A lot of the companies flogging social media services to businesses probably shouldn’t be in the business at all.
A lot of the “advice” they’re giving companies is terrible and yet they charge their clients “top dollar” for it.
(Not all of the companies operating in the space are “evil”, but a lot are)
The Onion’s recent video in the style of “Ted Talks” is brilliant and worth watching if you have any doubts about social media gurus:
Twitter has been offline for the last 30 minutes.
It’s not even showing the (in)famous “fail whale” at the moment!
So you can expect to see a surge of traffic to Facebook and Google+ 
Image via CrunchBase
Last weekend the news broke that Facebook was acquiring Instagram for $1 billion. Needless to say the tech news circles were buzzing with this announcement all week.
According to an article on TheNextWeb Twitter had also tried to acquire them, but failed.
And others suggest that Google may have been trying to acquire them ..
Came across this animated image on Google+ earlier today and thought it was amusing enough to share:
No idea where it originated, so if you know the image source please let me know
Image by sermoa via Flickr
Gowalla is to be shutdown.
After being acquired by Facebook the “also ran” to FourSquare will be shutting down early in 2012, according to Techcrunch.
So while Facebook may have acquired the skills and experience of the FourSquare team, they’re not taking over all the data.
So will Facebook use some of the technology to improve their own location based services? You’d have to assume that was the plan..
Guess we’ll find out ..
Image by sermoa via Flickr
Facebook has acquired Gowalla according to reports.
Gowalla, which offers very similar functionality to FourSquare, never quite seemed to be as popular as its rival.
Facebook had been offering a location based service for its mobile users, but they were reportedly going to be phasing it out, but with the addition of Gowalla that will probably change ie. the current Facebook system will be supplanted by Gowalla’s technology.
The main page of Gowalla currently offers users the option to signup via Facebook, though it still maintains a signup feature for those that do not wish to succumb to Zuckerburg. Whether that will change or not is probably too early to tell
Maybe I’m just old and grumpy, but I really don’t see why I would want to “friend” a business on Facebook:
I’m quite happy to “follow” or “connect with” or something else – I just think that “friend” (as a concept) is just not the right one for me.
Irish media sources are reporting that the well known businessman a race horse owner, JP McManus, is taking the social media site to court.
According to reports McManus’ legal representatives had contacted Facebook via normal channels to get false profiles removed. However the social media site has not removed them.
More details here
Heinz have launched a special offer via their Facebook page that allows “fans” to buy a “limited edition” ketchup.
Heinz limited edition ketchup
Unfortunately it’s pretty clear that the people behind the integration don’t really understand security or privacy.
In order to order the ketchup you need to fill out this form:
Now why do they need ALL that information to send you a bottle of a ketchup? A delivery address is obviously going to be needed, but why would you need my date of birth?
Sorry, but that’s really intrusive.. too intrusive really
Of course to get to that page you really have to trust Heinz .. because whoever setup the “social commerce” doesn’t know a lot about secure certificates or ecommerce judging by this:
Heinz SSL error
I’m sorry, but unless you can actually get the ecommerce basics like SSL certs right then all this talk about “social commerce” being the next big thing are just more fluff
And if a company the size of Heinz can’t get it right I doubt smaller ones will ..
The Social Network is probably going to win a lot of awards before the year is out.
If you haven’t seen it yet it will be released on DVD and BluRay in Ireland and the UK on February 14th.
Play.com have it for €23.99 (bluray) and €18.49 DVD. Both prices include free delivery.
Amazon are listing the bluray for £16.93 (approx. €20) and the standard DVD is available at £12.93 (approx €15). Pricing excludes delivery, but they offer free delivery on orders over £25.
US audiences can already get their hands on a copy, as it was released on bluray and DVD there last week.
