You can now see what’s being said inside your city.

Twitter has over 55 million status updates per day. That is a ton of data that is being published online what’s happening right now. With more and more users using mobile devices to post status updates, and with more users opting in to include their location with their Tweets – more and more of the 55 million updates are being tagged with a location. This is going to spawn interesting tools for internet users.

One of these tools was recently launched in the form of Sency for Cities (http://sency.com/cities.php). This tool, allows anyone to see what’s being said right now by people inside of Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, London, New York City, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, & Washington DC. So, when there is a topic that you want to get the publics thoughts on – you can now do that by performing a search at one of these city centric engines. Sency for Cities also shows you what’s hot right now in each city via 10 current trends listed under the search box. Lastly, this initiative will show you where people are at right now based on recent status updates in a city that provide an actual location.

All of this data can you help you learn more about what is going on right now inside of a city. It is also interesting to compare the current sentiment in your city with what the mood is in a rival city. Or, when a new movie comes out – you may be curious what all people are saying about it – but Sency for Cities can also show you what people in your city – are saying about it right now.

As time goes on – this data will get even more rich. You will eventually be able to see what’s being said at actual locations as opposed to just inside a specific city. And as the data becomes more targeted and helpful – more uses will come out of real time location search. But the great thing about it is that it’s different for everyone, so a way you utilize and learn from it may be extremely different from how the next person uses it.

The plan is for more cities to be added to Sency for Cities – so down the line – more people can see what’s going on inside of their respective city.

Post written by Evan Britton, founder of Sency

Post from: Social Media Vision

Sency for Cities

CRUSH – Your one and only source for juicy social media news in four minutes or less. Don’t forget to join us on Facebook and Twitter, and get your daily crush at www.commonsensenms.com

As promised, we’ve got the latest on the debate heating up over Facebook privacy. U.S. Senator Charles Schumer is adding fuel to the fire, asking the FCC to provide privacy guidelines for social networks. Schumer believes “The default policy should be one of privacy, and users should be in control of how they choose to share their information, not the other way around.” This “opt-out” to “opt-in” transition sounds smart to us, but check out the Senator’s Facebook page to find out what everyone else is saying and to put in your own two cents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFWAmMXmIiw

Taking a more active approach, a group in Germany expressed their concern over “privacy invasions” by sabotaging a Google “Street View” car. The Google employee returned to find the tires let down and the camera cables slashed. However, the protestors were kind enough to leave behind the informative note, “Please do not drive away, you have a puncture”.

And perhaps these privacy issues are the source of anxiety and worry bringing an influx of users to the site “Blah Therapy”. This new website pairs random strangers together as “venters” and “listeners”, however, when we tried to unload our feelings the site was down due to an overload of users.

But our epic privacy FAIL comes courtesy of Blippy, a social media site that lets users share with friends what they purchase. Several credit card transactions were visible via a simple Google search, exposing detailed information including amount spent, specific location, and full credit card number. While we hate to say it, we predicted this case of “TMI” from the beginning.

In Twitter news, a new report by Edison Research and Arbitron reveals that while the awareness of Twitter among Americans has increased from 5% to 87% in the past two years, the population is still struggling to find a reason to use it as only 7% of Americans are active users.

However, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has now joined the 140-character brigade in hopes of spreading Bolvarian Revolution. And if Chavez, who had recently declared Twitter “a tool for terror”, can be converted to the dark side, maybe Twitter still has a chance.

In an attempt to aggregate all the “Like’s” around the world, Facebook has created the new website likebutton.me. The site operates as a directory of “likes”, showing what your friends and the rest of the world have deemed most important from popular web sites, such as YouTube, New York Times and Pandora.

And that brings us to our CRUSH OF THE WEEK – we are taking on the serious epidemic sweeping the globe, “Internet Valleygirlification”. With Facebook only allowing a “like option” our freedom of expression is confined into a simplistic, 4-letter, click of affirmation. So that’s why we are hitting the pavement for the CRUSH Road Trip 2010. Don’t worry, we will find out what American’s really have to say and of course share all the juicy with you.

Post from: Social Media Vision

CRUSH: Road Trip 2010

CRUSH – Bringing you the latest in social media news in four minutes or less. And in our own exciting news – we’ve gone HD, making our crushing capabilities that much clearer. Enjoy! Don’t forget to join us on Facebook and Twitter, and get your daily crush at www.commonsensenms.com

Facebook took center stage this week with its annual developers conference, F8. What were the biggest announcements? Although Facebook founder Marc Zuckerberg displayed a dozen new tools and widgets, the most significant announcement to prepare for is the “open graph platform”. Open Graph plans to connect all corners in the web in order to “create a Web that’s smarter, more social, more personalized, and more semantically aware”. As one element of this platform, website owners will have a chance to place a “Like” button on their pages, allowing Facebook to then publish whatever a user likes directly to their Facebook profile.

