NFL Player Promoters Will Help NFL Dominate Social Media

NFL Player Promoters Will Help NFL Dominate Social Media A select group of college students could get digitally cozier with their favorite NFL players.

United Way is looking for social media interns to promote the philanthropy efforts of the 32 NFL teams and each team's United Way spokesperson to help the the organizations dominate social media.

[More from Mashable: Stimulate Your Lintellect With the Ultimate Jeremy Lin Nerd-Fest [CHARTS]]

The NFL has been known for its striking ability to engage with fans on social media. More than 4.6 million people are NFL Facebook fans and another 2.8 million follow the league on Twitter. The teams and individual players have large fan bases, too.

The interns will be called player promoters — not interns — and will be assigned an NFL player to promote. The main goal of the position is to drive traffic to the NFL player's social media accounts to increase the player's following, so United Way's message will reach more people. Although unpaid, this opportunity is a chance for college sports junkies — who are social media savvy — to be noticed by their favorite NFL players and to increase their own social media following.

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The Team NFL Player Promoter program adds to the NFL's 39-year partnership with United Way. The non-profit's name easily stays in the spotlight with the backing of 32 NFL teams that captivate a huge audience.

So far, 21 top athletes such as Greg Jennings of the Green Bay Packers, Josh Cribbs of the Cleveland Browns and Roman Harper of the New Orleans Saints have pledged to recruit 3,000 United Way volunteers over three years in an effort to reduce the U.S. high school dropout rate. The volunteers will read, tutor and mentor youth to encourage students to stay in school. United Way's high school dropout campaign plans to sign a member from each NFL team.

SEE ALSO: How the NFL Is Dominating Social Media

"These NFL players have their own reach — they are their own media," said Tracey Holmes, spokesperson for United Way. "The interns will greatly help the players call attention to United Way's goal and get their fan base interested in the player's work."

Interns will be responsible for developing creative social media strategies to reach the NFL player's audience. On top of tweeting and Facebooking, interns will write one or two articles about their player's efforts to recruit volunteers for USA Today College and United Way's NFL microsite. The application deadline is Friday, Feb. 17 at 5 p.m. EST.

In the slideshow below, check out some of the players who want to cut the nation's high school dropout rate in half by 2018.

Greg Jennings, a wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers, has the most Twitter followers out of the 21 players who have signed onto United Way's campaign to cut in half the number of high school dropouts by 2018. Jennings has more than 203,000 Twitter followers.

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Adoption by Facebook Gains Favor

Adoption by Facebook Gains Favor Hundreds of couples are using social networking sites, like Facebook or YouTube, to adopt a child.

Instead of posting ads in a local paper, couples are creating groups in Facebook or making YouTube videos, with the capacity to reach a much broader audience.

Facebook reported that it had 483 million daily active users in December and YouTube is reported to have hundreds of millions of users from around the world.

For couples struggling to adopt, the depth of social media is allowing them to find a child quickly and reach a global audience.

An Unconventional Approach

Struggling to start a family, newlyweds Melissa and Seth Edlavitch of Washington, D.C., were unable to conceive and then sadly lost twins during childbirth.

"I remember thinking that I would never smile again," Melissa said.

The couple, still determined to have a child, decided on a private adoption. They sent emails telling everyone they knew, trying to get the word out they were looking for a child.

After months of waiting, and no response, Seth posted their adoption flier on his Facebook site.

His flier was then reposted by friend John, who was contacted by a friend to whom he hadn't spoken in more than 20 years: "She said, 'You know I work with a couple and I know the woman doesn't have a plan for her baby, would you like to talk to her?'" Seth recounted.

Ecstatic, they met with the woman the next day at a local Starbucks.

After having asked her "All the tough questions," Seth said, the woman decided to let the couple adopt her baby. The paperwork was drawn and a month later, their son, Noah, was born.

"Then we got to hold him right away. And it was just … and so from the moment he was given to us we felt like he was ours," Melissa said.

Another couple, Molly and John Connelly, also had a successful Facebook adoption. After struggling to adopt for five years, the couple were able to adopt their son, Theo, after they started a Facebook group. They shared their story with the engineers at the Facebook headquarters last year.

"The Internet is changing adoption forever in historic ways," said Adam Pertman, author of "Adoption Nation."

Pertman cautions parents who are considering adopting by such unconventional means, "if it is part of an informed process, it's a wonderful expediting tool, if it is the only tool you have got in your box, then the risks are enormous."

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House Panel To Question DHS Social Media Monitoring

House Panel To Question DHS Social Media Monitoring A House Homeland Security subcommittee will press law enforcement officials on Thursday about policies for monitoring social media.

A Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence hearing on the department's monitoring of social media will feature testimony from DHS chief privacy officer Mary Ellen Callahan, and Richard Chávez, director of the DHS Office of Operations Coordination and Planning.

News reports have indicated that law enforcement officials have increased efforts to gather information from social media websites, but on Wednesday, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told the full House Homeland Security Committee her agency isn’t “sitting there monitoring social media” looking for evidence of terrorism.

Facebook Timeline for Brands Coming Later This Month [REPORT]

Facebook Timeline for Brands Coming Later This Month [REPORT] Facebook is planning to make its new Timeline format available for brands later this month, according to a report.

Citing "executives briefed on Facebook's plans," Ad Age is reporting that Facebook will use its Feb. 29 conference for marketers in New York to announce the initiative. Facebook will start in beta with a "handful of brands," says Ad Age.

[More from Mashable: The Future of Sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ [INFOGRAPHIC]]

Facebook announced Timeline, its photo-heavy new format for profile pages, in September. Since that time, the company has been vague about if and when Timeline would be rolled out for brands. In December, when the social network rolled out Timeline for all users, a rep told Mashable that brands were not part of that announcement.

Meanwhile, since Facebook announced Timeline, Twitter and Google+ have both rolled out brand pages.

[More from Mashable: Does Your Branded Franchise Need Its Own Social Media Strategy?]

Opening up Timeline gives brands some new options for self-expression on Facebook. In addition to outlining their corporate history (something Lexus already tried via a Facebook app), they can also take advantage of Gestures that go beyond Liking. The design also employs a large image at the top of the Page, which could make the individual Pages more distinctive that the old template. Back in September, we asked some top digital firms to imagine how branded Timeline Pages would look. Their designs are below:

From New York agency Skinny.

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Lawmakers to Homeland Security: Social Media Monitoring Threatens Free Speech

Lawmakers to Homeland Security: Social Media Monitoring Threatens Free Speech The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's monitoring of social media services could be a threat to civil liberties and online free speech, several lawmakers said during a hearing Thursday.

According to a report by a civil liberties group called the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, DHS paid more than $11 million to General Dynamics for a system to keep an eye on Facebook and Twitter public posts, as well as comment threads on major news websites.

[More from Mashable: Why Apple’s Mountain Lion Didn’t Roar]

EPIC's report found that the system watches public social media posts for comments that "adversely reflect" on the government, and for responses to proposed government plans. EPIC tried to get information about the deal through a Freedom of Information request, but was denied. It then filed a successful lawsuit and was granted access to the specifics by DHS.

