Social Media Minute: Check-in From Your Couch, Facebook Goes Groupon

By Jason Harris (@harrisja) Feb 2, 2011

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

Salesforce Adds Likes and Replies To Chatter
The Check-In Invades The Living Room With IntoNow
Facebook Now Offering Local Deals, a la Groupon
Google Team Invents Ways For Egyptians To Tweet Without Internet Access

Salesforce Adds Likes and Replies To Chatter

Chatter, a private and secure social network that launched Salesforce into the enterprise social realm, has gained some new functionality that mimics sites such as Yammer, Facebook and Twitter. Now, on Chatter, you can 'Like" a post and also send reply messages to others within your Chatter network. Also, users can post a hashtag to give Chatter.com messages a common tie on a freely-formed tag.

In addition, Salesforce is opening up Chatter to the general public on Chatter.com. While all Salesforce customers have Chatter integrated into their environment, Chatter.com will be free for anyone to use, regardless if the business, organization or company is a Salesforce.com customer. In addition to the iPhone Chatter application, an Android version will land soon as well.

Private facing micro-messaging platforms are very useful to organizations of all sizes. Here at CMSWire, we use Yammer. Does your organization use any type of utility? If so — how do you and your colleagues use it?

The Check-In Invades The Living Room With IntoNow

Location based startups — such as Gowalla and Foursquare — let us check-in to a location to announce our presence. Regardless of what you think of privacy issues and check-in fatigue, there's no denying that checking-in is an 'in' thing on the social web. Get ready for a new realm of check-ins — from the couch.

IntoNow is a brand new app for iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads that is basically Foursquare for TV enthusiasts. The app can listen to the program you're watching to make the check-in process as easy as giving it a sound sample. The app will check you in as you watch a program and enable you to chat in the app about that show or movie.

IntoNow monitors 140 stations in real time, making just about any mainstream show discoverable in the app. The company's intent is to match consumers and content owners — and eventually consumers and advertisers — based on the shows they like. To grab the app, go to the App Store and search for IntoNow.

Facebook Now Offering Local Deals, a la Groupon

There's been a lot of press and excitement around group deal buying lately. While Groupon closed a recent funding round of close to US$ 1 Billion and LivingSocial is selling more than 1 Amazon.com gift certificate, Facebook is making moves in the space as well. In a bit of a low-key rollout, users can find a "Find Deals on Facebook" page if they know where to look.

On the Facebook applications for iPhone and Android, and on touch.facebook.com (which is their mobile web version tailored for touch screens), users can access local deals. The page isn't integrated into Facebook.com properly, but in short order, Facebook users can expect to see Deals on the Facebook home tab. I searched in Portland, Oregon and was shown 5 local deals.