You better stay on your toes when it comes to keeping up with social media and it’s newest players.
This could be great for restaurants, stores, local hangouts and bars if this sort of next generation social media emerges successfully. Businessweek.com broke it down on what this new social media “service” is all about. “Foursquare, a 20-person company that operates out of a crowded loft in New York’s East Village, adds a game-like twist. Its 1 million-plus users earn badges by “checking in” at certain bars, restaurants, and other venues by pressing a button on the app upon arrival. A user can earn a “mayor” icon from a bar if he or she has checked in more than anyone else during the previous 60 days. The business model is simple: Generate as big a user base as possible and sell national brands and local merchants on the possibilities of marketing to people as they congregate—ready to eat, shop, or spend.”
The next thing we know we will have sales people cold calling to these establishments trying to get as many businesses on their “route” for people to go to. This is a great idea and I don’t think I have heard of anything else like it. Negatives to it? If you are someone that does not like people to track your every move…. IE things such as Twitter (as some call legalized stalking), this might not be the thing for you.
Pat on the back to those over at Foursquare for coming up with something truly innovative, and we will see what the next BIG THING will be in this wonderful internet world!

Twitter has exploded over the past few years, empowering news to travel at nearly lightening speed.  Over 50 million people post on Twitter per day right now!  But this big question has always been, what are their plans for a business model?  Well, the latest news is that companies will now be able to advertise on Twitter.  This plan for advertising will start with 10 companies including Starbucks, Virgin America and Best Buy.

The advertising program will be called Promoted Tweets.  The ad-matching and pricing formula for this advertising has not been announced yet, but preliminary discussions indicate a CPM pricing model.  As they continue, Twitter will likely seek other alternative ways to charge advertisers.

In the new Promoted Tweets program, when a company pays for a tweet, the promoted message will appear at the top of the results, regardless of the time it was written.  Promoted Tweets will also appear in the organic Twitter stream rather than on the side like other social networks promote.  Additionally, they will also be highlighted so that companies have the capability to respond if conversations turn negative.  It is still unclear how these promoted posts should appear, but it may be based on topics, geographic locations or shared interests.

Much more to come on the Twitter Promoted Tweets program, but affiliate marketers all over are likely “tweeting” about how to capture this audience even more with this new program!

Twitter and Yahoo! have announced a new relationship that will change the “tweeting” world forever! As if there is not already enough instant access to your friends, neighbors, and now even your dogs every tweeted thought, Yahoo! search will now include real-time twitter updates!

According to CNN, real-time tweets will now be available to the 600 million users in Yahoo’s global network. Twitter users will also be able to update their status from Yahoo! sites and share content from Yahoo! in their Twitter stream.

The last person I would have imagined who would be an advocate of social media is the Pope. I have to say hearing this on the news briefly made me want to know more. After searching the net, it seems this story is in fact true. The Pope thinks that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube is a great way to spread a message. If you are maybe a company where there is some resistance to joining the social media buzz, you might want to reevaluate that decision. PCW Magazine is saying that in the Pope’s “message”, he acknowledges the new technologies our world is having available, so one must use these resources to spread the word. I guess religious or not, you might want to take the Pope’s advice, and that is utilize social media to spread “your” word.

Twitter has made changes to make keeping up to the minute information on your friends even easier! This week Twitter gave it’s users the ability to create public or private lists keeping track of people and their latest 140 character tweets.
This new feature allows you to create your own lists of other users, while also allowing you to follow other people’s lists and view what lists you make it on to. The ability to create lists now adds an entirely new aspect to the “numbers game”.
According to SocialMediaInsider lists are another form of popularity contests through social media. “Say you’re a large company, or a smaller but tech-savvy one, with 100 people on Twitter, and these employees all add your main corporate account to 10 different lists. You’re instantly on 1,000 Twitter Lists, which for now will probably put you well in the top 1% of the most popular listed brands on Twitter. Meanwhile, if I’m on 100 lists through 50 people each adding me to two lists, and you’re on 75 lists but added by 75 different people, who’s more popular? The allure of gamesmanship over this will be short-lived. I hope.”
All of the lists, counting the number of followers you have, and tweeting things interesting enough for people to read is hard work! For LeadPile, I have a Twitter account with 99 current followers… How many of them actually are following me because they are interested in LeadPile news, or they are following me because I am following them and that’s the “twitter etiquette”, I can’t answer.

With Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn it is hard to keep up with the growing social media trends. Over the past couple of years there has been a steady incline in social media users that until recently did not appear to have any end in site.
According to Mashable “The Social Media Guide” Twitter and Facebook appear to be flattening while LinkedIn saw an increase in traffic of 5.68% for the month of September. LinkedIn also announced today that they have now reached over 50 million users. LinkedIn states that 50% of its user are currently based in the US, while 50% are international.
While Twitter and Facebook are expanding their focus and going off in many different directions to attract as many users as possible, LinkedIn has always had the same focus – to connect professionals to each other.
Personally, I have two Twitter accounts, a Facebook and a LinkedIn account…Each for a different purpose. For me, LinkedIn has become a way to stay in touch with former colleagues as well as connect with people who I would not necessarily want introduced into my personal life through pictures or comments on my Facebook or Twitter accounts.
It is all changing so quickly, and hard to keep up with! As soon as I grasp how to connect on one site, it seems like everyone has moved on to the next. Staying “trendy” with social media is a full time job, however Leadpile promises to keep up with the trends!