During Thursday's hearing, congressmen from both sides of the asile grilled DHS about the General Dynamics deal as revealed by EPIC's lawsuit. One Democratic representative, Jackie Speier of California, said she was "deeply troubled" by the arrangement.

[More from Mashable: Pixable Brings the Hashtag to Facebook Photos]

The Department of Homeland Security "is not a political operation," she added.

Pennsylvania Republican Representative Patrick Meehan also expressed doubts about the plan.

"My guess is that the average American has no problem with other private individuals reading their commentary in online writings and postings in open forums, but may feel a bit of unease knowing the federal government may be doing the same thing," said Meehan.

Reps. Speier and Meehan elaborated on their concerns about the deal in a letter sent to DHS Thursday.

"Although there are clear advantages to monitoring social media to identify possible threats to our security, there are also privacy and civil liberties concerns implicit in this activity," they wrote. "With its domestic mission, the Department of Homeland Security needs to be mindful of the rights of the citizens of our country to express themselves online. Not only should guidance issued by the Department permit analysts to do their jobs identifying threats, but it should also be stringent enough to protect the rights of our citizens."

DHS Chief Privacy Officer Mary Ellen Callahan defended the agency.

According to Callahan, DHS' social media activity has been limited to public outreach, gaining "situational awareness" when disasters strike and helping law enforcement. She added that privacy rules meant they could only collect information on public officials and during "life or death" situations.

"It is the what, not the who, being identified," said Callahan.

Would you feel comfortable with the government monitoring your public social media posts? Sound off in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, adventtr

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Twitter unveils self-service advertising system

Twitter unveils self-service advertising system SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Buying ads on Twitter is about to get easier for small businesses as the online messaging service adds a key piece to its moneymaking model.

Twitter is unveiling a long-awaited automated system that will enable advertisers to manage their marketing campaigns and budgets without having to deal with sales representatives.

Before Twitter opens the system to all comers later this year, the self-service approach announced Thursday will only be available to advertisers who accept or use American Express cards

To get the ball rolling, American Express Co. will buy $100 in Twitter ads for each of the first 10,000 qualified businesses in the U.S. that sign up at http://ads.twitter.com/amex . The ads, which Twitter calls "promoted products," will begin appearing within the flow of users' messages in late March.

Flipping the switch on self-service advertising is the latest sign of Twitter's ambition to build a powerful online marketing vehicle in the mold of Internet search leader Google Inc., by far the Web's most profitable company, and online social network Facebook Inc., technology's fastest-rising star.

It marks another stepping stone toward an eventual initial public offering of stock from Twitter, which has attracted more than 100 million users since its creation nearly six years ago.

The timetable for Twitter's IPO remains a mystery, although CEO Dick Costolo said in an interview Thursday that the company's decision won't be influenced by how well Facebook fares in its stock market debut this spring.

"I don't look at what other companies are doing," he said. "We don't think in terms of building this company for a particular IPO date. We are trying to build this company for the long term."

The company, which is based in San Francisco, isn't in desperate need of capital, having raised at least $700 million last year.

Twitter also probably needs a little more time to prove its financial chops. Last year, Twitter generated ad revenue of about $140 million, according to the research firm eMarketer Inc. That compared to $36.5 billion at Google and $3.2 billion at Facebook. This year, eMarketer expects Twitter to sell $260 million in advertising, helped in part by the new self-service platform.

The automated system will be similar to Google's. Advertisers will be able to specify how much they are willing to spend, pick the cities or regions where they want their ads to appear and write their own commercial messages, which will be confined to Twitter's 140-character limit per tweet. Twitter will only charge for ads that get a user response, such as when a viewer decides to follow the business, retweets the message or clicks on a link.

Selling ads through a self-service system will test Twitter's ability to prevent bad actors from polluting the atmosphere with spam and scams. It's a problem that still plagues Google, which has gotten into trouble for showing ads for from unlicensed pharmacies and other shady operators.

But Twitter's self-service ad system seems less likely to encounter trouble in the early going because only small businesses that have already been vetted by American Express will be allowed to participate during first few months, said eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson.

Twitter is allowing self-service advertising after about three months of tests with a small group of hand-picked small businesses.

Twitter has been easing into advertising to ensure the commercial messages don't spoil the ambiance of service that has been likened to a town square teeming with wildly divergent observations and conversations.

The response to the ads so far has been mostly positive, Costolo said, helping to convince him that the privately held company can open up its revenue spigot even more without facing a big backlash.

"I have every expectation that we will be able to scale this very rapidly," Costolo said Thursday.

Twitter ads paid off for Glennz Tees, an online merchant in Austin, Texas, that has been testing the self-service marketing system. The company's December sales more than doubled from the previous year, said CEO Walter Stokes. In another sign the ads resonated, Glennz Tees' followers on Twitter have more than tripled to 22,000 during the test phase.

The key, Stokes said, was just doing two or three ads per week. "We didn't want to go overboard with it because we didn't want to annoy people."

Twitter Q&As: London Fashion Week increasing interaction

Twitter Q&As: London Fashion Week increasing interaction Designers including Duchess Catherine's favorite Alice Temperley and Anya Hindmarch will be taking part in live Twitter conversations during the upcoming London Fashion Week as part of this season's digital schedule.

As well as announcing its largest number of live stream shows to date, the British Fashion Council (BFC) revealed plans February 15 to work closely with the social-networking site during the Fall 2012 edition of the fashion event -- which kicks off February 17.

A number of 30-minute Q&A sessions have been scheduled to take place over the six-day event, with tweeters able to talk to guests including Fashion 2012 Menswear chair Dylan Jones, Hindmarch and Temperley.

On Monday, February 20 at 13:00, Temperley, who took home the Designer of the Year gong at the 2011 Hollywood Style Awards last November, will be discussing her Temperley London show, as well as a film called Alice By Temperley that will be screening as part of the new Fash/On Film program.

For more details on Twitter interviews and live streaming see www.londonfashionweek.com and the official Twitter account @LondonFashionWk.

Meanwhile, as fashionistas descend on the British capital for London Fashion Week, underwear and clothing retailer Björn Borg will be transforming the city's Battersea Power Station into a miniature Sweden for a live-streamed fashion show February 16.

Among a pine forest, snow and hot tubs, the brand, which ships internationally from bjornborg.com, will showcase its Fall 2012 line, with pop star Robyn providing musical entertainment. A 4D fashion film directed by filmmaker and designer Paris Kain will also be screened to stream over the River Thames.

To watch the broadcast from 21:00 on February 16 visit facebook.com/bjornborg.

Urgent tweet in Kenya village: Help, sheep missing

Urgent tweet in Kenya village: Help, sheep missing LANET UMOJA, Kenya (AP) — When the administrative chief of this western Kenyan village received an urgent 4 a.m. call that thieves were invading a school teacher's home, he sent a message on Twitter. Within minutes residents in this village of stone houses gathered outside the home, and the thugs fled.

