MyPermissions, an Israeli Web and mobile app company, today launched a Trust Certification program that requires app developers flagged by its users for good privacy practices to sign a legally binding agreement not to share personally identifiable information about users with third parties.
Vine has added sound and motion to the popular microblogging website, Twitter. Learn how to bring your information to life in our Vine webcast on Wednesday, June 19 from 4-5 pm ET. In this one-hour webcast, Gemma Craven (left), EVP, New York group director at Social@Ogilvy will discuss best practices for using the visual social platform and share some of her team's successful vine videos. Register here. 
LinkedIn Acquires Pulse News Reader and Publishing Platform for $90 Million (SocialTimes)
In a move to make LinkedIn “the definitive professional publishing platform,” the company has acquired Pulse, the makers of a news reader and mobile content distribution platform. The company sold for approximately $90 million, 90 percent of which will be stock; the remaining 10 percent will be cash, according to LinkedIn.
Facebook Exchange Ads Being Tested on Desktop News Feeds (AllFacebook)
The lines between different ways to advertise on Facebook are beginning to blur, as the social network Tuesday announced what it called a “small alpha test” of running ads delivered by its Facebook Exchange real-time-bidding ad-purchase platform on the desktop version of its News Feed, while at the same time assuring users that the number of ads in their News Feeds would not increase. Facebook added that it would expand availability of this new ad format in the coming weeks.
Petition to Save Google Reader Reaches A petition on Change.org to save Google Reader, the RSS platform that Google plans to cancel, has reached more than 100,000 signatures. When asked if the company planned to respond to the petition and what the company’s next step would be, a Google spokesperson told us: “We’ve given an overview of our reasoning and plans on our blog posts on the Official Google Blog and the Google Reader blog, and we’ll be communicating directly with our users as we make these changes. We don’t have anything more to share than what was in the posts.”
If you are one of the many loyal users of Google Reader, it’s time to think about what you will do when Google pulls the plug on the RSS feed aggregator in July. Reader is not the only RSS feed reader, so we took a look at some of the others. What follows is a rundown of what they do and don’t do.
A full-page ad for the Demand a Plan initiative pushing gun control that appeared in the New York Times this morning featured signatures from a who’s-who list of tech luminaries and others.
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Twitter Interest Drops Off for Final Presidential Debate (CNET)
During Monday’s showdown between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Twitter users sent 6.5 million tweets regarding the debate during the debate, the micro-blogging site said. That comes in well behind the 10.3 million tweets sent during the first presidential debate on Oct. 3 but close on the heels of the 7.2 million tweets sent during the Oct. 16 debate. Reuters Obama’s “horses and bayonets” comments provided the latest debate-related phrase to become popular on social media. The hashtag “horsesandbayonets” trended on Twitter, where the mock username @horsesandbayonettes was quickly born. Twitter Blog Twitter added several new sections to election.twitter.com on Monday. While the daily Twitter Political Index tracks the sentiment of tweets, Twitter’s enhanced dashboard shows the topics that are driving discussion, such as the economy, healthcare and immigration. Mashable With the serious topic of foreign policy on the agenda and no audience, the GIF opportunities might have seemed limited. Luckily, Tumblr and the rest of the Interwebz tapped into their finest GIFing talents to offer an animated summary of the evening’s political smack-down. SocialTimes Over the weekend, “Kids React To Election 2012″ hit YouTube. The video features 13 kids, aged 6 to 13, discussing everything from attack ads to the Electoral College, Obamacare and the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Read more
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Twitter to Target Ads Based on Interests (The Wall Street Journal)
Twitter on Thursday said it will allow advertisers to more easily target their ad messages to people based on their interests, a shift some advertisers have been demanding of the short-messaging service. A company that sells a sports drink, for example, could elect to show paid ads to Twitter users who are fans of professional football. CNET The micro-blogging service will provide advertisers with 350 “interest categories” whose top-tier sections include groupings such as home and garden, sports, investing, pets and politics. Twitter determines which categories users fit into via its “interest graph” — Twitter’s own proprietary chart of user connections and relationships. AdAge Keyword targeting had previously been available for promoted accounts (where marketers pay for each new user who follows them) and for promoted tweets in search, but not for promoted tweets in user timelines, which is Twitter’s core ad product. Those could only be targeted to a brand’s followers and users that Twitter deemed similar to them, making them a blunt instrument. AllTwitter Twitter says its beta testing of interest targeting produced positive results, so we’ll see. Facebook ads are successful because they target audiences based on user-provided data, but that social network is very different from Twitter. TechCrunch In addition to interest targeting, Twitter is also announcing a change to the auctions that determine which promoted content gets shown. The minimum bid in those auctions has been reduced from 50 cents to 1 cent. Read more
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Facebook Cleared to Issue Stock for Instagram Deal (The Wall Street Journal)
Facebook received approval Wednesday to use stock in its acquisition of photo-sharing application Instagram, clearing the way for a deal that has lost about a quarter of its value since an agreement in April. At a state hearing in San Francisco, Calif., to review the acquisition’s stock component, the California Department of Corporations found the deal to be “fair, just and equitable,” allowing Facebook to issue shares to Instagram. Los Angeles Times But Instagram founder and chief executive Kevin Systrom said in the hearing that he understood the ups and downs of the public markets and that the transaction is now worth more like $750 million. Business Insider The fairness hearing was the last regulatory hurdle the two companies had to face before the world’s largest social network could buy the hottest mobile photo-sharing startup. The companies opted to issue shares under California law rather than through the Securities and Exchange Commission, in part because it’s a faster process. San Francisco Chronicle
At the fairness hearing, Systrom was asked how his company made money, according to the Los Angeles Times. “That’s a great question,” the paper quoted Systrom. “As of right now, we do not.” AllFacebook The word on Wednesday was that Facebook could consider purchasing Waze, developer of a well-liked, free, community-based traffic-nav app. Waze has nearly 6,200 users talking about it and the app has garnered 126,000 likes. Read more
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Facebook at the Republican National Convention: Politicians Finally Get Us (Mashable)
Facebook is among the tech giants roaming the halls of the Republican National Convention — the company has become intertwined with the convention, having set up Facebook “photo spots” and using the opportunity to launch a co-branded political analytics app with CNN. Interestingly, Facebook’s convention team is sharing a co-working space with Twitter. ABC Action News Tucked off to one side in the truly massive media presence at the Tampa Convention Center, the people at Google offer media types an oasis of sorts. A walk around the convention center presents the eyes with row after row of tables filled with thousands of computers and monitors. The Verge Google’s comprehensive 2012 election coverage will now include a tool to help citizens register to vote, the company revealed Tuesday morning in an announcement about new resources for voters. Google has partnered with New York nonprofit TurboVote, which collects contact information from voters and then sends them registration forms, reminders about voting and state-specific information about things like mail-in ballots. AllFacebook With the Republican National Convention in full swing, the phalanx of politicos in Tampa, Fla., is taking to Facebook to share status updates from a range of activities, including fundraising events, delegation meet-and-greets and speech preparations. The photos, links and comments mean Facebookers are getting a peek behind the curtain at the Super Bowl for politicians, aka the GOP convention. Social Times Twitter is abuzz as Mitt Romney secures the GOP presidential nomination, officially, and to celebrate C-SPAN has released a supercut of every Republican and Democratic candidate accepting the Presidential nomination since 1984. Watch as Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Al Gore, George W. Bush, John Kerry, John McCain and Barack Obama proudly say, “I accept your nomination!” Read more
