how it works out for them.

Twitter Mania

The Twitter frenzy online continues to grow as more and more people are finding the benefits and fun that can be had with the microblogging service. Due to this, there are constantly new updates being made, one that many people may have noticed is that their follower/following counts may have dropped over the last few days. This is because Twitter has recently made some corrections to these numbers as well as did another spammer sweep. Twitter also released a guide for businesses that use Twitter in order to help them make the most out of the service, this is called Twitter 101 for Businesses and it can be a good read if you are a business just jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. Another resource for brands using Twitter is the new Twitter management system from Buddy Media, just another reason for your company to climb on board the social media train.

This week Twitter also unveiled a live updating search widget, which will make real time search even more exciting and easy to keep track of. There has been so much news regarding Twitter recently so the last one I will bring up for anyone that may not have seen it is the new service which allows you to record a video to incorporate into your tweets. This service is called Twitvid and it should make Twitter a bit more interesting for the folks that love video.

Digsby Keeps on Growing

All of us at Essential are big fans of Digsby, Skip even had a nice humorous post explaining that he loves Digsby so much he wants to propose. It seems that the service just keeps on growing as more and more people discover all the benefits of using the program, and Digsby has just hit that 1 million user mark, so in addition to making that announcement they also announced the launch of an affiliate program. Congrats Digsby, we love you and wish you continued success and growth!

Facebook Changes Their Minds, Again….

Once again Facebook is reversing a decision they made, much like the decision they reversed a few weeks back regarding the vanity url’s being available only to users with so many followers. This time the change Facebook is reversing is the fixed usernames. Once you chose your username on Facebook you were stuck with it, at least that’s what everyone thought, including the staff at Facebook. Now they have decided that they will allow people to change their vanity url after all, if the one you want is even available anymore.

The Fun Stuff

Every week I plan on tossing in some of my favorites from the social media world, whether they are funny or just plain absurd this is where the fun stuff is. These will always be some of my favorite stuff that will either make you laugh or just wonder what is wrong with people. My favorite entertaining video this week was one from Digg, and this is sure to become the newest incarnate of the legendary Rick Roll. This time though we have a Teen Spirit style Rick Roll, or as some people have called it, The Kurt Roll. A great picture that I saw being bounced around the different social networks is one of my other favorites of the week and it has to be one of the smartest bums on the street,  I am alsowilling to bet he makes some pretty good coin doing this. To finish off the week I will leave you with the worst song ever written, as well as another awesome pic of the Fast Food Mafia.

Have a good weekend and we hope to see you coming back as we will be updating the blog regularly, and of course every Friday check ot the Social Media Wrap right here!

Social news sites and all of the other social networking sites are not going anywhere, in fact the communities are growing everyday and many of the top news stories worldwide first break in these social networking communities. Every week the social communities are buzzing with many big stories. Now, every Friday, we’ll bring you a weekly wrap-up of some of the biggest stories in the world of social media.

Breaking news from… Twitter?
Just yesterday, when the bombings in Jakarta happened, the first people to report on these bombing were Twitter users. This also goes to show how important social networking has become to society today, and it also enables anyone to bring breaking news to the web in real time. Real time reporting has been seen a lot in recent weeks and months via sites like Twitter and Facebook, another recent example were the Iran political protests and how the people caught up in them were able to update via social communities. That was important as well because it showed the power of the groundswell when many users turned their avatars green and also changed their time settings in Twitter to make it harder for the Iran government to try and block their citizens from reporting on Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter Hacked…again
That’s right, Twitter was hacked… again. This time, documents were stolen from an employee’s email and posted on numerous blogs around the web. Techcrunch has published some of the more interesting documents, while some of the other blogs held little back. Twitter has contacted lawyers, but they should know as well as anyone that when something catches on in the social world it is almost impossible to stop, this has been coined “The Streisand Effect” and it is something many people do not fully understand, but I would assume the folks at Twitter know about it all too well.

