Barack Obama and his team are ramping up their social media efforts to get the president’s agenda out following his State of the Union address.

The Obama team will mix traditional events and political appearances with outreach via Facebook, Twitter and Google YouTube. It is almost all something of a test as the administration gears up for re-election in 2012, but what’s clear at the moment is that the next big thing in digital and social media campaigning has not yet emerged. Read More »

We’re all used to some of the most commonly-used social sites suffering from technical glitches and falling over like a big sack of spuds.

Facebook might tell you plainly, in plain text, that your account is unavailable due to a site issue. Twitter tries to appease users with its cutesy fail whale. Last.fm advises you to go and have a cup of tea then refresh the page. Flickr suggests you ‘twiddle your cables’ until things start working again. Read More »

Someone at Google is having a quiet chuckle about this one. Possibly a loud one. If you put I HATE YOU into Google Translate (English to Japanese) the translation is not what you would expect.

Imagine shouting some Japanese and then randomly inserting the word “Facebook” that’s pretty much the result on Google Translate as these images show. Read More »

Is this going to catch on? Personal news or news aggregation website Ongo, which is backed to the tune of $12m by The New York Times, The Washington Post and Gannett among others, launches today charging $6.99 a month.

It is billing itself as a “a personal news service that gives consumers a fundamentally new way to read, discover and share digital news and information”. Read More »

It’s good to see LinkedIn doing something fun and useful with all that data they’ve got. This week they’re introducing a new tool from LinkedIn Labs, called InMaps, which lets users visualise their professional network.

It runs through all your connections and presents a colourful graphic showing how they are related to each other and where they form clusters and groups.

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Facebook could be facing a new privacy row as it prepares to launch a new ad option that will turn your Facebook’s “likes” into ads or “sponsored stories” as it is calling them without giving users any opt out.

Some people are clearly not going to like this at all. Effectively, the new ad unit turns Likes, Facebook Places checkins, and application activity by users into ads. It allows advertisers to effectively take from the crowd and build ads on the back of any viral buzz it might be generating. Read More »

A report is suggesting that Twitter could be on course this year to more than triple its advertising revenue to $150m.

That figure could jump again to $250m by 2012, according to a EMarketer. That’s some snappy growth considering that in 2010 (Twitter’s freshman advertising year) revenues hit $45m. Read More »

I just stumbled across this. It is an interesting if long shot of an idea. An unnamed group of online executives led by a UK-based online marketing strategist has written an open letter to News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch proposing to buy the troubled MySpce.

The offer comes on the heels of News Corp slashing the once social networking leader to the bone  along with almost 50% of staff. Read More »

Expedia Australia has devised a new way of winning Facebook fans: offering a $10,000 (£6,200) cash prize to the person who does the best job of administrating the brand’s new Facebook page.

Expedia: Facebook page marketing

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Is there anything Amazon doesn’t want to do? Last week in the UK Amazon snapped up LoveFilm and this week Amazon plans major expansion into online fresh food and groceries.

The FT is reporting that in the US the online retailer is developing a free weekly home-delivery service for everything from alcohol to fresh fruit and veg. Read More »