Social Media News & Articles

With the economy growing worse by the day companies are looking to do everything they can to eliminate dead weight. Much like when SixApart nabbed Pownce and stated they were shutting it down, MySpace is following suit and may shut down Flektor.

Flektor is a slideshow creation tool that MySpace acquired back in 2007. At the time the acquisition seemed to make sense. Flektor’s goal was to provide a way for users to generate quality, video-style content without all the poorly-shot or stolen video you see around the web generated by users.

There are a number of services out there to let people know where you are, what you are doing and what you like. TripSay, a new travel service still in beta, is a mesh of personal mapping applications and review applications and services. If you are looking for a social network to share your travel stories and opinions, TripSay may be the community for you.

Signs of economic unrest usually include a push to pander to a different or wider demographic. During 1992's economic recession, it was declared the Year of the Woman, a nod to the 34 women in the House and Senate. This year, we also celebrate a record-number of women in the 111th Congress. And again, it has been declared the Year of the Woman.

However, this time, a woman's representation expands to the Web, where a number of female-centric sites are kicking butt and taking names. Web sites targeted to women are growing in numbers, serving up content across a wide swath of subjects and age groups. From the looks of it, there seems to be something for everyone.

You say (exasperatedly): Another lifestreaming service? Really? We say: Yes, but this FriendFeed-powered mashup is generating a lot of commotion and feedback due to one teeny, tiny difference -- it's a blogging service, too. 

Kaltura, the platform that brought open source to video and enabled groups to edit and collaborate with online video, has released a video module for the open source Drupal CMS.

Kaltura is a popular video platform used by blogging platforms like WordPress and now Drupal sites. The platform is similar to Viddler, which allows video users to annotate, remix and interact with online video media, all within a Flash-based editor.

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

This week:

• TechCrunch's Arrington Loses It With PR Firms
• StockTwits Raises Funding
• Macworld Sans Steve
• Facebook Developers Grumble, but FB Platform 'Still Most Attractive Option'
• Read Write Web's Best Apps of 2008
• Random Scandal of the Week -- Slave Labor at HuffPost

TechCrunch's Arrington Loses It With PR Firms

In a wild, Chris-Crocker-style rant which had everyone asking "who spiked his non-foam double-latte?", Michael Arrington declared war on the PR firms that dare to ask TechCrunch to hold off on breaking news until they say so. Scared children cried and hid behind their mothers' petticoats, grown men slunk away.

Said an anonymous 'insider': "Yes, Arrington's done himself no favors with this tirade. Just in case he's damaged his reputation, perhaps he should look into hiring in some PR."

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb meanwhile wasted no time in telling Arrington he was wrong. He immediately reposted an older article on How and Why  Embargoes Work.

A new web service aims to bring new functionality to the microblogging space. Yonkly recently launched into public beta and seems similar to Twitter and Tumblr, but with many more features and capabilities. Yonkly was recently mentioned in one of our posts.

For starters, users can create a microblogging site around any subject area they want. Example networks featured on Yonkly's site include a "Twitter" for Christians, one for Hokies fans and iSweat dedicated to exercise and fitness.

It will be the best of times and the worst of times.

Amidst the 2009 predictions for e-new year, there is a consensus that it will bring both financial ruin and success. Chances are that both will come true.

eMarketer released insights of the Internet's plight into the aught nines -- and well, they're kind of what you'd expect. Their senior analysts offered up their best guesses. Let's take a look.

We all love our micro-blogging applications. We Tweet, we Tumble, we Pownce (or at least we did Pownce),  we feed our friends. Now thanks to Movable Type we are in Motion. They have released a beta for their new social application, Motion, for licensed users of Movable Type Pro.

Although SlideShare is not new, it has become a top site for creating beautiful flash video from PowerPoint presentations and has even been named number 20 in the Top 100 Tools list from Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies. Now they are making it even easier to create presentations and share them on the web…socially.

Live Labs, part of the Microsoft Corporation, has announced a new solution for people who want to keep track of all the information they find useful on the web. Thumbtack is similar to social bookmarking, but takes the service to new levels calling it a online research collection tool.

Jadu, a UK-based web content management company, has released an updated version of its namesake product, Jadu CMS. With version 1.8 Jadu focuses on delivering and managing content combined with social computing capabilities.

There is a slew of new features and capabilities to highlight.  For starters, Jadu 1.8 (codenamed Clearwater) introduces the idea of Jadu Directories -- key component of the new CMS platform. Looking to allow advanced functionality use by non-technical users, the Web CMS offers the use of directories to deliver database and directory information. Directories can be configured to pull data from outside data sources, including spreadsheets or other databases.

Zannel, the instant media network - otherwise known as Twitter with multimedia - has released an application for the iPhone called CityWatch. Now you can let people know what's happening in cities all around them, sharing your instant updates on your iPhone.

Chances are if you didn't know anything about Web publishing a few months ago, you do now. News about the industry is hard to escape, and its growing popularity will continue as long as the economy spirals downward. The last few weeks have proved productive for those interested in expanding and promoting their presence on the Web.

We've written a lot lately about mobile solutions in content management and social media. The market for mobile content is trending strongly upward especially with the release of the iPhone and the enhancements to the Blackberry.

Oddly enough though, e-Spirit has found that only 35% of organizations they surveyed in the UK have optimized their websites for mobile devices. This a potentially huge market. Failing to address it is a mistake.