Change your Facebook Instant Personalization

Facebook started a new set of features last week called “Instant Personalization” as part of its new Open Graph Protocal.

The Open Graph protocol enables you to integrate your web pages into the social graph. It is currently designed for web pages representing profiles of real-world things — things like movies, sports teams, celebrities, and restaurants. Once your pages become objects in the graph, users can establish connections to your pages as they do with Facebook Pages. Based on the structured data you provide via the Open Graph protocol, your pages show up richly across Facebook: in user profiles, within search results and in News Feed.

Some people are not a fan of how your information is being shared to third party advertisers. But not to worry you can disable facebook’s instant personalization features. Facebook did bury this and make it hard to find out how to disable instant personalization but its easy to do, just follow these steps.

1. Click on “Account” in the upper-right corner of the Facebook homepage.
2. Select “Privacy Settings” from the drop down menu .
3. Choose the link “Applications and Websites”
4. At the bottom of this list: “Instant Personalization.” click on “Edit Settings”
5. From this page you may select or unselect the checkmark to turn on or off “Instant Personalization”.
6. You may also choose to select specific websites or applications to see your personal information (or to block them individually).

Twitter Phishing Attack Spreading via Direct Message

A Twitter phishing attack is spreading rapidly today, attempting to obtain Twitter logins via Direct Messages. If you receive a message reading “lol, is this you”, and linking to a site called “bzpharma”, do not click the link.

Users who do click that link and enter their details are inadvertently letting spammers take over their accounts, which are then used to spam the same Direct Message to all their friends.

If you’re receiving these messages, your account is not compromised, but if you find you’re sending them, make sure to change your Twitter password immediately.

We’ve already notified Twitter of the issue.

Thanks to Laura Fitton (@pistachio), CEO/Founder of “Twitter appstore” Oneforty.com for giving us a heads up on this.

If you’re on Twitter, it may be a good idea to change your password today.

The site on Tuesday appeared to have been hit by a phishing attack that could be used to steal a user’s sensitive log-in information, according to blogs and news reports.

Twitter said it reset some users’ passwords because of the attack, according to a statement published by CNET:

“As part of Twitter’s ongoing security efforts, we reset passwords for a small number of accounts that we believe may have been compromised offsite,” Twitter’s statement says.

In a January blog post, site co-founder Biz Stone noted that some Web sites may be trying to masquerade as Twitter.com in an attempt to steal users’ password information.

He encouraged Twitter fans to change their passwords on Twitter.com, and noted that they should be careful to check the site’s URL to be sure they hadn’t been led to a fake Web site that simply looks like it’s Twitter:

“If you receive a direct message or a direct message e-mail notification that redirects to what looks like Twitter.com — don’t sign in. Look closely at the URL because it could be a scam,” he said.

One common scam URL, the post notes, looks like this:

http://twitter.access-logins.com/login [Do not visit this link]

If you are directed to that fake site instead of http://twitter.com, Stone says not to enter your password. Look at the address bar in your Web browser to tell for sure.

The scope of the most recent phishing attack was unclear Tuesday morning. Bloggers, some of whom have posted photos of their correspondence with Twitter about the scheme, report that fake e-mails and direct messages on Twitter are being passed around to point people to phishing sites.

Online scammers increasingly are targeting social networks since they generally don’t have the same kind of security protections in place as e-mail accounts, said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, a security company.

“This is the next generation of attacks, really,” he said.

Cluley’s company released a report on Monday saying that reported phishing schemes on social networks — those that lure users to fake Web sites to steal their log-in information — have increased in recent months. Nearly a third of 500 companies surveyed by Sophos reported to have been the victim of a phishing attack via a social network at the end of 2009, which was up from 21 percent that reported an attack in April of last year.

The goal of a phishing scheme is to lure a person to give away his or her password information, and then use that information to get sensitive info from a person’s social network, he said.

Social networks allow phishing schemes to spread rapidly, Cluley said, because some people have very large online social networks, and because many people let third-party sites access their Twitter and Facebook accounts to offer additional services.