"My wife and I were terrified," said teacher Michael Kimotho. "But the alarm raised by the chief helped."

The tweet from Francis Kariuki was only his latest attempt to improve village life by using the micro-blogging site Twitter. Kariuki regularly sends out tweets about missing children and farm animals, showing that the power of social media has reached even into a dusty African village. Lanet Umoja is 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of the capital, Nairobi.

"There is a brown and white sheep which has gone missing with a nylon rope around its neck and it belongs to Mwangi's father," he tweeted recently in the Swahili language. The sheep was soon recovered.

Kariuki said that even the thieves in his village follow him on Twitter. Earlier this year, he tweeted about the theft of a cow, and later the cow was found abandoned, tied to a pole.

Kariuki's official Twitter page shows 300 followers, but the former teacher estimated that thousands of the 28,000 residents in his area receive the messages he sends out directly and indirectly. He said many of his constituents, mostly subsistence farmers, cannot afford to buy smart phones, but can access tweets through a third-party mobile phone application. Others forward the tweets via text message.

"Twitter has helped save time and money. I no longer have to write letters or print posters which take time to distribute and are expensive," Kariuki said.

A recent report said that Twitter is enjoying big growth across Africa. It said South Africans use Twitter the most, but Kenya is second in usage on the continent.

The research by Kenya-based Portland Communications and Tweetminster found that over the last three months of 2011, Kenyans produced nearly 2.5 million tweets. More than 80 percent of those polled in that research said they mainly used Twitter for communicating with friends, 68 percent said they use it to monitor news.

Beatrice Karanja, the head of Portland Nairobi, said the findings show that the use of Twitter is part of a revolution for governments that want to open dialogue with their citizens and businesses that want to talk with their consumers.

When a man in his late fifties in Kariuki's village fell into a pit latrine in December, the village administrator's tweets mobilized area residents and saved him.

Rachel Bremer, a spokeswoman for Twitter, said her company wasn't aware of Kariuki and his innovative use of Twitter, but she called it "a great one."

"We are constantly amazed by the ways people all over the world are using Twitter to communicate," she said.

She said that the company has a web page dedicated to telling stories about the unique uses of Twitter. The page highlights how one man in Pakistan live-tweeted the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, how a father and daughter reunited after 11 years, and how a man raised funds to save a dog's life.

Erik Hersman, a co-founder of internationally acclaimed Ushahidi, a nonprofit technology company, said Kariuki's use of Twitter is a great example of how Kenyans in even the most remote areas can embrace social media.

"If a chief in upcountry Kenya is able to use and have an impact with his constituents by using tools like Twitter, it's not too long before we see a massive movement in the country with these types of social media," he said.

Kariuki, 47, said that he has been able to bring down the crime rate in Lanet Umoja from near-daily reports of break-ins to no such crimes in recent weeks. He also uses Twitter to send messages of hope, especially for the young and unemployed.

"Let's be the kind of people that do good for others whether we get paid back or not, whether they say thank you or not," one recent tweet said.

Kariuki said he intends to use Twitter to promote peace as Kenya prepares to hold another presidential election in the next year, it's first since the 2007-08 postelection violence that killed more than 1,000 people in Kenya.

Kariuki said that when he was first appointed the administrative chief of Lanet Umoja he asked himself how he could tackle the region's problems. First was solving the region's poor communication infrastructure. He said he is currently setting guidelines to help him sift through the information he gets so that he does not send out incorrect tweets.

"Information is power, but information can also be destructive. What we are trying to minimize is destructive information," Kariuki said.

___

On the Internet:

Chief Kariuki: https://twitter.com/Chiefkariuki

Unique uses of Twitter: http://stories.twitter.com

Mass. teen girls' Facebook photos put on porn site

Mass. teen girls' Facebook photos put on porn site CHARLTON, Mass. (AP) — Police in Massachusetts say part of a website has been shut down after it featured "hijacked" Facebook pictures of teenage girls from dozens of high schools and posted them on the site featuring child pornography.

Charlton Police Lt. Carl Ekman says he was told parts of the website were taken down Thursday. Police say the site featured 17 girls who attend Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical High School in Charlton and other schools across Massachusetts.

Bay Path's Superintendent-Director David Papagni says parents alerted officials at the school about 50 miles west of Boston.

The photos of the fully-clothed girls contained information that could be used to identify the teens. The website is hosted in Ohio, but its servers are in eastern Europe.

The FBI says it's reviewing the situation.

Jermaine Dupri Wants to Be the Next Big Social Media Mogul

Jermaine Dupri Wants to Be the Next Big Social Media Mogul

Atlanta-based hip-hop mogul Jermaine Dupri is passionate about technology. He checks his BlackBerry and iPhone incessantly, pops in his Bose earbuds every chance he gets and is addicted to the popular video game NBA 2K12.

[More from Mashable: Lawmakers to Homeland Security: Social Media Monitoring Threatens Free Speech]

But Dupri -- the Grammy-award songwriter, rapper and producer known for collaborating with artists from Jay-Z to Mariah Carey and for previously dating Janet Jackson for more than eight years -- calls social media his biggest tech love.

Although he has nearly 400,000 followers on Twitter, he sought a deeper need to connect with fans and launched his own social network last year called Global 14. The platform, which now consists of more than 30,000 members, gives people with common interests -- from art and fashion to hip-hop and R&B -- a place to discuss projects and passions in over 1,100 groups.

[More from Mashable: Startup Pick.fm Lets You Bet on Pop Culture, Celebrities]

Dupri appeared earlier this at the Social Media Week keynote panel in New York City to discuss how he built that community online with Global 14.

"I look at Global 14 members as my personal friends," Dupri told Mashable. "I'm not trying to take on Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg. I just created an environment where I can interact with my community and give people a place to chat about their passions. I have big plans for the site."

The word "global' in Global 14 refers to Dupri's diverse tastes and aspirations to grow his community worldwide, while 14 refers to the letters in his name -- "J" is the 10th letter in the alphabet and "D" is the fourth.

Dupri described Facebook as a reunion site for friends, while he believes Twitter is a stream-of-consciousness site for updates and news. Instead, he wanted to create a place where like-minded people could talk about their favorite interests.

"[Global 14] started as a blog, where I posted pictures of cars, fashion, girls, art -- all the things that I liked," Dupri said. "A group of people started following the site and a direct dialogue began between me and the consumer."

The site evolved into what Dupri calls "one big 'Like' button," where people can comment and inspire others. One of the most unique aspects of the site is its music publishing section called G Jamz.

"I found a gap in the Internet social media world for music publishing -- most kids don't believe that someone like me could listen to their music," Dupri said. "I found one of my signed artists through YouTube and it took me two months to have conservation with her because she didn't believe it was actually me calling at first."

"YouTube doesn't have a person that calls up its members to help them get started in music," Dupri added. "I started a contest designed for independent artists to help them get signed. My background is music and I owe it to music and to my fans to get involved."

Dupri traveled to 14 cities in 14 days to promote his social network last year, encouraging people from the site to get together and meet each other in real life. Most recently, Dupri turned to digital marketing agency iCrossing to help boost the site's search marketing and branding strategy.

