
These days, companies are hiring people to run their social media presence. If you’re hiring, how do you know whether you’re dealing with a real professional or not? We look at the top red flags to watch out for during the interview.

These days, companies are hiring people to run their social media presence. If you’re hiring, how do you know whether you’re dealing with a real professional or not? We look at the top red flags to watch out for during the interview.

Ben Mezrich, author of the “Accidental Billionaires”, spoke publicly about “Sex on the Moon”, his next book, for the first time at DOMAINfest. Ben’s “Accidental Billionaires” book is the basis of the movie “The Social Network”, a movie about Facebook which is up for 8 Oscars this year. “Sex on the Moon” is about another genius college student who stole the most valuable object in the world from NASA, a story which NASA kept under wraps.

Intel is launching its own app store to compete with Apple and Android. Intel powered devices will start shipping with Intel’s app store pre-installed on them in early 2011. Intel’s approach to apps is innovative. Consumer electronics retailers and manufacturers will both get a big cut of Intel’s app store revenue. Further, Intel app stores are white label – so consumers will see “Best Buy App Store – Powered by Intel AppUp”. Intel could be biggest trend in app markets in 2011.


Apple changed its mind and will now allow Flash apps on iPads, iPhones and iPods. This comes soon after web designers declared Flash doomed and reverses Apple’s App Store banning of Flash-based Apps and refusal to support Flash on the iPad tablet. Pundits were expecting a creative exodus away from Flash to HTML5, but now Apple has given Flash a new lease on life. The drama left me wondering “What’s going on?”, “Is this Important?” and “What is Flash, anyway?”. My findings after the jump.

“Its a myth that Twitter links are nofollow”search guru Danny Sullivan told me at his conference, SMX West. Danny warns readers not to be fooled because links in tweets are marked “nofollow” on Twitter.com – Twitter should be part of your SEO strategy. I later confirmed Twitter’s SEO value with Google’s findability guru Maile Ohye and other SEO experts. This means you should give people an option to “Tweet This!” on your pages. And remember, tweets now appear directly in Google’s social search and real time search results!
Read more
Is anonymous search and surfing the opposite of social media?
Our social media experiences require us to participate as a known members of online communities. Facebook, MySpace et al collect personal data while you communicate with friends, share photos and personalize your profile. Sure, most people are happy with the tradeoff of exchanging their privacy for the joy of social media.
Read more

Is LinkedIn the latest social network victim to be attacked with a DDoS attack?
LinkedIn was unavailable 5+ hours Saturday, only two days after a rash of social network attacks disrupted services globally. I can’t remember LinkedIn being down for anywhere near 5 hours before. Twitter, Facebook and Google all reported Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks (DDoS) last week. Have the hackers moved on to LinkedIn as their next target? Is this political, the continuation of anti-social media trend started by Twitter and Facebook’s shutdown in China?
Read more
I was shocked to hear a Social Data Cloud (SDC) is in full operation, created by Freedom OSS using Amazon Web Services (AWS) technology. CloudMQ is making social data available “in the cloud“, and all the major social networks are participating in the exchange.
Social Data Cloud (SDC)
Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn all publish data about changes occurring on their social graphs via CloudMQ. FriendFeed and other aggregators then subscribe to this data. Social networks can even subscribe to each others’ data. CloudMQ is the first Social Data Cloud (SDC), and is the beginning of a trend in which all social graph information will be made available real time, on a granular level “in the cloud”.
The emergence of this Social Data Cloud (SDC) raises important questions about user privacy, social network collaboration and future industry business models.
Adeo Resi of TheFunded.com shared his unique perspective on
fundraising with UGC focused entrepreneurs during an after hours,
impromptu session at User Generated Content Conference & Expo. Adeo packed a session room at the end of the day and held the
audience spellbound while he gestured with a Bud Light. Adeo advanced an agenda of recommending people move away from the venture capital investment model, citing the current economic crisis. Please see @BetterPath for live tweats,
and here are the highlights:
Fans of the Cramp’s Lux Interior found solace last week on the blog that broke the news of his passing, posting hundreds of emotional comments in an outpouring of grief and admiration. The Daily Swarm’s RIP Lux Interior blog post attracted tens of thousands of visits as the word spread among Lux’s global fan base. Commenters gave the post a life of its own, and in doing so created the first social media destination for fans of The Cramps.
“In a time of need, community will spring up around a blog post if another community place is not established” says David Prince, Editor and Founder of the Daily Swarm. People attracted to the Daily Swarm by the breaking news found an outlet for expression through commenting. The Cramps did not have a web site with social media features or a social network profile page for fans to turn to. Suddenly, their strong voice found an outlet that turned into a flash community around the post – many as first time visitors to the site – with hundreds of commenters filling the page with long heartfelt comments.