Of course the privacy police have already stated concern over the new development, and with good reason. When does sharing data on what we read, view, listen to, and interact with on the web become invasive as opposed to interactive? Stay tuned to CRUSH for latest in what is sure to be an upcoming battle over personalization versus privacy.

In honor of the recent celebration of Earth Day, we encourage you to fly on over to the “We Love Birds” community on Ning. Hosted by NRDC and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “We Love Birds” is one of the best uses of Ning we’ve seen yet. View some of natures’ finest yourself with the over 7,000 stunning photos.

While social media sites continue to innovate at a crushing speed, the honorable justices of the US Supreme Court seem to be experiencing technical difficulties. The divide between “the hip justices and hip-replacement judges” was made painfully clear during this week’s court discussion over sexting and privacy rights. Embarrassing highlights from the case:

• Chief Justice Roberts asks what the difference was between email and a pager
• Justice Kennedy wondered what would happen if you were sent a text the same time you were sending one to someone else – “Does it say: ‘Your call is important to us, and we will get back to you?”
• Justice Scalia’s confusion on service providers and concern of whether they can be shared by printing them – “You mean (the text) doesn’t go right to me?”…”Could Quon print these spicy little conversations and send them to his buddies?”

In other online sex news, we would like to commend Apple’s decision to trash nearly 6,000 sexually suggestive iPhone apps. Refreshing to see some leadership within corporate America, and hats off to Steve Jobs for refusing to chose profits over the objectification of women.

And that brings us to our CRUSH OF THE WEEK – Our story this week truly reveals the power of social media, as Mayor of East Haven Connecticut donated a kidney to a Facebook Friend, Carlos Sanchez, after seeing the status update Sanchez posted saying his friends and relatives had all been tested but were not a match. Making the Mayor a hero in our books, and Facebook her loyal sidekick.

Post from: Social Media Vision

CRUSH: The End of Anonymity

CRUSH – Bringing you the latest in social media news in four minutes or less. Become a fan on Facebook and get your daily crush at www.commonsensenms.com

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the massive lines outside the Apple store have been for the much anticipated, release of the iPad. With over 450,000 sold, it appears that having the iPad will be as commonplace as the iPod. But while there are already 3,000 iPad-specific apps available, there is one thing noticeably absent – Adobe Flash. Apple has banned flash from any of its iPhone and iPad apps, instead choosing only programs developed in HTML5.

Another media mogul Apple is taking a bite out of? Google. Apple is challenging Google’s online advertising dominance with the introduction of the iAd platform, which allows advertisers to develop interactive ads within another application. Although Apple CEO Steve Jobs has concluded it won’t be able to compete with Google’s search advertising, he is hoping Apple can become the leader in the mobile advertising sphere.

The war on climate change is heating up as the NRDC Action Fund rolled out its new media campaign to one-by-one get the 68 Senators who are not actively pushing for comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation to get in the game. And Senators, if you think they aren’t serious, just look at the recent activity towards target number one, Scott Brown of Massachusetts…

While the NRDC Action Fund works on the Senate, fifteen-year old Parker Liautaud is showing his commitment to the environment by skiing to the North Pole. His expedition, funded by none other than General Electric, is in hopes of becoming the first person to check in at the North Pole on Foursquare, which will earn him the coveted “Last Degree” badge.

Freedom of speech has been not only a liberty our country holds with pride, but also the source of controversy when it comes to media. Most recently, the forces for a free and open internet have been dealt a blow by the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C., taking away the FCC’s power to move forward in it’s plans to get more Americans connected to a faster and cheaper internet, and potentially allowing Internet service providers to block internet content they don’t like. Luckily this future isn’t set in stone, and a majority vote of FCC commissioners could give the power needed to both protect consumers and close America’s digital divide. Go to savetheinternet.com to lend your support to this important cause.

The latest news from Twitter is bringing applause from the business community, as the site’s plans for a huge redesign shows a greater emphasis on data. Hopefully this will allow better insight into solving the riddle that has plagued many of us, Tweet R-O-I.

And the quest to solve new media riddles brings us to the CRUSH of the Week, where we highlight a number of individuals who are moving up in the world after making the leap from old to new media. Proving once again that the future where new media rules the day, well, is now.

