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!

I’m a Firefox kind of guy. Long before IE7, I was in love with the functionality of multiple tabs in the same window. I was introduced to Firefox by Todd when we first started working together some years ago. I was lustful for all the add-ons, and I relished the rapidly vanishing programs cluttering my taskbar that inevitably accompanied any long day of using IE. My love affair with Firefox has lasted for quite some time. But as much as the functionality of multiple tabs has engrained itself into my psyche, there was a wonderful tool out there that had eluded my attention until recently. And having recently begun this labor of love of a company, I came to realize that this beautiful, buxom tool had seduced its way onto my computer; and into my heart. That tool, my friends, is Digsby. And like any true love, what started out as an infatuation has rapidly become a soul-mate. I’m starting to wonder how I ever lived and loved without it.

A few weeks back I was chatting on AIM with Shawn, our resident Social Media Manager. I don’t recall exactly how the conversation came about, but I was mentioning something about the confusion of having multiple chat windows open in multiple messengers. Shawn mentioned something about Digsby. Little did I know that this small conversation would be my introduction with the love of my life. Shawn went on to discuss what Digsby was essentially explaining that it was a one stop portal for each and nearly every e-mail, messenger and social media account that one could ask for. I began to salivate when thinking about just my hotmail accounts alone. I have one that I created nearly 15 years ago while in the Navy, one created by my College, one that I run various fantasy leagues on, one that I …. you get the point. For this reason alone, I was looking forward to not having to log in and then out to check multiple accounts. It was only after I downloaded and began running Digsby did I realize that this was only the tip of the iceberg.

I downloaded Digsby and began the set up process. I started adding my accounts. The process to me was reminiscent of a third date after you’ve had a great meal, enjoyed a nice film, and have gone back to her apartment for “coffee”… it was really starting to get hot and heavy. I was telling Digsby all my innermost personal secrets. I was letting her into all of my e-mail accounts, and my Social Media Profiles. She in turn undressed to reveal to me everything that she was made of. Within minutes, I was ready to propose. Short of packing me a lunch with a cute note for work the next day and rubbing my back after a tough day, Digsby appeared to be to be the perfect Soul-Mate.

A great visual interface aside, the true beauty of Digsby is the fact that I have everything in front of me in real time. One click. That’s it. One single click. With that lone solitary click, I had in front of me a real time view of every e-mail account, Social Media profile and instant messenger. I was flabbergasted. In real time, the virtual world of contact and Social Media was presenting itself to me in a number of innocuous pop up windows. Instant message from Shawn_Rosko about an upcoming presentation… check. @WebMasterRadio is now following me on Twitter… check, check!! I have an e-mail from my pop mail server from a perspective client… check, check, check!!! All of my accounts were right there, neatly displayed on a sidebar with great functionality. A simple mouseover showed me my message. A click allowed me to reply, or tweet. Now, I’m not going to lie here, I started to cry a little bit. The same kind of “triumph of the human spirit” victorious tears that one may find upon watching the final 10 minutes of “Rudy.” I was in love with a girl named Digsby and she was treating me right.

I tried to quantify what kind of tool Digsby really was, so I did some timing. Using a Dell Latitude D520 on a Cable DSL connection, I found that it took me 40 seconds or so to log in to one Hotmail account, browse my inbox, log out, and log back in to a 2^nd account. I had been doing this approximately 3 or 4 times a day for a total of 3 minutes. Logging into Twtter from the same tab and scanning that inbox added another 20 seconds. Moving over to LinkedIn took another… you know what, nevermind. I’m not going to bore you. The bottom line is that I was saving 10-15 minutes a day for simply logging in and logging out. That’s about 60-90 hours a year! Seriously, that’s between 2-4 days of your life every year spent logging in and out of accounts! I wondered what to do with that extra time that Digsby has afforded me. So I decided: I’m going to take a long weekend and go to Sandals and I’m going to propose to Digsby!