Under iCrossing's guidance, Global 14 recently joined Google+ and is gearing up to create original video content that addresses topics such as the future of social media and how to be a killer creative executive.

"I heard Steve Jobs speak about putting his personal touch into the computer and that helped me understand why I love his products," Dupri said. "You could feel that someone with such passion had gone over the products so many times before they came out. I make music not to make money, but because it's in me. Things always work when I put my heart into it, and more brands need to do the same thing."

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Police: Mass. girls' Facebook photos on porn site

Police: Mass. girls' Facebook photos on porn site CHARLTON, Mass. (AP) — The FBI and Massachusetts police are trying to figure out who "hijacked" Facebook photos of teenage girls from more than a dozen high schools in the state and posted them on a website police say features child pornography.

Authorities on Thursday described the site as an anonymous bulletin board with links to pornographic content and photos of students from all 50 states.

The Massachusetts link displayed pictures of 17 teenage girls from Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical High School in Charlton and others from schools around the state, officials said.

The photos of the fully-clothed girls contained information that could be used to identify the teens, including town and school signs, Charlton Police Chief James Pervier said.

The site is hosted in Ohio but its servers are in eastern Europe — outside local and federal authority, Charlton Police Lt. Carl Ekman said.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers said the agency was reviewing the matter to determine whether any laws were violated, including privacy and anti-pornography laws.

Boston FBI spokesman Greg Comcowich said the site was running Thursday. He would not discuss any agency actions taken in its review.

As she waited in her car at Charlton for her sophomore daughter, Tracy Nicholas Cruz, 40, said she has heard from many of the girls whose pictures appeared on the site.

"...they were humiliated," she said. "They didn't know how their pictures got exploited. These are good girls."

As a mother, she said, "It's just scary to think that your child could just have this site to communicate with other students and her friends and everything, and then something as bad as this other site comes out and takes their pictures? That's horrible."

Seventeen-year-old Autumn Walczak said she deleted her Facebook profile "because I did not want to be part of, like, anything that would happen to me and stuff."

Bay Path's Superintendent-Director David Papagni said some students and parents alerted school officials in January that someone had secretly copied the Facebook photos of students and posted them on the site.

"It's an awful thing," Papagni said.

___

Rodrique Ngowi can be reached at www.twitter.com/ngowi

Facebook Will Verify Celebs -- And Let Them Use a Fake Name

Facebook Will Verify Celebs -- And Let Them Use a Fake Name Facebook will today start offering some users the possibility to verify their accounts, TechCrunch reports.

The feature will start as invite-only, allowing public figures (in the beginning, only users with high subscriber counts will be invited) to change their account to verified status.

[More from Mashable: Facebook Timeline for Brands Coming Later This Month [REPORT]]

Once the account is verified, it will appear more frequently in the "people to subscribe to" list.

Twitter launched verified accounts back in 2009, and Google+ launched a similar feature shortly after launch.

[More from Mashable: The Future of Sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ [INFOGRAPHIC]]

However, unlike Twitter's version of this feature, Facebook won't display any sort of badge on verified accounts - a somewhat odd decision, since having a way to distinguish the real person from impostors is precisely why this feature is useful to most users.

Instead, verified users will have the option to display a nickname (Facebook normally requires all users to use their real name) instead of a real name, or have their real name places in parentheses.

To verify your account, you'll have to send Facebook an image of a government-issued photo ID, or a combination of two alternate IDs (such as birth certificate and credit card). While this will certainly make some users uneasy, Facebook promises to delete this data after verification.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Jirsak

[via TechCrunch]

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Apple Unveils Mac OS X Mountain Lion: So Long iChat, Hello Twitter [PREVIEW]

Apple Unveils Mac OS X Mountain Lion: So Long iChat, Hello Twitter [PREVIEW]

Apple developers, start your engines. Mac users, start dreaming of how much cooler your desktop or laptop experience could be this summer. That's when Apple will launch the latest big cat-themed Mac OS X, version 10.8: Mountain Lion.

[More from Mashable: MSN Launches msnNOW Social Trends App on Facebook, Web and Mobile]

At 8:30 a.m. EST Thursday, the developer preview version of Mountain Lion was live and available to Apple's legions of app makers. Mashable was briefed on the new Mac OS prior to the announcement.

Bottom line? It's a few more vital steps closer to fully connecting the experience you have on the Mac with the world of the iPad and the iPhone -- dumping iChat in favor of iMessage and Twitter, to take the most radical example. It's almost as if it makes your Mac moonlight as an iPad.

[More from Mashable: Apple MacBook Air Patented; Beware, Ultrabook Makers]

But it is categorically not the one OS to rule them all, if such a thing is even on Apple's radar.

OS 10.7, or Lion, launched in July 2011; 30% of Mac users now have it installed. (Another 50% of us still favor Snow Leopard). Coming in the wake of the iPad, it was clearly influenced by the success of the device. It introduced such iOS-like features as multitouch gestures on the trackpad and a "launchpad" of apps that looked just like the iPad's home screen.

Some of us began to wonder, with some cause, whether Mac OS X and the iOS were heading for a marriage down the road.

Well, here's the next phase in the relationship, and iOS has practically moved in to Mac's house. If Lion was a toothbrush in the bathroom, Mountain Lion is a chest of drawers in the bedroom. Reminders, iMessage, Game Center, Notifications, iCloud and Twitter integration -- all iOS's most intimate stuff is here, and it all pretty much looks the same as it does on the iPad. Most of it is designed to sync up so it is exactly the same.

And Mac OS X has had to throw out some of its stuff. Bouncing icons in the dock? Who needs them when you've got Notifications, which appear in classy banners down the side of the screen? The venerable antique Instant Message software, iChat, a 2002 vintage? A stupid wagon-wheel coffee table, says iOS. Throw it out.

Instead, here's iMessage, which will still let you IM your contacts (if you must). But what it really wants you to do is use Apple's seamless texting replacement of the same name. Admittedly, the thought of being able to immediately text anyone with an iPhone for free from your desktop is so unbelievably cool, it can bring on an attack of the vapors.

You get the sense the Mac is going to be happy with its new roommate. What's not to like about Airplay, which can seamlessly mirror your desktop on an HDTV? Or a separate Notes app, where you can attach notes to the desktop like stickies? Or Game Center, which will mean a lot more cross-device play?

Or a "share sheet," which effectively means developers are going to be able to put Twitter buttons everywhere? Mountain Lion will already let you tweet from all standard OS X apps such as Safari and Photo Booth. That means you can sit and take photos of yourself and instantly tweet them, to your heart's content. It's a boon for Twitter users (Twitter readers, not so much).

So things are going to be a lot more fun around the edges of the Mac OS -- which is no bad thing. At the grand old age of 12, OS X was starting to seem a little too same-y with each iteration. This new younger partner is about to give the Mac a new lease on life. (How much that will cost, we don't know; Apple isn't announcing a price yet, or a launch date more precise than "late summer.")

