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

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

Check out this hilarious video about the Social Networking Wars. Just watch the Youtube video below and make sure you leave your comments below on what you think!

Social Networking Wars: SuperNews!

Myspace confronts a young fellow who may have been cheating on it with other sites. Soon facebook and others show up for a showdown. Let the …

Post from: Social Media Vision

Social Networking Wars

Facebook Backup Plan

It may not occur to you but have you ever though about backing up data from your Facebook account?

Recently for some odd reason Facebook has decided to go Battlestar Glitchtastica on some of my friends recently to the point of having some of my friends completely lose their Facebook account information and start over.  Crazy Right?

For the people who has lost all their friends Contacts, Wall Posts and even precious Photos, everyone pretty much said the same thing..They all wished they would of backed up their account somehow.

Socialsafe the Facebook Backup Application (http://www.socialsafe.net)

When Socialsafe first launched you could only download Facebook photos pretty much.  Now Socialsafe added some great new features:

• Backup Facebook friends & contact details

• Backup Facebook photos & tagged photos

• Backup Facebook profile details

• Backup Facebook wall posts

• View time capsule feature (view how has your Facebook profile progressed since the start)

Never worry again about losing important data on your Facebook account now.  The application is very cheap for only pricing at $2.99 its a steal!!

I love the new features and I have to admit the price is a small price to pay to backup everything you ever wanted in your Facebook profile.  Imagine getting your account hacked, Facebook glitches or ever wanted to delete your account without worrying about coming back, this is priceless.

SocialSafe Explanation .. Introducing Wall Backups from Pascal Wheeler on Vimeo.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Backup Your Entire Facebook Account, Wall & Contacts

The news of Kanye West disrespecting poor Taylor Swift on stage which resulted in Taylor Swift crying back stage was spread like wildfire on all the major social networks.

Before Kanye or his PR management team could control the fire and backlash, the news had spread so rapidly that no response from Kanye’s camp came until hours later from Kanye’s blog.

Could of Kanye spoke out and responded to his actions portayed on T.V before it got out of control?  Before we determine that lets recap for a moment for anyone who has forgotten or hasn’t had the opportunity to watch what happened at the M.T.V VMAs last night.

Photo credit AP

Taylor Swift had won the award for Best Female Music Video and went on stage to accept her reward when Kanye West bursted on stage, grabbed the mic and proclaimed that Beyonce had the best video of all time.  This of course left Taylor Swift stunned and motionless while MTV cut away the cameras leaving Taylor Swift a no show on her award speech, which btw was her first ever VMA award.

The Twitter Attacks

Soon afterwards, the Social Media retaliation mob started in full effect most notably with the celebrities voicing thier opinions about Kanye West which @Ijustine proclaimed over 300,000 Tweets in just one hour about the Kanye incident.

Well incase no one knows, Kanye West doesn’t have a Twitter account due to the fact he went on a rampage removing all imposters of his name on Twitter and has proclaimed he will never use Twitter.  More could be read here on his own blog.

Kanye did however blog about his apology hours later.  The only problem with a blog is that its only seen by the Blog Followers/Subscribers and is not an instant broadcast like Twitter is.

*Update*  This blog article has since been removed.  Just another reason why Kanye needed a Twitter presence.

The Social Media Rule

This is Social Media 101 folks.  Social Media is used to keep your online brand management under control and to monitor effectively.  Without having a proper online management, Kanye was left without a Voice to correctly address the problem and provide a solution.

Having a Twitter Account Kanye will benefit you by:

• Increasing Brand Awareness & Online Presence to of course gain more exposure for your ego driving force there Kanye.
• Increasing Reputation Management to handle the misunderstood press releases and news media out there.  Also provides you a way to voice your own side of the story straight

Instead you get attacks like these from various Celebrities on Twitter.

Kanye should rethink his Twitter presence

So Kanye we all know how much you love to voice your opinion but to really ban Twitter and not use this great Social Media tool in your online management and PR arsenal is such a waste and your PR manager should be fired.

For a person who loves to show how much of a voice he really carries ironically doesn’t have one in the Social Media sphere.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Why Kanye West Should Of Had A Twitter Presence At The VMAs

There will always be critics, haters and naysayers out there in the real world and online world.

How many times have we heard sayings like:

“I don’t care what people are doing or where they are going, don’t tell the world on Facebook/Twitter”

The funny thing is mostly the people who do complain about this rant are usually users who have not found a benefit in using Facebook or Twitter and merely have an account just to have one.  They maybe update their account once every 2 weeks and has less than 50 friends.  However there are your emos and haters who just like to bicker and rant on things.

Honestly these people just seem to be bitter in life generally and are grumpy grandpas, if you ask me.

Then there are a few who doesn’t seem to grasp the benefit in status updates.