“There are Web sites out there that can offer you additional Twitter services,” he said. “For example, they may offer statistics about how often you’re tweeting … they may try to generate new followers for you. The service needs to somehow be able to log in on your behalf to be able to do some of these things.”

Those sites are dangerous, and Cluley said social networkers should not enter their password and user-name information on such sites. Only use third-party services that allow you to log in directly through the social networking hub, like Twitter.com, he said.

The site twitpic.com, for instance, requires users to give away their log-in information in order to share photos on Twitter, he said. A similar site called yfrog.com does not. It lets users log in through Twitter’s main site.

He suggested Twitter users go directly to Twitter.com to reset their passwords instead of clicking any links that claim to do so.

Thanks to CNN & Mashable.com

Blame It On Twitter

The tag #blameitontwitter has been used lately starting a trend on Twitter. The idea is to use the tag and then to explain in a couple words why Twitter is to blame for your problems. This new trend has taken the twittersphere by storm. This is exactly why I like social media, you have no idea what people are going to come up with and what is going to stick and become popular enough to get interaction from other members. I decided to post some of my favorite Blame it on Twitter posts:

#blameitontwitter Blame it on Twitter

1. I forgot to clean my room #blameitontwitter
2. Stalkers ? #BlameItOnTwitter
3. Being a bit TOO confident to say anything.? #blameitontwitter .
4. Most of my statements can be made using less than 140 characters now. #blameitontwitter
5. Gotta wash clothes? Later. Study? Ehh Later. #blameitontwitter
6. #BlameITontwitter if your phone battery always dieing .
7. Turning into more of a comedian.? #blameitontwitter .
8. I’m hungrrryy! But I can’t see to get off this and go make breakfast! #blameitontwitter
9. I stay up, and for what? #blameitontwitter !
10. When people start speakin random thoughts at random times, #BlameItOnTwitter.
11. Being late for school. #blameitontwitter
12. Your myspace WAS the bomb, now it’s in the musuem of past sites, Lol! #blameitontwitter
13. My batteries dying #blameitontwitter
14. I stop in the middle of my work when I hear that infamous alert #blameitontwitter
15. Twitter is the only time u can follow me and its ok to use the word follow #blameitontwitter
16. You don’t even watch your favorite shows cuz your timeline is more eventful #blameitontwitter
17. I only go on facebook to put follow me on my status… #blameitontwitter
18. If you’re using the pound sign when you’re not using twitter #blameitontwitter
19. Facebook & Myspace friends don’t get responses til days later… #blameitontwitter
20. Got stalkers knowing where you at all times #blameitontwitter
21. You’re outa airtime…#blameitontwitter !!!
22. Having split personalities yeah I guess you can #blameitontwitter because you sure didnt act that way a couple of months ago
23. Still up at 3 in the morning because you doing twitting topics and stuff on twitter #BlameItOnTwitter
24. When you stop following a chick cause she tweets that she has a man #blameitontwitter
25. In actual speech u start saying “pound (word here)” #blameitontwitter
26. Makin my day when I’m havin a bad day ; #blameitontwitter
27. Not getting enough sleep…#blameitontwitter
28. U start saying your friends’ user names instead of their real names? #blameitontwitter
29. Gossip becoming fact #blameitontwitter
30. Twittering @ the dinner table, think my followers need 2 hear that funny joke 2 #blameitontwitter
31. How u find me ? #blameitontwitter
32. I’m feeling a very unproductive day coming on #blameitontwitter
33. Tweet before Text – #blameitontwitter

Add your #blameitontwitter Blame it on Twitter

Tumblr - Social Media

Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you have heard of and or used Twitter. Twitter has become known for its ability get short messegaes to your followers quickly. Twitter has also been a huge Gold Mine for marketeers allowing us to monitor all the trends that are happening and what people are thinking while it is happening. But Twitter has also been known to attract a lot of Spammers, so Twitter has made some efforts to stop this and to attack the Spammers unfortunately they havnt done a very good job. So now we have a new contender who is shaking things up and will most likely take over Twitters market-share. The new company is called: Tumblr

Tumblr has solved many of the problems that Twitter wasn’t able to, and unlike Twitter, Tumblr is not known for temporary outages. Tumblr also allows you to customize Everything! Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme’s HTML.

