How popular is Facebook? The Vatican this week has taken the social networking website beyond the grave, setting up a Posthumous account for Pope John Paul II.
The deceased pope is set to be beatified on May 1 and the Vatican in anticipation of that event has posted various video highlights, photos and other information from the pontiffs 27 years as the top official for the Catholic church.
It’s the first time the Vatican has tried to evangelize a member of the church using social media.
A Vatican official told the AP:
“What we found is that Facebook doesn’t just share information, it creates community,” while adding, “People begin talking to each other and sharing ideas.” read more
Social Media played a huge part in helping the Egyptian populace coordinate a revolution that the whole world followed. Despite the new defunct Mubarak’s attempts to silence the people by disconnecting all internet connectivity in the country, updates were still sent out by Bloggers using old school mediums such as faxing. Following Mubarak’s fall, we’re still receiving updates on the Egyptian revolution thanks to the brave Bloggers, Journalists and Photographers giving us an intimate view of a country going through a massive change.
Many photos were shared through Flickr but the photo sharing network has acted to take down an Egyptian Blogger’s photos of the revolutions.
Has the former search giant finally sold off Delicious? Reportedly Yahoo! was able to find a buyer for the former book marking service, although they apparently sold the platform at a loss.
We’ve received a solid report from a reliable and proven source that Yahoo has sold social bookmarking site Delicious for $5m+. [...]
After a heated bidding process, the site has reportedly been sold to a rival bookmarking service – who exactly we’re unsure of but we’ll update once we have confirmation. (The Next Web)
It’s still unclear who allegedly bought Delicious, although if the information above is correct then Yahoo! sold the company at a loss (as they previously bought delicious for $18 million).
While some may suspect Google could have purchased the service (as the company also offers users a social book marking tool), it could have been a much smaller company instead.
Yahoo! as expected is being tight lipped regarding the reports, (they’re refusing to confirm or deny the report), although we will stay tuned for more details to see whether or not Delicious fans have new owners.
Path is on a tear over the last few months and today they have announced more new features for version 1.5 of their iPhone app. With the new update comes two exciting features, Facebook sharing and a new feature they are calling “Lenses.”
While the network allows for only a 50-friend limit, they are also now allowing users to share their posts with all of their Facebook friends using a Facebook share button. Using the button users can choose to post their photos and videos to their Facebook wall. The program offers the option to designate those files as private so only your Path friends on Facebook can see the posts or so everyone on Facebook can witness them.
The other new option, known as Path Lenses allows users to add some style to their photos and videos. As of today 7 lenses are offered. The first four are free and are titled: Pro, Ansel, Instant and Diana. While three Path Premium Lenses are also available at this time for $.99 each: Old Time, The Grib (pictured below) and 8-Bit.
More lenses are expected in the future according to Path co-founder Dave Morin.
Users will also find friend recommendations now included in the service and new activity-viewing. read more
LinkedIn Today puts a new spin on aggregating social news and displays what’s relevant to your industry keeping you up to date on your field. LinkedIn takes a familiar approach by pulling content from the Twitter feeds of relevant and respected online publications. Categories include Online Media, Internet, IT, Marketing & Advertising, Computer Software and Design. read more
In celebration of their 40th anniversary, Starbucks today is rewarding random Foursquare users with $40 gift cards. All you have to do to enter is check-in at any Starbucks location.
The promotion started at 12:01 a.m. PT and will continue through 11:59:59 p.m. PT on March 12. The company is giving away 500 prizes and a “Tribute Badge” will also be rewarded.
If you won’t be checking in via Foursquare you can also send an email with the subject line “Starbucks Foursquare Entry Submission” to foursquare@starbucks.com.
Winners will be drawn and notified on March 16 and you can find the official contest rules here.
It’s not the first time Starbucks has worked with Foursquare, unfortunately during their last campaign many stores were not made aware of the promotion which led to angry customers complaining that the promotion was not being honored. read more
With new cases of bullying grabbing national headlines in what appears to be a weekly news ritual, President Obama has decided to take a moment to send a message that it’s not okay to bully and he has chosen to use Facebook to deliver that message alongside first lady Michelle Obama.
In an exclusive Facebook video, President Obama has released a special promotional video that talks about the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention which is scheduled to take place on Thursday.
The President at times tries to keep the conversation light but on point, telling viewers he won’t bug them for a friends request but that while “This isn’t an issue that makes headlines every day, but it affects every single young person in our country.”
President Obama also talks about how bullying has increased in reach with cyber-bullying entering every aspect of life from school, to home, to phone to internet.
The partnership between Facebook and the White House makes sense as both organizations have tried their best to combat the growing issue of cyber-bullying, including a “safety page” and “safety center” being setup on the world’s largest social network, while the White House offers “StopBullying.gov.” read more
It looks like Facebook just gave bloggers one great reason to have their comment section assimilated as the social giant has released social analytics for the masses (which also includes stats for the like button).
For the first time, you can now access real-time analytics to optimize Like buttons across both your site and on Facebook. We use anonymized data to show you the number of times people saw Like buttons, clicked Like buttons, saw Like stories on Facebook, and clicked Like stories to visit your website. [...]
To help you tailor your content and products to your users, we now provide demographic information for the interactions that occur on your site and on Facebook. We display demographics for gender, age range, country, and language, and we count data on a per-interaction (not per-user) basis. This data is aggregated so no personally identifiable information can be accessed. (Facebook Developer Blog)
The social giant provides similar analytics for bloggers powering their comment section with Facebook, although the ability for publishers to see the demographics of their users by age, gender, etc., puts Facebook well ahead of rivals like Disqus (who has a similar feature for premium users).
WordPress lovers (self hosting only) can implement Facebook comments via a plugin, while Blogger fans will have to dive into the code in order to activate this upon your blog.
Note: Unfortunately the only draw back about using Facebook comments is that there is still no easy way to import (or better yet sync) comments to ones blog, although hopefully Facebook will provide that functionality in the future.
Craig Newmark, best known for founding craigslist, has launched craigconnects, a web-based initiative to help people work together for the common good using the Internet.
The project, dubbed by Newmark as the biggest thing in his life, will identify, connect and protect organizations engaged in work that is socially responsible, self-perpetuating and replicable. The initial list of organizations includes dozens working in the areas of community building, social media for social progress, journalism integrity, open and accountable government, service and volunteering, veterans’ issues, and peace in the Middle East. The public is invited to submit recommendations for others to be added to the list via the craigconnects website. read more
Do you love Kraft Macaroni & Cheese? If you do you could be the proud owner of five free boxes of the cheesy goodness, along with a free Kraft t-shirt. The promotion is part of a new Twitter contest the company is running that puts Twitter followers in direct contest with one another.
The program, which has been slowly rolled out over the last several weeks looks for two people at a time who have individually used the phrase “mac & cheese” in a tweet. The first person to click on the “Mac & Jinx” link they receive and give Kraft their address will receive five free boxes of the cheesy food goodness and a T-Shirt.
The new contest comes from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the same company responsible for Burger King’s advertising for more than 10 years as well as Microsoft’s successful “Laptop Hunters” campaign. read more
How popular is Facebook? The Vatican this week has taken the social networking website beyond the grave, setting up a Posthumous account for Pope John Paul II.
