Wordpress

Vast Oklahoma Tornado Kills at Least 91 (The New York Times)
Emergency crews and volunteers continued to work through the early morning hours Tuesday in a frantic search for survivors of a huge tornado that ripped through parts of Oklahoma City and its suburbs, killing at least 91 people, 20 of them children, and flattening whatever was in its path, including at least two schools. Much of the tornado damage appeared to be in the suburb of Moore, where rescue workers struggled to make their way through debris-clogged streets and around downed power lines to those who are feared trapped under mountains of rubble.

Read more

When Mel Taylor saw Hurricane Sandy coming, he saw an opportunity to launch BrigantineNow.com, a website that aggregates news focused on covering the Jersey Shore community of Brigantine, which sits north of Atlantic City. “I covered that horrible storm from a Dunkin’ Donuts and my house in Philadelphia. Nobody knew that,” said Taylor, founder of Mel Taylor Media, at America East 2013.

Read more

Gnip, which licenses so-called firehose data from Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress and Disqus to report to brands how they are being discussed on social media, will add data from several other major social networks, the company said today.

Read more

Facebook Officially Launches Lookalike Audiences (AllFacebook)
Lookalike Audiences, which Facebook began beta-testing last month, will launch this week as a targeting option on the social network’s power editor, allowing advertisers to reach out to potential customers with similar characteristics to their current customers. Facebook launched custom audiences last fall, which allowed brands to show ads to their current customers who were on the social network.

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

HootSuite today released new apps to make blogs, videos, pictures, and other media much easier to post and monitor from within the social media dashboard. The latest round of 5 apps brings the total to 41 third-party tools and applications that HootSuite clients can use to customize their dashboards.

Read more

Users of WordPress’s premium services can now pay using digital-only currency Bitcoin, the company said today. WordPress users could previously pay with PayPal or a credit card, but each of those platforms comes with limitations. For example, PayPal blocks more than 60 countries according to WordPress.

Read more

HootSuite, a Web-based social dashboard, has 4 million users, the company said today. HootSuite netted its first million users over a two-year period and its final million in just four months. The fastest growth occurred in the U.S. and Europe.

Read more

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

Mark Zuckerberg: I Won’t Sell Facebook Shares for a Year (Mashable)
Some investors and Facebook insiders may be rushing to sell off their stock in the company, but at least one person plans to hold onto his shares for a while: Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday that Zuckerberg has “no intention” to sell any of his Facebook shares for at least the next year. VentureBeat According to the document, Zuckerberg holds roughly 444 million shares of Class B common stock and an additional 60 million Class B shares issuable upon the exercise of an option. All of those shares are staying put for the foreseeable future. Bloomberg Facebook shortened the lockup period for certain employees, so 234 million shares will now be available for sale on Oct. 29, instead of Nov. 14. After Tuesday’s amendment, and accounting for the shares that Zuckerberg won’t sell, the total number freed up for sale by insiders through November will shrink to 1.01 billion from 1.44 billion previously, according to the filing. AllFacebook The bad news related to Facebook stock continues to roll in, with analysts for two of the social network’s largest underwriters, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan, lowering their price targets, according to reports. The Wall Street Journal reported that Morgan Stanley Analyst Scott Devitt dropped his price target for Facebook for the next 12 months from $38 per share to $32, warning that it could drop to as low as $17 per share. CNNMoney Zuckerberg will take the stage at this month’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference to make his first public appearance since the company’s tumultuous debut in May. Zuckerberg’s interview will take place on Sept. 11 in San Francisco. Read more

Social homepage tool RebelMouse has just released a WordPress plug-in to let publishers make their blogs look more like Pinterest. It can either work as your homepage or as a widget on your WordPress sidebar. Either way, including your tweets and Facebook posts on your blog has never looked like this before.

Read more