Tumblr is a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users are able to “follow” other users and see their posts together on their dashboard. Users can like or reblog other blogs on the site. The service emphasizes customizability and ease of use.

Tumblr’s emphasis is on customizability and ease of use, with a relatively simple sign-up process. The “like” button, which lets one user tell another that they like his or her content, and the “reblog” button, which easily reposts content from one tumblelog onto another, provide positive feedback that has given Tumblr an 85% retention rate, compared with 40% for Twitter.

Users “follow” other tumblelogs, much like on Twitter, and their updates appear in one stream on the Dashboard. This is the interface where users can like and reblog posts, as well as the buttons to add content to their own tumblelog. Other tumblelogs the user maintains appear on the right, along with statistics like tumblarity.

There are many forms of content that can be added to the user’s own tumblelog: there is the “Text” post, which is a simple self-explanatory form of post, which may be composed using a Text Editor, or HTML, depending on the user’s preference (A basic knowledge of HTML is helpful when using the site in more advanced ways). As of mid-2009, it has been possible to upload images from your computer into a “Text” post, which was not the case originally; there is the “Photo” post, where the user can upload from their own computer an image (many file formats are applicable), or can embed from another site using the URL of that image. In a left-to-right fashion on the interface, the next category of post is “Quote” where one inserts a body of text into a box, and then submits a source – together these appear on the dashboard in a suitable manner. Next, the “Link” post, where one enters a body of text into one field, and a URL in a separate field (and an optional caption), and the body of text appears on its own as a hyperlink – a convenient way of avoiding the need for HTML anchors. Following this, there is a “Chat” post which automatically inserts the code required to copy conversations from Instant Messaging programs etc. into a similar style. Next, we have the “Audio” post, where one can upload MP3s (up to 10MB in size), or host audio files from other sites. However, the user may only upload one audio file per day. After this, there is the “Video” post, where the user can embed video files from sites such as YouTube and any site that hosts files (e.g. Photobucket), or upload to Tumblr by logging into Vimeo – who are working together with Tumblr to provide this free service.

Tumblr is a site that offers a more expressive blogging service. Instead of the usual, long worded text posts and similar templates, you can structure your blog in any way you want. The main focus is the creativity that allows you to choose how you may want to convey everything, from background to picture alignment. This will allow people to write rapid fire posts and throw it on their Tumblr blogs. As well, people may notice that successful Tumblr blogs are always unique in their own way- whether the site style is retro, or the text has an insane font and colour.

Created in 2006 in New York, Tumblr has been getting a steady flow of increasing users every day since August 2008, as well as more visitors. Although slightly less than half of users are American, Tumblr is used throughout the entire world. However, compared to other blog sites, Tumblr has a slightly slower growth rate.

The main difference with Tumblr is that freedom of blog styling is enormous. You can set-up the blog in any way you see fit, and customize to your preference. Also, the ease of changing is very simple, and only takes a few clicks of the mouse. Speed, however, is the main point of difference. Some blogs can take you a while to pst, but on Tumblr it’s extremely more convenient and fast to do it, due to the fact that most blogs don’t even post that much text, it’s whatever they feel like posting.

Tumblr has a very simple Web 2.0 feel and look, feeling black and white at times though. The graphics are very simplistic in nature, but to the point. The navigation is smooth, unobtrusive, and clean, as well as the general interface of everything on the site.

It is very friendly to register on Tumblr. The only thing you are forced to do is input your e-mail address, password, and name of the Tumblr blog you require. With no verification code or e-mail check, it’s very smooth and fast- almost basic even. Registration can be considered one of the fastest out of all blog sites, so be sure to note that.

Tumblr is completely free as of August 2008. There are absolutely no ads, (which are subject to change) which are quite pleasing. However, in the future Tumblr may decide to include priced advanced options to help with costs, but they pledge to keep mostly everything free.