Facebook is the largest social networking site out there. Whether you are looking so see what your friends are doing, finding old classmates, or just trying to stay connected, Facebook seems to have it all. All except Twitter that is.
When Facebook failed to acquire Twitter.com in the fall of 2008 they decided to do the next best thing and try to be more like them. Within the past week Facebook launched Facebook Lite, which essentially works in the same manner as Twitter. Facebook Lite took out all the frills so a user can only post their status updates. This is a great way to get more people to the site who are looking for a simple way to follow what their friends or favorite businesses are doing.
Facebook has also made it so people who already have Facebook can simply “Tag” a friend and then begin to follow them. This will eliminate the need to juggle between two Facebook accounts. Facebook really did their homework when they decided to start to have some of the same features as Twitter. They even decided to copy the “@” that one puts in front of a name when someone “Tweets” to someone else. So it looks like Facebook didn’t do their homework, but just copy off the person next to them.

We all have been saying this for a while…. how does Twitter make money????? Now it seems that we will all now know, because they are officially offering advertisement on their site. Companies of all natures have all been using Twitter as a way of communicating brief updates of what is going on with their world, however now Twitter can pocket some money from this sort of thing.
I have to say reading about Twitter incorporating advertisements on it’s site prompted me to go to the site to check it out. I am trying to now see what changed? Maybe I wasn’t going to the site enough before, but where are the advertisements? I was thinking I would see a bunch of ads etc on the sidebars of the site, yet I do not see any of that.

We all know the importance of the internet in all of our lives, however there are some things that will go down in history. It’s like when a baby does little steps, talks, goes to school etc, you want to know what led up to that child to become who they are today. The internet is our world’s little baby!
11 Points.com points out some very interesting facts about “our” internet:

1. The first image posted on the internet was in 1992. This image was a random picture of 4 women.
2. The first email sent was back in 1971 by a programmer named Ray Tomlinson.
3. The first spam email to go out was in 1978 by a company called DEC (which is no longer in business).
4. The first banner ad was created by AT&T in 1994.
5. The first item sold on eBay was a broken laser point in 1995.
6. The first Tweet was performed by one of the founders of Twitter back in 2006.
7. The first search engine (called Archie) was created back in 1990.
8. The first domain name registered (symbolics.com) was in 1985.
9. The first YouTube video was created in 1995.
10.The first pornographic website registered was in 1994.

No matter how involved you are in the internet today, there is a deep history involved in what happened in previous years to create what we all call the internet today. I can’t wait to see the new list of “first” in 5-10 more years……… It’s such a big beast with so MUCH more potential!

Believe it or not there is a network out there promising if you pay, they can increase your Facebook friends. Does more friends really = something worth paying money for? With today’s use of social networking, I might have to say yes. According to Adage.com, as we all know Twitter and Facebook are effective marketing tools, so maybe the idea of companies really getting into this and helping others build their “friends” list, could be an effective idea. If “friends” = more money then this is certainly something I could see other marketing companies looking into doing. Nothing is free and who has time to try and generate 5000 new friends like this company says they can help you do? Great idea.. hope it works out for this company! At the present time, Leadpile will continue to build our “friends” list and Twitter “followers” little by little.

With the explosive popularity of Twitter, many companies have attempted or are attempting to become players in this space.  You can now add Yahoo to the list of companies that are rolling out a strategy.

Yahoo has already developed a Portuguese and Spanish microblogging platform, and an English version is already accepting invitations to the program.  You can go here to see the new site. Reviews of the other versions have been mixed at best, so it will be interesting to see if Yahoo is spending their time and resources wisely in entering this space.

In past years, many journalist were worried about taking too many incentives to write about something specific. These days now the FTC is bringing to everyone’s attention the fact that many bloggers could be writing about something because they were receiving kickbacks. The FTC (Fair Trade Commission) is trying to make it regulated that if you are receiving any rewards for blogging about a particular subject matter, that you fully disclose this to your readers. It seems that this attempt to regulate could move into social networking sites such as Twitter too. We have all heard about one of the most “famous” bloggers – Perez Hilton, but is he being paid by someone to blog or Tweet about certain subject matters? I would think so…
In this day someone’s time and opinion really matters, so should it be wrong to be able to accept “things” in order to talk about them? In the day of regulations with insurance companies, real estate and many other industries, governing gifts received in order to render a service is against the rules. However, should this sort of thing really apply to bloggers? Leadpile likes the opportunity that a blog allows us to talk about certain hot topics and things going on in our industry, however I don’t think any sort of potential FTC regulation will affect our little blog.