But don't expect iOS to go hog-wild and bring its apps on board in future versions. Apple is giving a hefty push to the Mac app store, which benefits from a security feature called Gatekeeper where you can limit installations to just Mac store apps. (You might want to do this for your malware prone-parents, say.)

Developers are going to have to make two separate versions of apps they want on Mac and iOS for some time to come, and that's just fine with Apple. When it comes to its two operating systems, the company seems to believe living together is good enough.

So what do you think? Will you buy it? Take a quick gander at a video we put together with material from Apple, then a gallery of screenshots -- and last but not least, your chance to chat up a storm about this major Mac development in the comments.

Meet the Mountain Lion.

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Facebook Adds 11 New Media Apps

Facebook Adds 11 New Media Apps Facebook launched its latest wave of media apps built with Open Graph Thursday, including a Mashable app. The media apps -- joining veterans such as The Guardian's social news app and Washington Post Social Reader -- are a platform for users to discover and share content.

Facebook writes in a blog post that its news apps have driven significant traffic, increased engagement and introduced media outlets with a new, younger demographic.

[More from Mashable: Mashable Launches Facebook App]

The beta round of media partners were launched at f8 in September, including Yahoo News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily. The Huffington Post app launched in November 2011, but is included in the list in Thursday's blog post. Digg also launched an app in December.

In addition to the Mashable app, the new set includes Buzzfeed, CBS Local: Los Angeles and New York, CMT, The Daily Show, GetGlue, MSNBC.com, MTV News, Pixable, Sporting News (coming in March) and TODAY Show. Among that group, GetGlue and Pixable stand out as non-news sites and we're eager to see how those apps change the sharing experience on Timeline.

[More from Mashable: Today’s Top Stories: Facebook Account Verification, iPhone Contacts Controversy]

Facebook also released some numbers on the reach of its first wave of apps, since their launch at f8. Yahoo News has seen 25 million people opt into Social Bar and the app has 2 million daily users. The Guardian's app has been installed 5 million times, with 50% of users ages 24 and under. Digg Social Reader has driven a 35% increase in readership.

Are you using any social reader apps on Facebook? Where do you see the platform going? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, -Oxford-

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Facebook goes Twitter on us and will introduced verified accounts and pseudonyms

Facebook goes Twitter on us and will introduced verified accounts and pseudonyms So much for a quiet period? Even though Facebook recently filed its S-1, the updates just keep coming. We recently learned that brands would be getting the Timeline treatment at the end of the month, and now TechCrunch says Facebook has taken a page out of Twitter’s book and will introduce verified accounts as well as the ability for users to create pseudonyms for those accounts.

The site has long championed a “real name” policy, although enforcing this has been incredibly lax. Many users have defied the system with their user names (points at self), and Facebook has very loosely policed this. Google+ attempted a more severe structure and was quick to oust faked names (and in some cases, real ones it didn’t trust). Of course, by now we know that G+ compromised and eventually allowed users to include a nickname with their profile.

So while Facebook hasn’t been a watchdog about this, it now officially accepts pseudonyms for verified accounts. Selected users (those with very high subscriber numbers) will see an option to verify their accounts. Celebrities and public figures are obviously the beneficiaries here, and Facebook decides who gets the privilege. The site will manually patrol the verified account registrations, as well as registered aliases, and applicants will have to send Facebook government-issue ID or two alternate IDs (which the site will delete later).

It’s all very similar to the process Twitter went through when it first introduced verified accounts (obviously, alternate names were not an issue on the site). The site was plagued by celebrity impersonators, which was hurting its legitimacy — as well as frustrating businesses trying to use the site and its famous users for marketing purposes. The solution was simple, and has since spawned entirely new avenues for marketing via the platform. Google+ went through a similar transformation. 

Facebook likely wants to push the same strategy with its new subscription feature. Once an account is verified, it will be pushed more frequently in the suggested subscriptions section. However, the site will not be using any visual icons for users to identify when an account is verified. So if your name just happens to be Justin Timberlake, some confusion might remain without something notifying users whether they are or aren’t following the more famous Timberlake.

It’s definitely a deviation from Facebook’s original focus, which was very much about connecting real people, not validating celebrity. And while Twitter has become a popular haven for the famous and their followers (and an advertiser’s paradise), Facebook would be wise to remember it has a much more stable revenue model than the microblogging site does. Facebook is really trying to push this idea of subscribing to the more famous among us, but it just isn’t as naturally positioned for this as Twitter. Twitter is more passive and users are more apt to watch and listen, but on Facebook we’re more interactive — something the subscriber feature isn’t really about. 

The lack of pushing celebrity Internet presence (in comparison to other social sites) on Facebook has been somewhat refreshing. Relatively speaking, it’s been much more about “real” people. 

But it’s Facebook’s world and we’re all just living in it. The site’s evolution is unstoppable, and we’ve seen significant change over the last year especially. And how it shapes the platform from now on will have more to do with its investors and financial future — it can’t take as many risks or ignore potential profit. 

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

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MSN Launches msnNOW Social Trends App on Facebook, Web and Mobile

MSN Launches msnNOW Social Trends App on Facebook, Web and Mobile The homepage highlights top trends, biggest movers and topic tabs.

One of the Web's oldest portals, MSN, is about to dive headfirst into one of the Internet's hottest trends: Social Media.

No, Microsoft, which runs MSN, is not launching its own social network. Instead, the 17-year-old content destination is unveiling a new social reader, msnNOW, on Facebook, the Web and in a new web-based mobile interface.

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The initiative is actually two components. According to MSN General Manager Bob Visse, a team of 20 editors will use a new Demand Dashboard to measure velocity and volume of trending topics across Facebook, Twitter, the Bing search engine and BreakingNews.com (a joint MSN/NBC venture).

Stories that are trending will appear on msnNOW in a constantly updating "Biggest Movers" box. In addition, a team of editors will select topics and stories from among those social (and search) trends and create 100 word write-ups for posts that will appear in msnNOW's What's Trending homepage.

The page, which will look pretty much the same on the web and in the new Facebook app, will feature a large main story and a grid of other popular stories below. Visse described it as a "river of real-time content". Within each area, reader will find small icons for Twitter, Facebook and BreakingNews.com. The presence of each will indicate on which social networks the stories and topics are trending.

These are not icons for sharing these posts, but Visse promised that sharing options would be obvious on the Web site and in the Facebook app, where there will be opportunities to share and comment.

Along with each MSN-created post, readers will find related Bing search terms, Tweets and other content. Not every topic or story will get an MSN write-up. For those, What's Trending will link to a Bing result, which will also offer a link directly to the original content source. "We give the best of the web regardless of where that content or hot story originated from,” Visse told us.

Visse explained that MSN is targeting a younger "always socially connected consumer who lives an online lifestyle for information gathering and seeking." That may mean that some of the trending content will be a little edgier than what you traditionally see on the portal. It's all designed to start a conversation. Even the design has the younger demo in mind. It's image-centric, with what Visse calls "short, pithy headlines."

