Top Twitter Trends This Week

If you think Twitter trends are all about tween pop sensations and low brow hashtagery, you’re — well, you’re mostly right. But not this week.

Twitter once again showed its international breadth and taste for breaking news with the top topic of conversation being the release of Myanmar dissident Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest after what many reports claim has been nearly 15 of the last 20 years. Suu Kyi has opposed her country’s ruling military junta, and her steadfastness has earned her a Nobel Peace Prize, among other recognitions from the international community. Her release was discussed and celebrated around the world, earning the number one spot on the trends chart this week.

Other hot topics included the announcement of a royal wedding in the UK, and some contentious bouts in the world of boxing, a sport that rarely hits the trending charts on Twitter, but came in at number three this week.

Curious about the rest of the week’s top Twitter topics? Check out the full list below, aggregated by our friends over at What The Trend. Because this is a topical list, hashtag memes and games have been omitted from the chart.

You can check past Twitter trends in our Top Twitter Topics section as well as read more about this past week’s trends on What The Trend.

---

Top Twitter Trends This Week: 11/13 – 11/19

---

Rank	Topic	Top Index This Week	Intensity	Description
#1	Aung San Suu Kyi	1	3	Military authorities in Myanmar have signed an order authorizing the release of pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, according to news reports.
#2	Royal Wedding	1	3	Prince William, the second in line to the throne of the British Royal Family, announced his engagement to Kate Middleton. The wedding will be held in Spring or Summer of 2011.
#3	Boxing	1	2	Manny Pacquiao earns his 8th title via a unanimous decision after his fight against Antonio Margarito. After boxer Manny Pacquiao’s decisive victory, the sports talk turns to the only likely fighter left for him to face, the undefeated Floyd Mayweather.
#4	Eid ul-Adha	1	2	Eid Mubarak is a traditional Muslim greeting reserved for use on the festivals of Eid ul-Adha and Eid ul-Fitr. The phrase translates into English as "blessed festival," and can be paraphrased as "may you enjoy a blessed festival." Eid ul-Adha is being observed this year from November 17 to November 20.
#5	NFL	1	2	In football, top trends centered around Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick facing Washinton Redskins quarterback (and ex-Eagles QB) Donovan McNabb. The Eagles went on to win over the Redskins, 59-28.
#6	Harry Potter	1	1	Part one of the seventh film in the series, Harry Potter And the Deathly Hallows, debuted in theaters on November 19.
#7	Soccer/Football	1	1	Officials announced the first-round groups of the 2011 Copa América South American football championship. It will be held in Argentina this time. Other top mentions were Marcelo Bielsa and Manuel Preciado, coach of Real Sporting de Gijón.
#8	Tony Parker-Eva Longoria	2	1	Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs and his wife Eva Longoria (best known for her role on Desperate Housewives) have filed for divorce.
#9	NBA	1	1	Greg Oden of the Portland Trailblazers is, again, out for the season with a knee injury, and the Los Angeles Lakers were defeated by the Denver Nuggets.
#10	Ryan Reynolds	4	1	People Magazine has selected Ryan Reynolds as the Sexiest Man Alive.

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

Google Pours Another 3.2 Million Into Start Up

SEATTLE — Google Inc.'s venture capital arm, Google Ventures, invested $3.2 million in a genetics startup run by Google CEO Sergey Brin's wife in November, bringing the Web search leader's total investments in 23andMe Inc. to $10.2 million.

In a Securities and Exchange filing, Google said it participated in a Series C preferred financing round and continues to hold a minority stake in 23andMe. In a separate SEC filing, 23andMe reported it raised a total of $22.2 million in the round.

Google said its audit committee approved the investment. A new lead investor determined the valuation of the Series C investment, and not Google, according to the Web search company. It did not name the new lead investor.

Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andMe, is married to Brin, who personally invested about $3.4 million in the financing.

The startup offers genetic testing for people interested in what diseases they might be genetically predisposed to, or for people who want to learn more about their ancestry. The tests cost between $400 and $500.

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

Facebook Says...Email is Dead.

Email is too slow and formal and will eventually follow the letter into extinction, says Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The youthful billionaire made the claims as he launched the social networking site's new messaging service, which integrates all web and text-based communications and works instantaneously.

The service, perceived as a direct rival to Google's Gmail, marks a new front in the ongoing and increasingly bitter battle between Facebook and Google to gain the loyalty of users.

Domination: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg talks about the new messaging service rumoured to be a 'Gmail-killer'

Zuckerberg revealed that, just as was rumoured, the 500million people signed up to Facebook will have access to a ‘Facebook.com’ email address.

