USocial, the (arguably) controversial media agency which ran a follower-boosting campaign for Michael Jackson’s Twitter account and has previously been involved in a Digg dispute, claims that Twitter is trying to shut it down on the grounds of spamming.

This is something CEO Leon Hill says that the company has never done.

“The definition of spam is using electronic messaging to send unsolicited communication and as we don’t use Twitter for this, the claims are false,” he said. read more

With the announcement of the new Pico microblogging theme Six Apart now also stepped in to the microblogging game and wants its part of the pie. They also announced new features to simplify microblogging on the TypePad platform:

• “Post from anywhere” capabilities with email, iPhone, and TypePad bookmarklet
• New simple, professionally-designed, stylish themes
• “Post once, publish everywhere” with built-in support for Facebook, Twitter, and Friendfeed
• Control of your own advertising, your domain, and your personal brand
• All backed with support and training from TypePad One

These features might be new for Typepad users, I personally fail to see where they are new. Other than having ‘built-in plugins’ for the technically challenged people. Everything else, and much more, can be obtained freely via Tumblr and/or WordPress. For the minimum $4.95/month TypePad charges, I can host my blog on my own domain and have much more freedom.

The fact that Nick Denton’s Gawker Media is making a bundle despite the recession, filling its sites with heavyweight advertisers, is old news. That doesn’t stop Advertising Age to feature the blog network as something that is actually working. It gets a bit silly though:

Did Gawker Media just grow up? The little web publisher that big media loves to hate is now teaching them a thing or two about brand advertising. No belly-fat ads, ads with festering sores or diet-success stories; just big, splashy brand ads from HBO, Audi and Samsung.

I don’t exactly recall the Gawker Media brands being littered by Civony Adsense ads before everything went downhill in the advertising industry. But fine, yeah, there’s no doubt that the 45% revenue increase accounts for some sort of maturation. I’d like to put that to the fact that advertisers get the web and its strengths over old media channels better these days. After all, when you feel the pinch it is a good thing to be able to track everything in realtime.

There’s no stopping Envato it seems. The latest addition to the tutorial site network is Phototuts (yeah, I’m cutting out the +, looks bad in text after all), focusing on photography. Tuts manage Skellie announced it, and AppStorm editor David Appleyard will edit it. Makes sense to add photography to the network obviously, but one has to wonder where it will end.

In another episode of the tr.im saga, Nambu’s Eric Woodward, announced that the service will be opened to the community on September 15, 2009 and the code will be released under the MIT open-source license.

Woodward also promised that he will continue to cover financial costs to continue the service. Donations are welcome and accepted. Further on it was announced that tr.im data will be released in real-time to anyone interested and that the possibility to use the tr.im platform on self-maintained domains will be offered as well.

Personally I am getting a little bored of the constant change in direction coming from Nambu and I do not expect anything else than a news update in the next days, announcing that tr.im has been sold.

The Southeastern Conference is expected to ban social media for fans in a bid to protect its exclusive deal with media companies ESPN and CBS. In clear this means that fans will not be allowed to blog, tweet, upload (live) videos or even update their Facebook status during games. Both companies are paying the conference $3m for the broadcast rights over the next 15 years.

In the actual digital era it is not new anymore for news to be broken on the popular social media platforms and often games can be followed on Twitter or on many a fan page on Facebook. Sometimes live video finds it way to streaming platforms such as Qik or captures are uploaded only minutes after important events to Youtube. The SEC now calls these fan activities illegal.

Ticketed fans can’t produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event.

Is the SEC effectively trying to protect its revenue stream or actually censoring the fans?

Source: Tampabay.com via Mashable.

Happy Monday, folks! If you’ve upgraded to Movable Type 4.3, you may have encountered a bug related to custom fields and the new asset manager. A fix has been developed by Six Apart and is currently being tested. The upgrade, 4.31, is expected to be released this week.

In plugin news, Byrne Reese has announced Image Cropper — a new plugin that lets you crop and resize images to make more interesting thumbnails. Be sure to watch the screencast to see how it works — the interface looks very nice.

Finally, Dan Wolfgang has an updated version of his More Custom Fields plugin. This version adds a “Selected Entries” custom field, which can be used for things like custom related entries lists.

What have you done with MT lately? Let us know in the comments.

David Ogilvy is a legend in the advertising world, despite having first retired some 30 year ago and not having published a book in nearly 25. His works are required reading for advertising students today and his philosophy of creating ads that generate sales made millions for his clients. He had a characteristic style or writing and design that remains instantly recognizable to those who’ve studied him, even today.

Though Ogivly died in 1999, just as the Web was beginning to take off, many of his lessons and ideas remain just as valid today as they did half a century ago. Last year I wrote an article entitled “7 Blogging Tips from David Ogilvy” that focused on applying some of Ogilvy’s techniques to blog writing. Ttoday however, I’m going to focus on how his design tips can help you choose a good look for your blog.

Ogilvy had a very famous and classic layout that focused on combining visuals with easy-to-read text. It’s a simple layout that draws the reader’s eye and lures them into the content. It’s a design that at least some elements easily apply to blogs, including the ones below. read more

A leading security company claims that Twitter is being exploited by those who own and control botnets — clusters of computers taken over without owner knowledge and often used to launch denial of service attacks.

Arbor Networks suggests that Twitter accounts are being set up to broadcast links to malicious code. Those computers already part of the botnet would then follow these links, via RSS feed, in order to get new instructions/targets. read more

Together with the announcement of the Retweet implementation on Twitter it seems that Twitter has started to send out Cease & Desist orders to third party developers in a try to protect its trademarks. In a weird spin of things, Mesiahlabs, developer of Retweet.com which we discussed previously, has become the victim of this because Twitter has received approval for the term tweet. Mesiab Labs’ @retweet account has effectively been suspended by Twitter. Previously the company had announced that they had no plans to ‘go after’ companies using the term ‘Tweet’.

It rests to be seen if Mesiab Labs will get the approval for the mark retweet granted because there might be a lot of objections to the application, not only from Twitter, who now seem to be in a unique position to claim the mark, but also from competitors such as Tweetmeme. Funnily enough, the whole RT concept is just another Twitter community driven and created component and it seems ironic at least if someone were able to claim the mark for a concept or term which is owned by the Community.