Bing Integrates More Facebook Results into Social Sidebar (AllFacebook)
Just like Facebook is integrating Bing into its graph search, Microsoft’s search engine is getting more cozy with the social network. Bing announced Thursday that more results from users’ Facebook friends will be included next to the main search results if users have connected their Facebook accounts to Bing. PC Magazine “Starting today, five times more of your friends’ content on Facebook is searchable in the sidebar — including status updates, shared links, comments and photos from your friends,” Microsoft said. “It is now easier to see who knows and what they’ve shared related to your search. So when your friends aren’t around, Bing is the perfect stand-in.” CNET The social sidebar is the right-hand area that displays material related to queries from social networks such as Twitter, Foursquare and Klout. The bar has been beefed up to return status updates, shared links and comments from Facebook friends related to your searches. The bar also emphasizes friends’ Facebook photos in greater detail. Computerworld Previously, the results included only the Facebook friends’ “Likes,” photos and profile information. The idea is to give people more useful and personalized results. ars technica In related news, in the wake of its “graph search” announcement, Facebook removed the ability for users to opt out of appearing in search results on the site, as noted by Quartz. Because graph search relies on the content of profiles to fuel its results, the move will allow more comprehensive returns on searches but may violate the privacy of users who previously relied on that feature.

Foursquare, in Bid for Relevance, Shows Off 500 Million Check-ins (SocialTimes)
Foursquare published a map displaying its last 500 million check-ins, which it says it amassed over the last three months. With the world map, the company is making a not-so-veiled claim for relevance in the wake of a critical report released earlier this month by PrivCo, a financial research firm that specializes in private companies. The report alleged that Foursquare has had trouble raising venture funding and is likely to be purchased this year for less that its total funding. CNET The map plots out all the check-ins — which are so complete in some areas, it looks like a boundary map — from the last three months in bright points against a black background. You can zoom in to get a closer look, but most of the activity is in the United States and United Kingdom. The Next Web In a blog post today, Foursquare says that it likes to think of its recommendation system as a “Google PageRank for the real world.” The PageRank system is a closely guarded algorithm that determines the worth of pages based off of a bunch of mutable and constantly-being-tweaked factors. GigaOM In related news, Instagram announced Thursday that it’s hit 90 million monthly active users, finally releasing the metric that most people look to in evaluating the reach of a particular website or app. Monthly active users are one of the better indicators of a company’s true reach — you can have millions of users, but if they never log in and use your service, that doesn’t mean much.

California State Budget Pinched by Facebook Stock (The Daily Dot)
This week, the office of Gov. Jerry Brown drastically scaled back its expectations for how much taxable revenue the state can hope to collect from the stock over the next 18 months. According to The Wall Street Journal, last week gubernatorial aides lowered their estimates for how much revenue the state will see from Facebook stock through the end of California’s 2013-14 budget year by nearly a third.

RIP LinkedIn Answers (Mashable)
LinkedIn will pull the plug on LinkedIn Answers, its Quora-like Q&A service, on Jan. 31. The company sent an email to LinkedIn users on Thursday explaining the move.

Twitter’s User Research Team Launches Survey and Pays $100 for Your Participation (AllTwitter)
Want a cool $100? Twitter’s User Research team launched a survey, and if you’re selected, they’re offering $100 for one hour of your time.

Facebook Unleashes Cupid Potential (USA Today)
After years of playing a de facto cupid among friends, Facebook is no longer just dipping a toe in the online-dating hot tub. “For dating queries, friends of friends tends to be a good place to start,” said Tom Stocky, Facebook director of product management.

Theaters Encourage Twitter Users to Tweet in Seats (AppNewser)
While it may have been considered rude in the past, tweeting while sitting in a theater is now being embraced by some venues across the country. The idea is that cultural institutions encourage Twitter users who attend events to live-tweet shows by giving tweeters reserved seats and a hashtag.

Google/YouTube to Invest in Music Distributor Vevo? (ReadWrite)
Is Google about to make a move to control the distribution of music videos? Well, maybe. If YouTube and its corporate owner Google take a stake in music video distributor Vevo, as has been widely reported, it would be yet another sign of the tech giant’s increasing interest in video content.

Kickstarter Project Wants to Expose Idea Thieves of Silicon Valley (GigaOM)
A man claims he was burned by the money men of Silicon Valley and now wants the public to fund a documentary about idea theft. Unfortunately, his track record raises questions about his own integrity.

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VEVO’s Jim Macnie writes on the VEVO blog, “We tally view counts across online, mobile and tablet, connected devices and VEVO syndication partner sites like AOL, Facebook, Yahoo! Music and YouTube, making our counts the most accurate metric around.”

“But wait,” you may be asking yourself.  “Isn’t Gangnam Style the most-viewed music video of 2012?”  With 941 million views and counting, yes it is.  But VEVO seems to be leaving Psy’s hit out of the equation since it’s not a “VEVO” music video.  I think Donya Blaze, Mediabistro’s managing editor, hits the nail on the head, saying quite eloquently, “He who compiles the stats can skew them in his favor.”

So Gangnam Style aside, here are VEVO’s top 10 most-viewed music videos of 2012.  Enjoy!