Take a look at a few more examples below:

Heres a Facebook Group

Twitter Comments

The benefits of Status Updates – Enough with the pointless bashing

Ok so whats the real benefit of an update of:

“I am getting ready for my trip to NYC”

“I just bought a new puppy”

“Just saw the movie G.I Joe”

Close minded people may view these updates..just babble….pointless.  I beg to differ.  Matter of fact, the millions of other users who effectively use Facebook & Twitter as an excellent medium for communication and engagement beg to differ as well, here’s why.

The main point in displaying these updates are to open up conversations and provide the lead for engagement

Its that simple folks.  Most people don’t realize that this is an excellent way to strike up a conversation and a perfect time to engage so that you are effectively using your Social Network to its full potential.  Why let anything go to waste when your not using it at full potential?  That’s like buying a Fast Expensive Car that just sits in your garage.

Now some people may say that some updates are too excessive?

Yes I do agree, some people need to learn The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook by Tamar Weinberg, however it goes back to the old saying “Something is better than nothing”

Its just like in jr.high when the boys would be afraid to dance with the girls but one boy who may not be the best dancer, dances himself silly in the middle of the gym and magically girls start to dance with him.  While the cool guys were laughing at the silly boy, the silly boy got to dance with the girls.

So stop the bickering, its only making yourself look bitter.  Go out there and Engage!  Communicate!  Do what the Social Networks were created for you to do and that’s Socialize, no matter how pointless the updates maybe, its just another way to provide communication.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Why Facebook and Twitter status updates are not useless

Engage & Connect

So now you have all thje major Social Networks in your portfolio…Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIN, now what?

The biggest common mistake out there is when people sign up for Social Media and are not active on there or better yet develop a stasis lock and waits for something to happen.  This isn’t dating and in which dating rules apply you have to make sure the time is right before you make the first move.

There is no waiting for the perfect time to make the first move, anytime is a good time to make the first move.

Why Make The First Move?

The worst thing you can do is just have your Social Media profiles just sitting idle, collecting dust.  It will be a waste of time and conform to the myth that Social Media is a waste of time.

• Be Proactive

Don’t be afraid of rejection or feeling scared to engage people.  Quite often or not you will find most of the time that people on Social Media networks are generally receptive and engaging when you first contact them

Contacting people first opens up a Social Engagement and shows the recipient that you are providing value on your Social Media profile and validating that your not some spammer or non-active user.  What people hate the most are Spammers and users who just sign up for Social Media profiles but don’t provide value or any updates.  It’s like buying a Nintendo Wii because everyone is buying one but just showcasing it to the world without actually opening the box and playing with the system.

How To Maske The First Move?

Facebook / LinkedIN

• Join groups that fit your interests and niche – If you like surfing, then search for Surfing groups.  Find groups that can benefit you by networking and sharing the same interests.  An added bonus when joining groups, you will make new friends and it’s ok to friend request people in the same group as long as you indicate that in your message.

• Comment on your friends status updates often – Don’t wait for them to comment on yours, you make the 1st move.

• Friend new people – Proactively try to find new people to friend whether it be the ones Facebook suggest, Groups or manually searching.  More exposure the better and you can’t go wrong with a large network especially now since Facebook allows you to customize & label your feed stories so it won’t be too much noise in your streams.

• Facebook chat – Try often to just Instant Message someone on Facebook just by saying hi, this will open up conversations.

• Suggest a friend

• Wish Happy Birthdays

• Become humble and ask questions – Ask questions often, often we see self indulged narcisstic marketeers that get no respect because they are all about them them them and not enough of letting other people take charge in conversations.

• Join Q&A discussion threads – This tactic gets quite often overlooked but it’s so easy to do, especially in LinkedIN.  Find Question & Answer boards and actively answer questions or ask questions on here.  The point is to engage the community so they can either respect your authoritative responses or help you out and both ultimately providing you with meaningful relationship building.

Twitter

• Follow new people – Find Twitter directories like Twellow or Wefollow and again follow your niche and community, by reaching out to follow them first you can start building your follow empire and community.  Waiting for people to follow you will be the long and hard route so why not take the proactive approach.

• Ask open ended questions – Again often on Twitter people who don’t ask questions arent really engaging correctly and will have a hard time building quality relationships.  Try asking open ended questions and see how the responses are and more than likely great conversations will come about.

• Engage Twitter comments with full replys Just because you reply does not mean your actively engaging in quality manners.  Don’t be lazy and show some decency by replying back with full engaging replys so hopefully you can build quality relationships down the road.

• Retweet The art of retweeting is just to acknowledge the influence and authority of your friends on Twitter.  They will highly appreciate your Retweet

• Follow Fridays It may be a fad but theres a reason behind this madness, its to promote your friends and also become the influencer to your current followers,  The more quality people you recommend the more influence you gain.

• Recommend Friends Start promoting your friends and recommending ones that you admire, chances are the recipients will greatly appreciate that since you are adding value to them.

So like AT&T’s old slogan used to be “Reach out and touch someone”

Post from: Social Media Vision

This isn’t a date – Make the 1st move in Social Media