Blog

Will Foursquare Dodge User Backlash as it Changes Privacy Policies? (SocialTimes)
Foursquare announced plans over the holiday weekend to change its privacy policies effective at the end of the month, which, while unlikely to cause the kind of brouhaha that Instagram’s proposed changes did, may not take effect without controversy. “As our product evolves, one of the things we do is update our policies to match it. And a big aspect of that is privacy (something we think about a lot),” the company said in an email to users.

Read more

More people are searching for Tumblr on Google than for competing blogging platforms, including WordPress. What’s more, the keyword “tumblr” appears more often in the search box than even the general keyword “blog.” Is Tumblr becoming the household name for blogs, like Kleenex is for tissues or Styrofoam is for polystyrene?

Read more

When Instagram was sold to Facebook for $1 billion, investors at Andreessen Horowitz walked away with $78 million: a 312% return on a $250,000 investment. When an article in the New York Times suggested that the venture capital firm should have gotten more, co-founder Ben Horowitz fired back with a blog post defending the firm’s decision to invest more money in an Instagram competitor called PicPlz.

Read more

Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email.

Twitter Promotes Patent Peace with Innovator’s Agreement (paidContent)
In a first among major tech companies, Twitter is taking steps to ensure that its patents don’t become fuel for future intellectual property wars. Twitter Blog It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. parislemon Hopefully other startups large and small will follow Twitter’s lead here. It would be really excellent if larger companies (*cough* Yahoo *cough*) did as well, but it’s hard to see that happening given the current state of things. This is a movement that will have to start from the ground up. AllTwitter Those “in the know” when it comes to patent law seem to approve. VentureBeat The Innovator’s Patent Agreement will take effect later this year; you can read the whole thing on GitHub. Read more

We’ve put together a list of five Tumblr tips to help you plan, set up and run your Tumblr blog for maximum success.

Read more

Moustaches get all the attention and it’s just not fair…for beards, that is. Ke$ha wants to give beards the attention that they deserve and so she’s launched her very own Tumblr dedicated to beards, just in time for Decembeard!

Read more

Blogging has come a long way since its beginnings in the ‘90s, with over 156 million public blogs in existence as of February 2011. Everyone is blogging, from moms to techies to artists and politicians, and a fun infographic from Flowtown examines the blogging ecosystem.

Read more

Thinking about starting a blog? Before you even think about sitting down to set up your blog and write your first post there are several questions you need to ask yourself. These seven important questions can help you determine whether you’re on the right track, how you should proceed and whether you should even be starting a blog at all.

Read more

I’m knee-deep in launching a new blog. This will be my tenth (non-personal) blog launch/re-launch in six years. Each time I do it, I seem to forget (and re-learn) the pain that’s involved. Getting a blog off the ground is far from easy, and keeping it alive is even harder. Of the 10, five are alive and well, if in different hands, two are dead and two should be if they aren’t. For the tenth, it’s still too early to tell, but everything looks better than it has with my other launches.

Read more

A new infographic from KISSmetrics reveals not only the pros and cons of posting during both high and low activity hours, but also pinpoints the best time to post to your blog.

Read more