Social Media

The Internet is starting to look like that drawer full of family photos that we’ve been meaning to put into an album for years. That’s why we’re excited to announce the launch of our new conference, Social Curation Summit! Join us in New York City on July 31 for the first ever full-day conference exploring the business of social content curation and visual communities like Pinterest and Tumblr. We’re offering a special early bird rate of only $199 when you register by Thursday, June 7.
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How do people actually spend their time online around the world? Did you know Brazilians have the highest online friends, and Japanese have the least? How many views does YouTube get per day (hint, it’s in the billions). Who gets the most unique visitors per month other than Facebook or Google? Is it Twitter? Wikipedia? Take a look at this new infographic by Go-Gulf and find out.

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The Flaming Lips are known for pushing the boundaries of time and space with their music. Lead singer Wayne Coyne stopped in New York on his way to a 24-hour bus tour from Memphis to New Orleans for MTV’s O Music Awards, the band’s most epic performance since the 24-hour song it released in October 2011. “I can talk all day,” the singer announced upon arrival. But he has no trouble staying within 140 characters on Twitter. In our interview with Wayne Coyne, the singer shares his Twitter philosophy and a few of the unexpected connections he’s made through social media.

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Facebook Camera App Launches for iOS (TechCrunch)
Facebook began rolling out a standalone photos app Thursday with which users can shoot, filter and share single or sets of photos and scroll through a feed of photos uploaded to Facebook by your friends. Facebook Camera for iOS lets users rapidly pick one or more photos, apply filters, tag friends and locations, add a description and post. Gizmodo iOS users are used to pulling down at the top of apps to refresh a stream, but this action reveals your iPhone’s photo album, instead. This takes getting used to, as does the process of selecting multiple photos to upload or changing your mind and removing one. Wired The product highlights the company’s commitment to its mobile business. But considering Facebook’s recent purchase of the photo-sharing app Instagram, it’s hard not to compare the two. Silicon Valley Mercury News Facebook agreed to acquire Instagram on April 9 for cash and stock then valued at $1 billion, but the value of the stock has widely varied after the Menlo Park, Calif.-headquartered social network went public last week and has experienced volatility on Wall Street. The deal has not closed, and Facebook recently changed wording in its Securities and Exchange Commission filings that indicated it did not expect the acquisition to be complete in the current quarter. Reuters Less than a week after its IPO, Facebook is already facing multiple lawsuits by disgruntled shareholders who claim that the company and its underwriters told only select institutional investors about the social media company’s weakened growth forecast. This is not the first time investors in a hot tech company’s initial public offering have alleged that underwriters favored their regular clients at the expense of the little guys. Read more

Yahoo!’s got a brand new search tool that will follow you from your desktop all the way home.  Launched Wednesday night, Yahoo! Axis is socially connected, spatially redesigned, and has some unusual features that definitely make it worth a test drive. See a demo and screenshots here.

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Facebook Faces Shareholder Lawsuits (AP)
Facebook’s fourth day of trading as a public company saw an increase in the company’s stock price and shareholder lawsuits related to the social network’s botched initial public offering. Several shareholders who bought stock in the IPO have filed lawsuits against Facebook, its executives and Morgan Stanley, the IPO’s lead underwriter. Reuters Meanwhile, Facebook is considering a stock-listing proposal put forward by the New York Stock Exchange, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters, in the wake of a disappointing initial public offering last week on the rival NASDAQ bourse. Facebook has exchanged phone calls and emails with NYSE Euronext and are considering their pitch, the source said without elaborating on specifics. CNET Facebook plans to open its first Middle East office in Dubai next week, according to the Associated Press. This United Arab Emirates city is considered the Silicon Valley of the region, so it makes sense that the social network would put its Persian Gulf hub here. The Hill Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday began to look into the debacle of what was supposed to be the social networking company’s crowning achievement. Lawmakers want to know whether institutional investors got a sneak peek at an updated analysis, written just before the initial public offering, that gave a more pessimistic assessment of Facebook’s future revenues. AllFacebook Some Facebook page administrators are seeing messages in the top-right-hand corners of their timeline pages urging them to create Facebook ads and containing a “promote your page” button. Have you seen similar messages on Facebook pages you manage? Mashable A Facebook page and a six-minute video tell the story of a 12-year-old girl whose mother died when she was 3 years old, grew up being abused by her father and bullied on her Facebook page. Eventually, the girl commits suicide. There’s just one problem: this is all fake. Read more

Synthesizer creator Robert Moog, who would have been 78 years old today, is having the best birthday ever. Not long after Google’s artists created an interactive Moog synthesizer doodle for the homepage, a fan responded with a crazy cover of Daft Punk’s “Aerodynamic” using Google’s tool, which he posted on YouTube.

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Part sci-fi drama, part massively multiplayer online game, Defiance gives the phrase “social TV” a whole new meaning. Premiering in Spring 2013, the the entertainment hybrid is a collaboration between game publisher Trion Worlds and the Syfy cable network. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Defiance.

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Mary Long from our sister site AllTwitter has looked at how a person can create a plan for what will happen to their social media accounts after they pass away. It’s a morbid thought but one that may be important to those of us who have a lot of private or personal information on there. Check out Mary’s ideas, as well as a review of some tips from the US government over at AllTwitter.

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Enterprise service provider Oracle has just purchased Vitrue, a cloud-based social marketing platform that integrates brands with major networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, as well as emerging platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Klout. Social media marketing is definitely hitting the main stream with this one.

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