It's also one of the first times that MSN has launched a new product across three separate platforms at once and, as Visse noted, it’s the first time MSN "has done anything interesting with the Facebook social reader experience." msnNOW, however, will not launch with Google+ integration, though Visse said Microsoft is open to tracking volume and acceleration on the still young social network at a future date.

Visse calls the msnNOW project a "transformative experience for MSN." Even so, the design is still decidedly MSN-centric across all platforms. Visse contends that while msnNOW is not yet a Metro design (the cubist-look Microsoft is painting across virtually all of its interfaces), msnNOW's "component-like design is not a big leap to get a Metro-like design."

The intention with the current look is for a really good, super-easy-to-use interface. The mobile interface, in particular, is designed for easy touch and swipe consumption across multiple mobile devices (the mobile web site should work well on the latest iOS, Windows Phone and Android browsers).

Though MSN currently enjoys a reported 125 million monthly visitors, with 75 million visiting the MSN portal homepage each month, msnNOW will not take over that hot destination. Visse told Mashable that msnNOW will have a hard and visible link from the MSN homepage and msnNOW content that does make the main homepage will feature msnNOW artwork and insignias.

msnNOW is an interesting bet for Microsoft, the big software company without its own big social network. Can it be the aggregator instead of the creator? And will content and media companies like the 100-word write-ups -- or will they think such stories are cannibalizing their content?

Visse, though, has other concerns. "I'm waiting to see how it works out. Did we connect with the younger demo in the way I think we're going to? Are the edit choices and the way we package them together interesting and exciting for users?" All good questions and Visse acknowledges that he won't know the answers until they launch the product.

What do you think of msnNOW? Check it out and then give us your critique in the comments below.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Courtney Love's Twitter Libel Case Heads To a Jury; Jeremy Lin's Night Out

Courtney Love's Twitter Libel Case Heads To a Jury; Jeremy Lin's Night Out Welcome to the Smart Set. Every morning, we bring you the gossip coverage filtered. Today: Beyoncé has some big plans, Jeremy Lin struggled during his first night of NBA carousing, and the badgering of Kate Upton continues.

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According to sources, new mom Beyonce is already "planning two projects to be released in 2012." The material, not surprisingly is skewing more towards the simple joiys of parenthood, rather than cautionary tales about what happens when you don't put a ring on it. Ryan Tedder, who wrote "Halo" for her, says he's already started sending her songs for the projects, but doesn't offer much in the way of specifics. "All I can say is you kind of feed her the best that you have and she's this phenomenal filter and she takes it all in." This makes Beyonce sound a bit like The Thing, though we're sure Tedder meant it as a compliment. As for Jay-Z, he said back in December he planned to record a new solo album this year, and maybe another collaborative album with Kanye West. Frequent Jay-Z producer Pharrell Williams let it slip to MTV News earlier this week that he and Jay-Z "are working on something, it's crazy." He also clammed up when pressed for additional information, noting that Jay-Z is "very discreet about details and stuff." [Page Six and MTV News]

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New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin has electrified the known universe and made Knicks games bearable for the first time in almost a decade, but he still needs to work on his wild, late-night carousing. After Wednesday's night win over the Sacramento Kings, he and teammate Landry Fields went to Valbella on West 13th Street for Lin's dad's birthday dinner. According to a source, there was "no alcohol" at the dinner, with Lin opting to quaff "water with his Dover sole special." After dinner, Lin and Landry met up with teammate Jared Jeffries and headed to the Chelsea nightspot Avenue. According to sources, when they arrived, club management "sent over six bottles of Champagne," Lin opted to hold a Bud Light -- "the same Bud Light," according to a source --  all night. It's unclear how much he enjoyed his night on the town. "He looked like he was having a good time," one source tells Us Weekly. "You can tell he's not exactly a party guy, but people got into it." Another witness tells Fox Sports: "He danced a little bit, but we did not see him to talk to any girls. He just hung with his teammates and some execs from the team." Not unreasonably, it's being reported Lin "seemed shy when any woman tried to catch his eye, or when waitresses brought out the bubbly with a sign that read, 'All I Do Is Lin, #17,' a play on the DJ Khaled song, 'All I Do Is Win.'" To the young guard's credit, he hung in there, departing the club with Fields via a side door a bit after 2 a.m. [Fox Sports and Us Weekly]]

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It seems Carine Roitfeld, who was editor-in-chief of French Vogue for ten years before announcing her resignation in December of 2010, has "made no secret of her wish to launch her own magazine" and is apparently "is in talks to publish her title in collaboration with the media group that owns Visionaire, V Magazine and VMan." A single issue of Visionaire sells for $295 these days, while a six-issue, year-long subscription to V is a much more reasonable $20. Whatever the hypothetical new magazine ends up costing, the scuttlebutt is that "the title could be out as soon as this fall."  [WWD]

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For the love of Pete, can people stop badgering Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover subject Kate Upton -- who seems really nice -- if she's the girlfriend of Mark Sanchez, the erratic and balding quarterback of the New York Jets? Yesterday, Ellen Degeneres tried to trick Upton yesterday by asking her about "your boyfriend, New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez." Clever, that Ellen! Upton replied that she "did not have a Valentine's Day date this year," before noting that "even if I had a boyfriend, I wouldn't ask how he felt about [the cover]." [New York Daily News]

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This was bound to happen: Courtney Love will likely have to go to trial for tweeting that her former lawyer was "bought off" and speculating someone must have "got to her." Love's new legal team tried to get a judge to dismiss the libel suit yesterday by noting "the phrase 'they got to her' is essentially meaningless in and of itself, without context." It didn't work, and the case is probably headed for a jury trial.  [The Hollywood Reporter]

Director Julie Taymor has settled one of her many lawsuits stemming from stint as director of Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark. This one is about back pay she claims producers owe her after ousting her as director of the out-of-control flying and crimefighting musical last March. Sources say Taymor "will receive "full royalties of nearly $10,000 a week through the show’s entire New York run." Now, she can turn her attention to her pending federal court case in which she's demanding half the profits of the $75 million show. [New York Daily News]

Adele, Chris Brown, Nicki Minaj most mentioned artists on Twitter during Grammys

Adele, Chris Brown, Nicki Minaj most mentioned artists on Twitter during Grammys Microbloggers posted more than 5 million “Grammys” tweets on Sunday, February 12, between noon and midnight PT.

Twenty-three-year-old British singer Adele was the star of the night both on stage and online. The sweet-faced recording artist picked up six awards at the 54th Grammy Awards on Sunday night, while also becoming the focus of 140 character conversations on Twitter.

In a February 15 blog post, Twitter announced it had recorded a peak of 10,901 tweets per second (TPS) for the night as Adele stepped on stage to receive her award for Record of the Year.

Adele (@OfficialAdele) was the most mentioned artist on Twitter during the 12-hour period, followed by Chris Brown (@ChrisBrown), Nicki Minaj (@NickiMinaj), Rihanna (@Rihanna), and the late Whitney Houston.