The fall of MySpace
Reports of MySpace showing a steady decline in it’s user base surfaced this week, as many people are running from MySpace and embracing Facebook. MySpace has recently been coined as the “ghetto” of social networking communities due to the unappealing layouts and rediculous page load times. Where MySpace has remained relevant is when it comes to a networking tool for musicians. Being a musician myself I have seen firsthand what is possible for bands networking and promoting themselves on MySpace. Perhaps MySpace should really target and focus on if they want to have a place in the future of social media. When bands and other entertainers embrace social networking amazing things can happen, and Myspace has helped launch a number of careers (for better or worse).

Real Time Search is still a hot topic
Real time search has been an increasingly hot topic and it is proof that the future of search will be geared more towards real time search results. Let’s face it, when you do a search you don’t want to find outdated information on the subject, most would prefer something that is totally fresh and relevant. Real time search has been revolutionized by Twitter and now many sites are implementing this concept, including Friendfeed, which is another popular networking site where you can integrate feeds from all of your different social profiles.

Integrating TV with Social Media
As more and more companies start embracing the social media phenomenon, we will see more technological advancements in the social world. One example of this is the new social network TV service Verizon is offering their FIOS customers. This application will enable users to watch TV together online and communicate with each other as they watch. The services will also be fully integrated with Twitter and Facebook as well as other user generated video sites on the web, such as Dailymotion and Blip.tv.

The lighter side of Social Media (this week)
Some of the more entertaining stories we have see in the social world this past week include a dancing bear that has been invading webcam chatrooms on Stickam and causing hilarity to ensue. The dancing bear prank was done by Ryan Perera, who thought it would be funny to invade random chatrooms for fun. The prank raised quite a few eyebrows in the social world because of how random and funny it truly was, and the folks in these chatrooms got a good laugh watching the dancing bear on cam.

We were also graced with some funny images that were a big hit on numerous social media websites and gave people some nice laughs, one being the man who cant afford beer and then we also had the humorous directions that involve a kayak. The Dairy Queen sign in this image is most definitely a huge fail on their part, but made many say WTF! Or was good for another chuckle to many others.

Here was an interesting image which shows 4 different Newsweek covers, and obviously you can see exactly why mainstream American media sucks (and the exact reason people are embracing social networks for unbiased news).

Last but not least in interesting social media stories we have the girl who was arrested for swearing during a 911 call. I’ll let the video do the talking.

Hope you enjoyed our wrap-up…until next week!

You hear the words being mentioned all the time and there are so many companies taking advantage of the social network uprising. When done properly they are finding great success with it because it gives them a way to better interact with their customers. People like communication, information, and honesty, and social networks give business’s the chance to achieve all of this by having a social presence online. A blog is becoming essential for any business and I feel that having a presence on the larger social networks is also something that will soon be necessary to keep up with the competition. So if you have not considered this as part of your marketing strategy yet then be sure to give it some serious thought as soon as possible and get yourself out there and have a face, become a resource for your niche and you will reap the benefits for many years to come.

Whether you are just a basic internet user or you are an addict you can find so many useful ways to take advantage of the social networking phenomenon. Facebook is becoming increasingly popular as a way for families to keep in touch and share family photos as well as plan events and keep other family members in the loop. I know for me personally I have connected with family and friends that I have not talked to in well over 10 years, and this is one of the many reasons that social networking is taking over the internet, and the means in which people communicate on the internet. Social networks are actually one of the leading means of communication on the web today, even replacing email in many instances. Twitter is also becoming an extremely effective means of communication and networking on the web, and with all of these different ways to connect why use email besides for private matters.

Another great way that social networks are being used is they are creating a new way for people to find jobs, and employers are finding many wonderful new employees through sites like LinkedIn. On LinkedIn you have a full resume readily available online for any potential employers to find, and you can also seek out companies that are hiring in your field by doing a simple search. LinkedIn is also a great way to network with likeminded individuals and possibly develop new business partnerships and ventures with these folks that have similar ideas. The possibilities are endless when it comes to networking yourself online, you just need to get yourself out there.

Musicians and comedians are also heavily involved in the social networking craze and bands are getting record deals left and right using sites like MySpace and Sonicbids. Social networking has changed the whole music industry because it is allowing any bands or entertainer the chance to network with others from around the world. It also allows them to easily contact promoters and clubs to book their own tours very easily, and these are the things that are helping them become known around the world. There are numerous sites where you can sell your material, and these sites all give you all the tools needed to promote your stuff, all you have to do is spend the time doing it.