Entire conversation histories going back years will also be saved into users’ accounts and Spam will be completely filtered out, he claimed.

'We don’t think that a modern messaging system is going to be email,'
Zuckerberg said at a press conference in San Francisco.

'We want people to be able to communicate in whatever way they choose: email, text or Facebook message.'

At the moment Facebook users are able to contact one another by either posting on each other's wall or by Facebook's own internal messaging service.

Battling Google: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, pictured earlier this year, has launched a new messaging service which could rival Google's Gmail

Facebook’s new email system is modelled on instant messaging and on-line chat and will allow people to simplify their communications regardless of how they choose to do it.

Texts, email or instant messages will all come into one ‘feed’ and users can respond in any way they want.

One person could text a friend, for example, who will see the message come up on their Facebook page instantly and respond via an instant message or email.

Zuckerberg said that he was changing Facebook because young people found email was too much of a ‘cognitive load’.

He said of the new programme: ‘It’s not email. It handles email... along with all the different ways you want to communicate.

'It’s true people are going to be able to have Facebook.com email addresses but this is not email. Email is one way people are going to use this system, but we don’t even think it’s going to be primary way that people use this system.

‘The goal of this product is to make it that we can seamlessly integrate across all of these different products very easily.’

He added that he did not think there would be an overnight e-mail exodus but that young people have ‘suddenly shifted towards real-time communications’ and he had to respond.

Commenting on the launch on Monday, Eden Zoller, principal analyst at Ovum, said: 'An email service from Facebook makes a lot of sense. 

'It has a huge base of 500 million users that already love to communicate and share, and Facebook is giving them richer ways to do this through virtual gifts, games, location and even voice thanks to the recent integration deal with Skype.

'Adding email to the mix is a logical step and Facebook could tap into user data to provide an attractive, highly personalised service. You would also expect it to push mobile features given its big move in this direction. '

The other major change to Facebook is the introduction of the conversation history tool - rather than multiple emails on different email accounts or old text messages scattered over a number of phones, users will instead have a single thread of their conversations between another person.

Facebook’s director of engineering Andrew Bosworth said that over the course of time, users could look back on their relationships with friends going back years in a modern-day version of keeping letters in a box.

The third feature will be the ‘Social Inbox’ which will split the user’s email inbox up into three categories: Friends, general email and junk.

Only emails from the people you request will come through your friends inbox leaving you to dip into the other email whenever you wanted.

The move will certainly alarm Facebook's nearest rivals such as Yahoo and Google.

In recent months the relationship between Facebook and Google has become increasingly fraught amid the poaching of staff and efforts to throw up barricades to prevent users from easily shifting information, such as email contact lists, between the two platforms.

The changes to Facebook have been under development for more than a year and will be rolled out over the forthcoming months on an invite-only basis before going worldwide.

Last week, Google began blocking a Facebook feature that allows users to automatically import Gmail contact data into the social networking service.

Google accused Facebook of siphoning up Google data without allowing for the automatic import and export of Facebook users' information.

They are also increasingly vying for engineering talent in Silicon Valley. This week, Google internally announced plans to boost salaries by 10 per cent, according to media reports, in a move viewed as an effort to staunch an exodus of engineers and managers to Facebook.

Google has banned Facebook from importing its users' e-mail contacts, a move it says it made because Facebook refused to allow the export of contact and friend data from within user profiles.

A new style of messaging: Mark Zuckerberg unveils Facebook's newest feature in San Francisco

The expected announcement by Facebook comes as former internet big-hitter AOL is opening the doors to its new web-based e-mail program, code-named Project Phoenix, for a limited number of users. Starting next year, anyone will be able to sign up for access to a beta test site.

The Project Phoenix inbox page was designed to make it easier to fire off a quick email, text or instant message with just a few clicks on a ‘quick bar’ at the top of the page.

People can also send short replies directly from the inbox page, without having to click on a message first. The new design displays thumbnails of recent photo attachments at a glance, and lets people toggle between several open e-mails at a time.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1329979/Facebooks-Mark-Zuckerberg-claims-email-dead-new-messaging-service-launch.html#ixzz15NyEGrz3


http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

Facebook Passes Ebay in Value

 – Facebook’s estimated market value has shot past eBay’s, making it the third most valuable web company. Shares of the privately held company are now trading at more than $16 on SecondMarket, sources tell Bloomberg, which would make the overall company worth $41 billion—behind only Amazon ($74.4 billion) and the big kid on the block, Google ($192.2 billion).