This site is extremely recommended for those who don’t have time to start a proper blog, or have no idea what they’re doing and want to give it a shot. The key point is that it takes less time to devote a blog on Tumblr than another blog service. Newcomers and experts alike at blogging will be pleased to try Tumblr and its reliable services.

• Ability to create your own unique blog
• Simplistic menu when adding new items to your blog
• Advanced menu to customize blog, own domain name, etc.
• Option to create a group where you can share control
• Choose to follow interesting blogs on Tumblr to be notified of updates

http://www.tumblr.com/

http://jamesstjohn.tumblr.com

The Doppelganger Week on Facebook is an excuse to post your Celebrity Look-a-like photo as your profile pic. I’m just wondering when the celebrities are going to join in and post their look-a-like pics, should be interesting. What I like about Doppelganger week is that it showcases exactly what social media does best. Sometimes the least likely phenomenons happen in real-life and social media acts the same way. Nobody knows who started Doppelganger week or what caused it to become so popular. What is the next BIG social idea going to be?

Trendrr is a New York-based digital and social media business intelligence platform.

Using real-time and over-time dashboard views, Trendrr allows users to identify volume, sentiment, location, demographics and influencers around their product and brand, as well as velocity around the media and links being shared on the social web. Users can look at competitive data and track against sales and marketing campaigns with historical views. The service’s data tracking capabilities include blogs, microblogs, news aggregators, social networks, commerce, and video sites. A “virtual scratch pad” enables users to compare data sets and create mashups. Graphs can be shared with links or embed codes, or exported in xml, json, or excel. Trendrr allows users to make real-time actions based on quantitative and qualitative trends by understanding social media’s impact on sales, savings and brand equity–three sources through which Trendrr enables users to track ROI.

Tracking Social Marketing Trends

Trendrr allows you to track the popularity and awareness of trends across a variety of inputs, ranging from social networks, to blog buzz and video views downloads, all in real time. You can even compare trends to one another, monitoring and evaluating this comparison across a variety of sources.

Features

	Executive Reporting Create reports of all your projects to understand the impact of campaigns and programs. Allow yourself to get faster visibility to the marketplace.		Alerts Receive immediate emails when something you are tracking goes viral. You can also implement monitoring practices across 50 key online services.
	Track More Data Increase your allotment of searches and data sources. Arrange for company-wide Trendrr access!		API Level Integration Trendrr’s custom API allows for customization of your data and graphs. We can structure and automate your own corporate data – all in one place! Or incorporate Trendrr data into your existing dashboard if preferred. API + bespoke work available
	Track Competitors Trendrr Pro gives you access to competitor data allowing you to best understand your impact in the marketplace. Don’t fall behind – use this data to set goals and measure improvements!

From the Trendrr website they list several frequently asked questions:
How do I get started?

First-time user? After setting up a new account, get started by clicking on the green “Start Tracking” icon to browse the array of different data sources to choose from. After choosing a data source, enter what you would like to track and that’s it – it’s that easy!

For example, if you choose “Twitter Search” as your data source and enter “Michael Jackson” into the search query, you will begin tracking the number of statuses containing a Michael Jackson on an hourly basis.
Who should use Trendrr?

Anyone – bands, brands, agencies, students, bloggers, web services, robots! Trendrr’s user-demographic is limitless – ranging from the large marketing agency who wants to gauge the market share of a particular company to the casual user who may just want to monitor the popularity surrounding his or her favorite up and coming artist, new TV show, or movie.
I am not a business or a marketing agency – What can I use Trendrr for?

Anything! Trendrr is what you make it.

Use Trendrr to monitor the popularity surrounding your favorite up and coming artist, new TV show, or movie that just went into development.

Compare the popularity of anything, across any input, and draw your own conclusions. See what people are saying and project what you think the effects of this data will be.

Use this site as fuel to blog about interesting data or trends you’ve identified and share and raise awareness regarding things you think are on the rise. Use Trendrr to support your claims with graphs and data.