“2012 grammys” topped the Arts & Entertainment rising searches on Google Insights over the last seven days. “Grammys,” “grammy 2012” and “grammy” also appeared in the top ten list. Second through seventh place on Google Insights for the week ending February 16 were filled with search terms related to Whitney Houston’s death.

How Twitter Is Changing the Craft of Comedy

How Twitter Is Changing the Craft of Comedy At the "How to be Funny in 140 Characters or Less" panel Wednesday, I watched the full life cycle of a humorous trending topic on Twitter -- from its creation, to peak, then death -- all within less than an hour.

The event was part of Social Media Week NYC, and was led by Lizz Winstead, writer and political satirist for The Daily Show; Jon Friedman, writer, comedian and producer; and Julieanne Smolinski, writer and editor.

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"How to be funny on Twitter is always tricky, because no one can make you funny. But people can make what you think is funny a little more accessible," says Winstead.

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Hashtag games on Twitter have become a new form of entertainment, and a great exercise for comedians. The topic given at the panel was #RejectedGroupons. From just a 168-seat theater, the topic trended in second place, worldwide within twenty minutes. By the end of the hour-long panel, the topic was no longer trending.

Click here to view this gallery.

Twitter has no doubt changed comedy, and humorists say it's even created a new "genre" that's different from traditional standup.

"Comedians are getting attention in a way they haven't in a long time -- it's a new outlet," says Friedman.

Attention on the social network has often led to opportunity for comedians and writers as well -- Smolinski says "every job I have right now, I got because of Twitter."

The panelists also discussed the formalities of being a comedian on Twitter. Although Winstead claims to hate using the word "brand," she admits there is a certain entertainment to marketing ratio that every comedian should be aware of on Twitter. For her, it's one pitch for every ten comedy tweets.

"You don't want to tweet any type of self-promotion too much because then people will get irritated and then they won't follow you," says Smolinski.

Overall, the three panelists say that even with the rapid, viral nature of comedy on Twitter (as proved with #RejectedGroupons), this form of social entertainment is supposed to be casual.

"If I do standup, I get a little stressed out," says Friedman, speaking of the copious amount of preparation that live performance entails. "But with Twitter, it's different. I like to just calm down and not take it so seriously. Otherwise when it's not fun, I'm not going to want to do it anymore."

So how do you become a comedian in 140 characters or less?

"Don't overthink it -- if you thought it was funny, tweet it out there. You show people what you think is funny and they'll throw it out there," advises Friedman. "Just use your own voice and don't try too hard."

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Beyond Facebook: Game publisher Kabam moves for independence through Kongregate partnership

Beyond Facebook: Game publisher Kabam moves for independence through Kongregate partnership Facebook is well regarded as the main hub for social gaming; the company’s top gaming partner, Zynga, makes up 12 percent of the networking site’s revenue. However, while Zynga seems content to make 90 percent of its own revenue through Facebook, one social gaming publisher, Kabam, is looking to move beyond its Facebook beginnings.

Kabaam, founded in 2007 as Watercooler, is the company behind The Godfather: Five Families, Dragons of Atlantis and the popular Kingdoms of Camelot. According to Inside Social Games, based on the company’s recent quarterly bookings—which are up 10 times over its 2010—Kabam believes that it is second behind Zynga when looking at social game revenue

“The key isn’t about how many users you have,” said Kabam Chief Executive Kevin Chou. “It’s about how much money you are making.”

Despite the company’s recent layoffs, this month, Kabam took it’s 450 employees to a new headquarters in downtown San Francisco, California. There it joins other big name social gaming companies like Zynga, 6waves Lolapps and Disney’s Playdom.

Kabam also announced an interesting new partnership in February with Gamestop-owned gaming portal Kongregate. The Kongregate portal provides free browser-based games; it boasts 16 million monthly uniques, and 28 million hours spent gaming by users. Kabam will initially bring three of its free-to-play games to Kongregate, including Dragons of Atlantis, with plans to bring The Godfather: Five Families and Thirst of Night.

The move is a sign the company is looking to become more independent from Facebook; an idea Zynga had been mulling in 2011 with its Zynga Direct/Project Z gaming platform but has been slow to enact.

While publishers find social gaming appealing due to the low up-front costs, the Facebook route requires game companies to typically spend a lot of money on advertising to hook new users. Other networks like Google Plus have been more helpful for promotion.

Also, Facebook gaming has predominately been a realm for casual gamers. While Kabam has targeted the loyal minority of hardcore gamers on the social network, the vast majority of new users attracted to Kabam’s games are coming from outside of Facebook. Kabam’s August 2011 numbers of 12.9 million active monthly Facebook numbers has recently shrunk down to 2 million. Users from Google Plus, Pokki and the Kabam web site comprise the rest of the player base. Alongside the Kongregate announcement, Kabam announced that its Kingdoms of Camelot will be headed to iOS.

Kabam has two gaming pushes for 2012 and beyond. Chiefly, the company briefly announced a propriety framework it is calling Pyramid. The company built its reputation off of its asynchronous strategy games, but is looking to connect all of its user base, regardless of platform, in one synchronous environment; no barriers. The Pyramid investment has been large, but it means a game universe where players across multiple platforms such as iOS, Google Plus, Facebook, Kongregate, etc., will all be able to interact with each other in real time. On the company blog, Kabam writes, “The world is a big place, but we like to think that Pyramid will help make it a little smaller.”

Along with Pyramid, Kabam’s acquisition of Fearless Studios to push into 3D has not been wasted, and the company is enthusiastic about its future products having console-like 3D graphics. Kevin Chou believes that 3D is the next upgrade for social gaming and pointed to the work done with Unity 3D and Google’s Native Client as examples of the movement.

Images via Kabam.com

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

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Saudi in Mohammed Twitter row insists he repented: family

Saudi in Mohammed Twitter row insists he repented: family A Saudi journalist awaiting interrogation over Tweets deemed insulting to Islam's Prophet Mohammed insists that he has repented, a relative told AFP Wednesday.

Hamza Kashgari "has affirmed to his family that he stands by his repentance, that he has made a mistake and regrets it," said the family member on condition of anonymity.

The 23-year-old fled to Malaysia after his comments sparked a wave of condemnations and threats against his life, but was deported back to Saudi Arabia on Sunday.

Upon his return from Malaysia, Kashgari "informed his family he is in very good condition," the source said. "His family is still waiting for authorities to allow them to visit him and appoint a defence lawyer."

A Saudi lawyer told AFP on Tuesday that Kashgari "has not yet been interrogated and we hope this issue ends before it reaches the attorney general."

Saudi English-language daily Arab News reported earlier this week that Kashgari would face blasphemy charges.

On the occasion of the Muslim prophet's birthday, Kashgari tweeted: "I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you."

"I will not pray for you."

His post sparked outrage and prompted thousands to call on a Facebook page entitled "The Saudi people demand Hamza Kashgari's execution" for him to be executed. The page already has more than 23,000 members.

Kashgari had quickly apologised for his comments, tweeting: "I have made a mistake, and I hope Allah and all those whom I have offended will forgive me."

The European Union said Monday that it was "deeply disappointed" that Malaysia deported Kashgari.