SecondMarket doesn’t publicly release trading data, but Bloomberg’s source said Facebook’s price has tripled over the past year. Another private exchange estimates Facebook’s value at $40.9 billion, and says it’s shot up nearly 50% in the past month alone. Those valuations might change drastically on the open market, however. “It could be a bargain at $41 billion,” says one IPO consultant. Then again, Facebook doesn’t disclose financial information, and a spokesman cautioned that all external value estimates are “fundamentally speculative.”

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

Facebook To Launch Email On Monday

The secret product Facebook will announce on Monday is, in fact, its new email system, 
says TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid.

Given that Facebook has already replaced email for many younger Internet users--and become the "start-page" and communications hub for many of the rest--it makes great sense for Facebook to offer a full-fledged email product.

If Facebook offers a good email platform (easier said than done), the product could gradually have a devastating impact on Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, and other email systems.

In so doing, it could also hammer their financial performance. Yahoo and AOL, especially, generate an enormous number of page views (and, thereby, ad impressions) from their email users. As these users migrate to other platforms, they take their impressions with them. 

The mass exodus from AOL Mail has played a big role in the company's financial collapse in recent years, and Yahoo Mail has begun to see the same sort of erosion.  Thus far, the defectors have generally gone to Google.  If Facebook's email client is strong, many of them will now likely go to Facebook.

Knowing Facebook, it will likely put a twist on the normal email experience, and the way it integrates the main Facebook service will be critical to the product's success.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-email-2010-11#ixzz155m03oXs



http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

All I Want For Christmas Is...A Facebook Gift Card?

Recent trends around social media as a platform for gift card sales suggest that Facebook will likely become a huge trafficker of gift cards in the coming years.

In fact, new Facebook applications and early adopter brands will push the trend forward this holiday season. Case in point: Sears and Kmart have become the latest mass merchant retailers to start selling gift cards through their Facebook Pages, just in time for the holiday season.

The two retailers are actually employing eGift Social — a Facebook application readily available to other merchants as well — to power their Facebook gifting program.

Shoppers can visit Sears and Kmart Facebook Pages to purchase themed gift cards for most occasions, holiday-branded ones included, to send to their Facebook friends. The Facebook-purchased gift cards are redeemable in stores or online, and are even posted to the recipient’s Wall (or sent via e-mail).

The two retailers join the ranks of Starbucks and Amazon, two brands also tapping into the friend-to-friend gift card exchange opportunities that Facebook affords.

The online gift card industry is booming and is projected to hit nearly $6 billion by 2014, according to a February report from Javelin Strategy & Research. Realistically, buying and sending gift cards through Facebook is the next logical distribution channel.

As more and more gift card stores find their way inside Facebook, we suspect consumers will respond to the convenience of these digital storefronts and replace the trip to the supermarket’s gift card aisle or the mall with an online visit to Facebook instead.

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

End Of An Era For Search Engine

Today marks the end of Ask.com as a search engine; the once-mighty search giant will lay off the vast majority of its engineers and concede its small piece of the search market to Google and Microsoft.

Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, was once one of the world’s most recognizable search engines. It launched in 1996 and quickly grew in popularity with its focus on natural language queries in addition to keyword search. At its peak, Ask.com took care of 2 million queries per day. Its mascot, Jeeves the butler, was well known by millions of people.

In 1999, the company held an IPO and everything looked peachy (as most things did during the Dot Com Bubble). You probably know the rest of the story though; Ask.com started to bleed money and quickly lost relevance in the face of a more agile competitor: Google. Its market share dwindled and its technology stagnated until it was eventually acquired by Internet conglomerate InterActiveCorp for $1.85 billion in 2005.

Five years later, IAC hasn’t found a way to turn the Ask.com search engine into a contender, despite its best efforts. According to Bloomberg, IAC will cut 130 engineering jobs in New Jersey and China, cease development of its algorithmic search technology, and refocus its efforts on the Q&A service it launched this summer.

What is the fate of Ask.com’s search engine, though? Ask.com President Doug Leeds says that it will deliver search results from one of its competitors, not unlike the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal signed last year. IAC already has an existing deal with Google, but Microsoft has been agressive with finding ways to expand Bing’smarket share.

---

From Jeeves to Google

---

The IAC-owned website is still one of the web’s top destinations and its search revenue has grown in the last year (up 20% to $205 million), but that’s mostly due to its toolbar business. In the heavily competitive market of search, Ask.com didn’t stand a chance against competitors that are constantly launching new features.