You can even Trendrr yourself (yes, I’m using Trendrr as a verb here!) and track just what and how much is being said about you online.
I don’t want to track new trends. What else can I do on Trendrr?

Trendrr is not only a place to track new trends. You can also:

• Draw causal relationships between movement across a variety of data and then share that with friends.
• Combine other user’s data with your own to further enhance your Trendrr experience.
• Explore what other users are tracking and see how the data they’re interested in compares to what you’re interested in.
• Import your own data using Trendrr’s API to compare virtually anything (see developer.trendrr.com for more details).

How do I discover new trends?

Trendrr not only allows you to track new trends, you also allows you to browse the data that other users are tracking. To browse other data and see other users’ graphs, simply choose a category from the top menu bar or search for a specific trend with the search bar in the top right of your screen.
Helpful Hint:

Try narrowing your search query to focus your results. For example, if you would like to track the number of blog posts with the exact phrase ‘Spider Man’ you should use quotation marks around it: “Spider Man”. Additionally, if you would like to track blog posts that are potentially negative in buzz, you would perhaps want to enter “Spider Man” +”horrible movie”. Experiment and you will track exactly what you want.
Can I compare results from different data inputs in one graph?

Yes – with Scratch Pad! If you want to compare results from several different data sources, simply click the “+Scratch Pad” icon to the right of the graph you wish to include and the data will appear on the top left of the screen. Compare as much data as you wish! To save this graph, simply click “Save” from the drop-down menu of the “Scratch Pad” and the new graph will appear in “Mashups” on your home screen.
What are “Reports” and how do I create them?

For TrendrrPro users, “Reports” is a place where you can organize your data and view it in a way that is conducive to interpreting it and coming to a conclusion about what the trends mean to you. “Reports” allows you to sort data that is relevant to one another in order to more readily compare data across data inputs. For example, if you are trying to track the popularity of your favorite band, U2, you may want to create a “Report” that includes all of your data that deal with U2 (i.e statuses containing U2 on Twitter, number of views on Youtube for their new hit single, etc). By having all of your similar data in one easy to read page, you can more easily track the changes across data inputs!

To create a new Report, click on the “Reports” dropdown menu from the Trendrr home screen and click “Create New Report.” Create an appropriate title and select whether you would like the report to be private (so that only you can view it) or public (so that any user can see your report). To add data to your report from “Graphs”, simply click the “+Report” icon next to the graph you would like to add and choose the preferred report to add it to.

Don’t have access to Trendrr Reports? Upgrade to TrendrrPro today!
Can I customize my reports?

Yes! Clicking on “Edit This Report” when viewing the report will bring you to the report customization window. Here you can change the date range, type of report, title of report as well as change what is displayed in each column of the report (i.e %Change, standard deviation, average, etc.) You can even export your report to PDF format by clicking “Export: PDF” while viewing the report.
What are “Projects” and how do I create one?

Trendrr Premium and Elite customers have the opportunity to organize their data into project specific views – providing for unique visibility and streamlined analysis on a project-by-project basis. From the grey toolbar, simply select the grey arrows beside “Project” for the ability to add new project views or manage existing projects. Selecting “Projects” will take you directly to your project specific views and analysis.
What are “Alerts” and how do I create one?

For TrendrrPro users, “Alerts” is a useful tool to more easily track data. “Alerts” notifies you by e-mail whenever data reaches a desired level.

To set up an Alert, simply click the “+Alert” icon next to the graph you would like alerts for. Choose the desired value and you will then be e-mailed whenever that value is reached.

Don’t have access to Trendrr Alerts? Upgrade to TrendrrPro today!
What are “Tags” and why are they useful?

Tags are meant to be a helpful tool to organize the data that you track. They are not only for your personal organization, but also allow other users to discover your data and trends if you have set the graph to “public” (only you are able to see your own private graphs while any user can see your public graphs. So, even if you, yourself, don’t care about organization, it is always a good idea to tag your data with a few useful keywords to help in the discovery of new trends by other users!
How do I add my own data source or data set?