#1 – Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe

#2 – One Direction – What Makes You Beautiful

#3 – Pitbull – International Love ft. Chris Brown

#4 – Jennifer Lopez – Dance Again ft. Pitbull

#5 – Justin Bieber – Boyfriend

#6 – LIL WAYNE – Mirror ft. Bruno Mars

#7 – One Direction – One Thing

#8 – LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem

#9 – Jennifer Lopez – On The Floor ft. Pitbull

#10 – Pitbull – Rain Over Me ft. Marc Anthony

Megan O’Neill is the resident web video expert here at Social Times.  Megan covers everything from the latest viral videos to online video news and tips, and has a passion for bizarre, original and revolutionary content and ideas.

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Jirsak / Shutterstock.com

Web audience measurement provider ComScore yesterday debuted the first commercial rankings that provide de-duplicated visit counts for desktop users and mobile users, whether through apps or a browser.

Social sites ratcheted up their prestige, even while the list of the most trafficked digital properties showed that the same sites that do well on the desktop Web do well on mobile platforms.

For instance, when total users were tallied, Facebook edged out Microsoft to take the third spot. Twitter climbed two notches, past Disney and Wal-Mart. And eBay inched past the mass content marketer Demand Media. Yelp also moved up a spot.

Google sites ranked first and was the only property to surpass 100 million unique visitors on both desktop and mobile devices.

Pandora skyrocketed 38 positions on the combined listing.

LinkedIn struggles on the smaller screen, however, falling a spot in comScore’s new consolidated rankings. Music video provider Vevo fell several notches.

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This is not VEVO’s first partnership. In March, the company started syndicating its content to Yahoo! Music.

“VEVO’s partnership with Virgin Produced brings our platform to new heights, quite literally,” said Doug McVehil, senior vice president of programming, talent and content operations at VEVO in a statement.  They’ll play traditional music videos in 30-minute blocks that include artists like Katy Perry, Coldplay, and Rihanna, and will show episodes of VEVO’s original “VEVO GO Shows.”

But the companies have also collaborated on “VEVO Sound + City,” a video version of an in-flight magazine that keeps travelers entertained while showing them other places they might like to fly with the airline. These travel videos will, of course, be pumped full of music. First on the list is the ultimate tech hub, San Francisco.

“Music is the foundation of and continues to be a meaningful part of the DNA of our brand,” added Jason Felts, CEO of Virgin Produced. “The expansion of our channel programming to include high quality music offerings through a partnership with VEVO will provide our viewers and Virgin America guests with the music content they once were only able to enjoy on the ground. We look forward to including VEVO as we expand our network of channels.”

 Image by TM – Design via Shutterstock.

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Empire State Building Shooting: There’s No ‘Crime Scene Filter’ on Instagram (BetaBeat)
After the fatal shooting at the Empire State Building in New York City on Friday, every smartphone owner in the vicinity began tweeting about the drama, many uploading photos taken on the fly – to Twitter and, perhaps more strangely, Instagram. Slate When photos like this one, depicting a crumpled, bloody man on the sidewalk appear on Instagram, I wish there was an option to “dislike” it. It feels uncomfortable to see 95 “likes” — in the form of sweet little hearts — beneath an image labeled as “dead man.” The Poynter Institute Meanwhile, The New York Times explained the graphic photo it posted on its homepage. People on social media expressed plenty of opinions about the decision, as people on social media are prone to do. Mashable There are many businesses housed inside the Empire State Building, near the location of the shooting. Among those businesses is LinkedIn, which alerted Twitter followers about two hours after the shooting that all staff in its Empire State Building office were “accounted for and safe.” ABC News A search of the apartment of the gunman killed by police outside the Empire State Building showed the shooter apparently had no intention of returning home after shooting his former co-worker. Police found an envelope with his keys left behind for his landlord, leading investigators to believe he did not expect to be back. continued…

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Judge Rejects Facebook’s ‘Sponsored Stories’ Settlement (CNET)
U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg of San Francisco, Calif., has rejected Facebook’s settlement of a class-action suit regarding an ad feature that publicizes users’ “likes” of products and services to their Facebook friends but doesn’t pay the users for the endorsements or allow them to opt out. Under the proposed deal, Facebook would have given its users more control over how their “likes” were handled and would have allowed users under 18 to opt out of sponsored stories. Wired Seeborg was concerned that the deal, which provides a $10 million payout to attorneys suing Facebook and $10 million to charity in what is known as a cy pres award “was merely plucked from thin air.” In his Friday ruling, he ordered the parties to provide more information on how it reached that amount. Bloomberg Businessweek Seeborg also said that while it isn’t feasible to divide $10 million among as many as 70 million affected customers, it isn’t sufficient to justify giving that money only to advocacy groups. Lawyers for customers had argued the groups would be “watchdogs” over Facebook. Inside Facebook Facebook is once again the second-largest video site in the United States, according to comScore. The social network saw 53 million unique video viewers in July, about a third of Google’s audience but higher than the number of unique viewers on Yahoo and Vevo. Mashable Google, thanks largely to YouTube, still enjoys a comfortable lead in the race with nearly 157 million total unique viewers. Yahoo users, however, watched more videos — 625 million to Facebook’s 327 million. Facebook users watched an average of 21.7 minutes of video throughout July, while Yahoo users consumed 70.4 hours of video content. continued…

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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