Post from: Social Media Vision

CRUSH: The Great New Media Migration

So the Facebook f8 conference is a hot topic so I figured I should give some resources and some of the Facebook F8 Announcements.

If you don’t know what f8 here is their definition:

“8 is a Facebook conference where developers and entrepreneurs collaborate on the future of personalized and social technologies.

At f8, members of the Facebook team and the developer community will explore a variety of topics including new tools and techniques, business growth strategies and open technologies. We hope you’ll join us.”

Here are some of the new plugins and api updates and more:

• Like button plugin
• Activity stream plugin
• Recommendations plugin
• Facebook Login plugin (they plan on killing off Facebook Connect)
• Social Bar plugin
• Open Graph Protocol

You can watch the Keynote replay and other videos here – http://apps.facebook.com/feightlive/

Here is the code you can use to add the Like button to your website/blog:

<iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/widgets/like.php?href=http://example.com”
scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″
style=”border:none; width:450px; height:80px”></iframe>

Here is what it looks like:

Here are some news updates and blog posts on what is going on:

Why Doesn’t Facebook Look Like This?

As you may be aware, tomorrow, Facebook kicks off its big f8 developer conference in San Francisco. We’ll be there to cover what’s going on, but it looks like a lot of the information is already out there — Inside Facebook, All Facebook, … Obviously, I’m interested in any location announcements the company may make tomorrow — but it’s not clear if Facebook will actually announce anything yet as their plans have been fluid, and possibly still aren’t solidified. …

Hacking The Graph: Live From Facebook’s f8 Conference – Story …

Story analysis for facebook graph . Quickly understand and learn about facebook graph from your favorite sources.

Facebook F8: One graph to rule them all | Technology startup news …

Facebook F8: One graph to rule them all The social network’s big announcement at its F8 developer conference is what CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls the Open.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Facebook F8 Announcements

I had to share this funny video called “THE NEW DORK – Entrepreneur State of Mind (Jay-Z ft Alicia Keys Spoof) for grasshopper.com with all the readers of Social Media Vision. This is for all us Social Media Geeks out there!!!

Post from: Social Media Vision

THE NEW DORK – Entrepreneur State of Mind – Funny Video

CRUSH is a fast and fun weekly round-up of social media news – Join us on Facebook to keep up with all the latest.

What was this week’s theme among your favorite social networking sites? Change. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are all rolling out a handful of new features. Including Twitter’s addition of “most popular tweets” to its search capability, a new interactive layout for YouTube, and the introduction of language alterations and community pages from Facebook.

Facebook was especially busy, as it also acquired “Divvyshot”, a program that will allow users to tag photos by event. You can expect to see this application in the upcoming months. Music artist John Forte has already gotten a head start on how this might work, pausing mid-set during his latest tour stop in Boston to snap a photo for his morning Twitter feed.

More politicians are beginning to find audiences via social media. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is reaching out to his constituents on Facebook. He follows New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, who did a live stream chat courtesy of the Live Free of Die Alliance a few months ago.

But beware, the power of social media is a double-edged sword. Just ask the RNC, as the release of controversial financial records and activities have been blasted to the public by an army of bloggers, as well as a video mashup of RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s speeches to Fat Joe’s music video “Make It Rain”.

On a lighter note, April Fool’s Day did not go by unnoticed. Here’s a list of Mashable’s favorite pranks from this year.

And of course, we couldn’t resist pulling a prank of our own, which brings us to our CRUSH of the Week. Haven’t heard of a Rick Roll? Let us introduce you…

Post from: Social Media Vision

CRUSH: Rick and Roll

So the iPad is officially out and with over 300,000 sold in the first day I believe the the buzz around this supposed amazing gadget is here to stay. I am sure you are sick and tired of reading about The iPad, but I wanted to give a couple of great resources and articles if you are interested in buying or just want an iPad Review!

I personally don’t have one and would never buy the 1st generation iPad just for the fact that I belive that the market always makes the next generation better by giving reviews and telling Apple what does and doesn’t work. So personally I am waiting for the 2nd or 3rd generation iPad!

From a lot of the reviews I find that the biggest problem is the durability of the iPad since it the surface space is much bigger than the iPhone. Some things people love happen to be the battery life which was one of my biggest concerns.