Please refer to developer.trendrr.com for all developer information.
I try to enter my search term into one of the Video data sources and it doesn’t seem to be working. What am I doing wrong?

Some data sources require a specific URL of a website in order to properly track. Each data source is different – just make sure you check what the query is asking for above the search field.

Explore Trendrr and discover all of its great capabilities!
Have any feedback for Trendrr?

Feel free to let us know of any bugs you come across while on the site as well as any suggestions you may have. Updates are being made every day and your input is critical in helping us make Trendrr the best it can be.

Pope Benedict XVI has demanded in a recent message that the Priests start using Social Media outlets including Blogs. As the Catholics 265th Pope, Pope Benedict XVI has been a very surprising and extremely supportive advocate of Social Media and Social Marketing. After the support and momentium gained by social media for the now President Barack Obama it appears as if many of the world leaders has chosen to start using the internet to help them gain and retain followers.

It looks like even though Pope Benedict XVI is a fan of Social Marketing and Blogs, he does not have a Twitter account yet. Last year, he launched a YouTube channel, and six months ago, he released Facebook and iPhone apps to spread the Church’s message. It looks like that he hopes Catholic priests will follow his digital example. It is going to be very interesting to watch the evolution of the Catholic Church’s Social Strategy.

Here is a very small excerpt from the Popes message:

“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich “menu of options” might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web, or to see it only as a space to be filled. Yet priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel, exercising their proper role as leaders of communities which increasingly express themselves with the different “voices” provided by the digital marketplace. Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.”

Their are many different ways to manage your Twitter account & when you have multiple accounts to manage you might want to check into Twinterface. TwinterFace enables you to add sub-users to your company’s twitter account. This way you can manage your brand perfectly! In an easy interface you can manage multiple twitter accounts and switch between them. All the information about this can be found at their blog at http://blog.twinterface.com They have the beta version open to the public. Not all elements are finished but enjoy!

for serious marketeers is without a doubt HootSuite.

HootSuite added new features, and we think you’ll like them. Some features were the result of your requests. Others were added because they’re just darn cool.

Twitter Lists

Many of you have been asking HootSuite to implement Twitter lists, and we’ve been listening. Not only can you import the lists you’ve already created, you can create your own lists using HootSuite. These lists can be be saved as a column. You can further modify your lists (and who’s on them) using your column preferences.

Facebook and LinkedIn

We’ve decided to push HootSuite functionality beyond Twitter. You can now integrate your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. Whereas before you could update Facebook and LinkedIn through Ping.fm functionality, things are different now. Facebook and LinkedIn accounts are treated similarly to Twitter accounts: you can create columns from these social networks, read your friends’ status updates, and update multiple Facebook accounts. Facebook integration offers in-line commenting.

Scheduled Facebook and Linkedin Status Updates

If you are a regular HootSuite user, you’ve probably tried scheduling your tweets. We’ve extended this capability further: HootSuite users can now schedule their status updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Ping.fm. The ability to schedule Ping.fm updates is particularly noteworthy since through it you can update most popular social networks (such as MySpace, LiveJournal, etc.) Scheduling status updates now has near universal applicability.

After months of hard work, HootSuite for iPhone is available in the iTunes store starting today.

HootSuite for iPhone is the only Twitter app that lets you view statistics. It’s also the only one that lets you schedule your tweets in advance. With HootSuite for iPhone, you can send tweets to multiple accounts simultaneously, from the palm of your hand. But that’s not all.

Use HootSuite for iPhone to import your Twitter lists. Upload and share photos or files over Twitter using ow.ly and read explanations for why topics trend on Twitter.

All this goodness and more is housed inside the most robust, intuitive user interface of any iPhone Twitter client.

Key features of HootSuite for iPhone include:

• Customizable user interface with sortable tabs and columns
• Easy navigation thanks to column swiping
• Schedule tweets
• Update multiple accounts at once
• Save searches
• Track statistics
• Share photos
• Import lists
• Explore trending topics

To find out more information, visit the HootSuite Blog »