Facebook to Debut ‘New Product’ June 20 (AllFacebook)
Facebook alerted journalists by mail — snail mail, not email — that it will debut a new product this Thursday (June 20) at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Joanna Stern of ABC News reported on the event and scanned the invitation she received, saying that it arrived in a “clean white envelope sent via snail mail.”
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. 
Facebook (Unofficially) Lands on Google Glass (AllFacebook)
Although it’s only available to a super-select few, Facebook already has a home on Google Glass. It’s not the official Facebook application, but TechCrunch reports that recently launched photo-sharing app Glass to Facebook uploads photos taken with Google Glass to users’ Facebook accounts.
WhatsApp Messenger dominated both major app stores in the number of downloads in April, according to data from Distimo.
Vine, the video sharing startup acquired by Twitter and before its January launch, became the most downloaded free iOS app today, according to App Store listings.
Obama Hosts ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Chat on Twitter (USA Today)
President Obama urged Twitter followers on Monday to lobby Congress for a debt reduction deal that includes higher taxes on the wealthy. “Keep pressure on Congress,” Obama tweeted during a chat that was part of the White House “My2K” Twitter campaign to drum up support for its position in the “fiscal cliff” debate.
Privacy Groups Ask Facebook to Abort Proposed Changes to Privacy Policy (SocialTimes)
Online privacy groups Electronic Privacy Information Center and Center for Digital Democracy have written a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking him to abandon proposed changes to the social network’s privacy policies. Users would no longer have the opportunity to vote on proposed changes and privacy practices for Facebook and Instagram would be combined.
I remember when I first visited Japan in 1997. Our group of North Americans were shocked at how even teenage girls had their own cell phones, complete with dangling bells and ornaments. What surprised us more was their use of “SMS” messaging to send chat messages to one another. After I’d returned from the trip, I did some research and found that the phenomenon was also spreading all over Europe — Brits in particular sent millions of text messages per year.
It would be a few more years before we had it over on our continent, but once it hit, it hit big. That’s what it’s a bit of a changing of the guard to see that social media messaging (Facebook, Twitter, etc) is costing mobile operators billions of dollars in SMS revenue.