Ask.com and Ask Jeeves represent the spirit of the Web 1.0 era; with a good idea and a smart team, you could launch your idea and spread it across the world (and raise excessive amounts of funding in the process). Despite its decline since the tech bubble burst, it has fared much better than many of its other compadres (think Pets.com). It’s a testament to the fact that millions of people still rely on Ask.com as their portal to the rest of the web.

While Google’s approach to search (speed and simplicity) won out, today still marks the end of Ask.com the search engine. It’s truly Google and Microsoft’s market now.

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

How To Protect Yourself From Common Freelancing Risks

Not being paid on time clearly has an adverse effect on everybody but, unlike permanent employees, freelancers are usually much more at risk of unpaid or delayed invoices. The best way to avoid that happening to you is making sure you identify risky clients and taking measures to protect yourself in your dealings with them. How to protect yourself when dealing with risk clients will depend on what form those risks will take.

Scope creep
It starts with a simple enough project. Then there's a request for something else, small, to be added. Then another one. Then another one. By the time you notice that you should have said no the project is orders of magnitude more complex than what you are being paid to do and working overtime to meet the deadlines. While being flexible is a benefit of freelancers over big companies, being too flexible can cause clients not to take you seriously or take for granted that you will do any extra they ask for. The only way of avoiding this is by clearly documenting what is the initial scope of the project, and what is the procedure for any change. Every time there's a new request, document it explaining how it will affect the scheduling and budget of the project, and make sure the client understands that. If you still want to go ahead with the change out of good will, make sure the client knows it's you doing him a favour.

Missing information or assets from the client
Sometimes clients need to provide the freelancer with assets or information needed for the completion of the project. And sometimes they forget to hand in those deliverables on time or do it at the last possible minute without noticing how much it affects the deadlines and the freelancer's calendar. This causes stress and the typical last minute rush to have everything done on time, or extends the life of the project delaying payments and conflicting with other events on the freelancer calendar. 

To avoid this, is necessary to educate the client on the economic costs and risks of not providing the freelancer with everything he or she needs to do her job. Make sure to detail, in writing, what is expected from the client and when are the deadlines, and add a clause to the contract that explains what will happen if the project is delayed because of the client. The freelancer may need to move on to other projects and potentially any money owed needs to be paid after a certain time has elapsed. Sometimes penalty fees need to be paid for the project to be restarted. It all depends

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

Creative Ways To Make Money Online...If You're Creative..

The online world can be a gold mine of income opportunities for people with creative talents. It has never been easier to make money online doing things you love. Whether this is music, taking photographs, writing, crafts, or other creative activities you can make money online doing it.

Writing

As a writer you can make great income online if you are willing to work at it. Sites will pay you for your articles and other short written pieces. You can freelance if you have the skills and make even higher levels of income. You could blog about topics and use that blog to sell advertising such as Google Adsense. You might purchase your own website to write articles on, sell advertising, or affiliate products. You might land a job writing for any number of online websites and businesses who are eager for your writing talents.

Photography

Not only can you display your photographs online, you can sell them to photography content sites that will pay you for your efforts. You can turn a basic hobby into a full-time a career if you work at it and can create decent photographs people want to buy.

Music

Being a musician can bring you money online too. You might start a website and sell online lessons for those interested in learning an instrument. You could make instructional videos and sell them on sites such as EBay. You can use YouTube and make videos that earn income. 

Painting And Other Art

If you are a painter or other artist you could create a website to draw people to your work and sell those works for income. You could use your website to teach others how to draw and sell lesson packages to them.

Home Crafts

Using sites such as EBay you could sell your home made crafts. People like purchasing things that are home made and of quality. Turn your love of crafts and other home made items into a full-time business online. You could setup a website and sell your items that way too.

Other Jobs

You might be great at designing websites. You could visit some of the sites that hire website designers and offer your talents to them. Game developers, programmers, and other creative people can find jobs online too. 

Summary

If you are creative you can find work online. You might be a writer, photographer, painter, musician, or a person who likes making crafts.  Whatever your creative talents are you can find ways to make money with your talents online.  All it takes is a willingness to work hard and with time, you will see results.

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

First Offline File Sharing Comes To New York

In New York, a anonymous and superior off-line network for
transmitting data is launched for free.

As you can see in the photograph, the network is walled-up in the
wall that connects to the USB drive that can be accessable
to everyone.

While thereare just a total of five pieces for the whole city,
but the originator has promised to increase the number of
flash drives and issue detailed instructions soon, which
will describe the process of creating such access point.
Judging by the enthusiastic reviews of people on twitter,
it will be seen in other cities and countries in upcoming time.

What do you think? What are the possibilities? 

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business