Kashgari was a columnist at the Jeddah-based Al-Bilad newspaper, which fired him after the controversy over his tweets.

Insulting the Mohammed is considered blasphemous in Islam and is a crime punishable by death in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia.

A committee of top clerics branded Kashgari an "infidel" and demanded his trial in an Islamic court.

Others have defended Kashgari.

Prominent Saudi cleric Salman al-Odeh tweeted: "His repentance from what he said has comforted me. I feel the sincerity of his statements and call onto my brothers to pray for him."

Twitter Opens Self-Serve Ad Platform Widely to Small Businesses

Twitter Opens Self-Serve Ad Platform Widely to Small Businesses After making the platform available to just a few advertisers in November, Twitter will expand its self-service ad product to all small businesses next month.

Twitter is partnering with American Express for the initiative, which offers preferential treatment for American Express cardmembers. Such cardmembers will be invited first and AmEx will give $100 in free advertising to the first 10,000 businesses to sign up

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In a blog post announcing the move, Twitter was vague about what, exactly, the the new small business advertising will be like, except that it will involve Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. Twitter reps could not be reached for further comment. However, Adam Bain, Twitter's president of global revenue, tweeted Thursday night that the initiative involves Twitter's self-service advertising.

That self-service platform went live in November, but was only open to a handful of advertisers at the time. That offering was a long time in the making. Twitter introduced a turn-key ad solution in December 2010, but it took almost a year until it was operational.

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Meanwhile, over the last year, Twitter had refined its advertising offerings by introduducing geotargeting and a dashboard that gives marketers a deeper dive into the company's data. With the former, advertisers can choose among 210 designated market areas in the U.S., which appeals to small businesses with a limited geographic footprint. The dashboard, meanwhile, offers new information on who is following a brand and what their interests are, among other data.

Twitter, a private company, doesn't disclose the amount of revenues it currently draws from advertising. However, eMarketer estimates that Twitter's overall revenues -- which are primarily from advertising -- will hit $259.9 million in 2012.

Image courtesy of Flickr, EvanDC

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Today’s Top Stories: Facebook Account Verification, iPhone Contacts Controversy

Today’s Top Stories: Facebook Account Verification, iPhone Contacts Controversy Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.

Facebook to Offer Account Verification to Some Users

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Facebook will start offering account verification to users with high subscriber count, TechCrunch reports. Verified accounts will not have any sort of badge to distinguish them from regular accounts, but they will let users have nicknames and appear more frequently in the “people to subscribe to” list.

Apple: iOS Apps Will Require Permission to Access iPhone Contact List

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After Path and Twitter admitted their iPhone apps access and store users' contact lists on their servers, Apple issued a statement saying iOS apps accessing users’ contact lists will require explicit permission. “We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release,” an Apple spokesman told All Things Digital.

Low-Cost Androids to Conquer Africa, India, and China [REPORT]

Cheap Android handsets might reach a penetration rate of 80% of total smartphones in Africa, India, and China by 2015, claims a new report from In-Stat. Unit shipments for low-cost Android smartphones will be near 340 million worldwide in 2015, the report claims.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Pixable Brings the Hashtag to Facebook Photos

Pixable Brings the Hashtag to Facebook Photos Photo-sorting app Pixable is bringing the Twitter-style hashtag to Facebook photos.

The startup's core service sorts images from your Facebook and Twitter feeds into piles such as "Top of the Day," "New on Twitter" and "New Profile Pics." Now you can tag the photos in these categories with hashtags and see them in your Facebook Timeline.

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A new Facebook Timeline integration will show activity on the app within modules on user timelines. Photos with hashtags show up in a separate module in your timeline that functions like an album collection organized by sentiment rather than event. Using the new feature, you can sort the photos you view on Pixable -- from both you and your friends on Facebook and Twitter -- into piles such as #cute, #nyc, #friends or #birthday both within the app and on your Facebook profile.

Other Pixable Facebook Timeline modules include a roundup of favorited photos each month and a general log of app activity.

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So far about 1.5 million people have installed Pixable on their iPhones and 300,000 have installed it on their iPads. About 20% of them log in every day.

"People are treating this more like a photo inbox," explains Pixable co-founder Andres Blank. "The photos that really matter come to you, you don’t have to go on a hunt."

While focusing on photo consumption rather than broadcasting is what distinguishes Pixable from other photo apps, it also puts the app at a disadvantage when it comes to growing its numbers.

Hashtags are Pixable's first broadcasting mechanism. When you add one to a photo, it can be Tweeted, Facebooked or shared with the rest of the community. Users can also browse public photos by hashtag.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Golf, Meet Social Media: PGA Tour Gets First Branded Hashtag

Golf, Meet Social Media: PGA Tour Gets First Branded Hashtag Even golf -- that centuries-old Scottish sport stereotyped as rich old white guys puttering around in goofy outfits -- has hopped aboard the social media train.

At the Northern Trust Open this week, golfers sponsored by the TaylorMade brand are sporting hats emblazoned with the Twitter hashtag #driverlove. The hashtag references TaylorMade's larger campaign that plays off the special connection that some players feel with their clubs. It appears to be the first time a hashtag or explicit social media reference has appeared on PGA Tour golfers or playing surfaces.

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While other sports have added interesting social media twists to their players and fields, golf is a game deeply rooted in tradition and not necessarily eager to humor cutting-edge fashion trends and tech fads. But that leaves an opening for brands willing to innovate, according to TaylorMade's chief marketing officer, Bob Maggiore.

"For our sport as whole, the social media space has really been a slow-moving river," Maggiore told Mashable. "So it's interesting for us, because we've kind of given up on doing certain things the old way. We like to get out in front and try different things."

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TaylorMade is among golf's most prominent brands, and Maggiore said the company had a record setting year financially in 2011. He said the hashtag plan was hatched in December, and has already sparked a modest "cult following" among golfers and fans after less than two days of practice rounds and pro-am play at the Northern Trust. (The first round officially tees off Thursday morning.)

The front of the hat features a simple heart design, and the #driverlove hashtag is emblazoned on the side of the cap, where Maggiore said a pedestrian company logo would usually appear. According to Maggiore, the hashtagged hat is an example of how social media allows TaylorMade to market in more abstract -- but possibly more effective -- ways.

"Versus just directing people to these brand homes, we're able to get people engaged with these bigger, great ideas, like here that it's okay to love your golf equipment," he said. "The hashtag has been really powerful in our TV spots, but once we activate it with live athletes it's going to be that much more powerful."

At the Northern Trust, top TaylorMade golfers including Dustin Johnson, Jason Day and Sergio Garcia are donning the caps. If they make it into the tournament's final rounds, where there is increased broadcast and fan attention, the hashtag should gain even more attention and drive more conversation.

"We just want people to jump right into the space and get tangled up in the fun that we're having with it," Maggiore said. "The win for us is people taking it and going as deep as they want with it."

Do you think sports teams and brands should do a better job of incorporating social media in their marketing efforts? Let us know in the comments.

This story originally published on Mashable here.