Check out this recent Business Insider article called “10 Things We Love and Hate About the iPad”

Here are some of the items they talked about in the above article:

• The iPad really is a gorgeous device and using it is a true pleasure.
• The amount of media already available for the iPad is impressive.
• But the iBookstore is still a ghost town compared to Amazon’s Kindle store.
• The missing Facebook app left us frustrated.
• It’s going to be a great companion for watching TV.
• But, yes, typing is a pain in the butt. And the screen is full of fingerprints.

PCWorlds iPad stress test really put a damper in my desire to buy the iPad. Watch there Apple iPad Stress Test

I have been following my friend Paul Colligan’s PaulsiPad.com to find out what he thinks about the new iPad. He will be doing 30 days of blogging and reviewing the iPad!

Here are some other great articles on the iPad Review:

iPad Review · TechBlogger

iPad Review. This weekend saw the delivery of iPads into hundreds of thousands of filthy hands. I managed to get my hands on a 32GB unit and put it through its paces for a battery charge and a half, and wanted to …

GeekBrief.TV » Blog Archive » Brief 734 | iPad Review

Brief 734 | iPad Review. 44. Shownotes: iPads went on sale early this morning, April 3rd. A lot of you pre-ordered an iPad to have it delivered to you while sit in your pajamas and have some pancakes. I made that mistake with Snow …

Apple iPad review — Engadget

The Apple iPad. The name is a killing word — more than a product — it’s a statement, an idea, and potentially a prime mover.

Post from: Social Media Vision

The iPad Review

This video is courtesy of Shopper Approved a Consumer Ratings Software company.

Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior. (from good ole Wikipedia on Social Proof)

So we all know the importance of Social Proof and gaining trust with our visitors, but what are we doing about it? Most of us, NOTHING! Which is pretty crazy in my opinion. Social Media has made it easier than ever for consumers to instantly share information about a product or service. This doesn’t however help a website owner share rating, review and feedback with it’s visitors.

If you watch the video above you find that:

“63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews.”

(Major consumer electronics retailer/iPerceptions study, January 2008)

and

“82% considered user-generated reviews ‘extremely valuable or valuable’.”

(North American Technographics Retail Online Survey Q3, 2008)

I could give hundreds of other similar stats on the importance of Social Proof, but all the stats in the world won’t change the fact that most online and offline companies aren’t doing squat to gather ratings and reviews from their customers.

Lots of companies and entrepreneurs think that it is hard to capture ratings and feedback, and for this reason almost no one does. I felt the same way until I started working with the guys over at Shopper Approved.

Shopper Approved is a consumer rating and review network that allows website owners to easily gather ratings, reviews and feedback from their customers. By adding the Shopper Approved rating/review service to your website, your customers will be able to provide you with valuable feedback, ratings, and reviews automatically. You can then give your new customers easy access to this brand building information by displaying our exclusive ‘Shopper Approved’ trust seal in a prominent location on your website.

With their simple system all you have to do is paste a snippet of code on your thank you page after a customer has bought. Literally within 5 minutes you can start gathering Social Proof to share with future visitors and potential clients.

Scott Brandley, CEO of Shopper Approved says this about Social Proof:

“Adding online reviews to your website have been proven to increase conversion, increase the average transaction amount, improve customer satisfaction, and even lower product return rates, and Shopper Approved is the best customer rating and review solution on the market today. But don’t take our word for it, go ahead and try it for free! In less than 5 minutes from now you can be gathering incredible ratings and reviews! Collect them once, and reap the benefits for years to come!”

Now you have no excuse! Take a moment of your time to see if Shopper Approved can help build more social equity for your business today. Simply visit ShopperApproved.com

Post from: Social Media Vision

Social Proof – What’s The Big Deal

Why Google Needs Buzz – Kevin Rose

If you haven’t heard about Google Buzz yet then it is time to learn what and how you can use it. Watch this video from google:
YouTube – Google Buzz

Start conversations about the things you find interesting. Share updates, photos, videos, and more.

Check out Joel Comm’s Buzzing With Google Buzz | Top One Report

When it comes to social media, it’s not the numbers that count. You can have a Facebook page with tens of thousands of fans and a Twitter timeline with.

Now I know this post is way overdue but let’s be honest we all needed some time to learn more about how Google Buzz was going to change the Social Media industry. In my honest opinion I don’t think it has really changed much at all other than become another tool or channel to share content.

Here are some Google Buzz Tips and Tricks

Doriano “Paisano” Carta made a short video tutorial in which he show how you should setup ping.fm and Google Buzz if you wish to distribute content.

Give your comments below on what you have thought about Google Buzz so far. I plan on posting my thoughts here soon.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Google Buzz, Kevin Rose and Joel Comm