Yesterday morning we shared the story of the #SaveYouTube campaign and YouTuber Onision, who is saying that “YouTube is murdering off some of our favorite YouTubers.” Yesterday evening YouTube responded to the complaints saying simply, “This isn’t happening.”
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email.
Facebook Faces Shareholder Lawsuits (AP)
Facebook’s fourth day of trading as a public company saw an increase in the company’s stock price and shareholder lawsuits related to the social network’s botched initial public offering. Several shareholders who bought stock in the IPO have filed lawsuits against Facebook, its executives and Morgan Stanley, the IPO’s lead underwriter. Reuters Meanwhile, Facebook is considering a stock-listing proposal put forward by the New York Stock Exchange, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters, in the wake of a disappointing initial public offering last week on the rival NASDAQ bourse. Facebook has exchanged phone calls and emails with NYSE Euronext and are considering their pitch, the source said without elaborating on specifics. CNET Facebook plans to open its first Middle East office in Dubai next week, according to the Associated Press. This United Arab Emirates city is considered the Silicon Valley of the region, so it makes sense that the social network would put its Persian Gulf hub here. The Hill Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday began to look into the debacle of what was supposed to be the social networking company’s crowning achievement. Lawmakers want to know whether institutional investors got a sneak peek at an updated analysis, written just before the initial public offering, that gave a more pessimistic assessment of Facebook’s future revenues. AllFacebook Some Facebook page administrators are seeing messages in the top-right-hand corners of their timeline pages urging them to create Facebook ads and containing a “promote your page” button. Have you seen similar messages on Facebook pages you manage? Mashable A Facebook page and a six-minute video tell the story of a 12-year-old girl whose mother died when she was 3 years old, grew up being abused by her father and bullied on her Facebook page. Eventually, the girl commits suicide. There’s just one problem: this is all fake. Read more
Synthesizer creator Robert Moog, who would have been 78 years old today, is having the best birthday ever. Not long after Google’s artists created an interactive Moog synthesizer doodle for the homepage, a fan responded with a crazy cover of Daft Punk’s “Aerodynamic” using Google’s tool, which he posted on YouTube.
Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, a host and producer for the Huffington Post, talks about his experience with various social media feeds as he tried to cover the Arab Spring for the Huffington Post. What’s notable about the video is that he identifies the new journalistic experience and it is remarkably fast and requires a great awareness of the various available technologies. He scans Twitter, YouTube and even monitors a few Google+ Hangouts in there to get as much information he can.
YouTube has undergone a lot of changes over the past few months, from a new design to the launch of new professionally-produced content channels and more, but at what cost? Many of the most popular YouTubers have reported that since YouTube has started rolling out these new “upgrades” their subscribers, view counts and overall satisfaction with YouTube has been declining…big time.
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Massachusetts Joins Growing Crowd Probing Facebook IPO (PC Magazine)
Massachusetts regulators on Tuesday issued a subpoena to Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for Facebook’s initial public offering, in an effort to get answers about reports that some investors and not others were informed of earnings revisions for the company ahead of the IPO. The highly publicized IPO is facing scrutiny from several quarters for possible irregularities that may have occurred before the stock was floated and continued through the first day of trading. AllFacebook The hopes of collectors who sought to own one share of Facebook stock from its initial public offering last week were dashed, as paper stock certificates will not be made available, after all. CNNMoney reported that Computershare, which handles shareholder records for the social network, alerted GiveAShare.com and OneShare late last week that there would be no paper stock certificate. Reuters Facebook has agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleged the site’s “Sponsored Stories” feature publicized users’ “likes” without compensation or the ability to opt out, according to a court document filed on Tuesday. The proposed class action lawsuit, filed in a San Jose, Calif., federal court, could have included nearly one of every three Americans, with billions of dollars in damages, court documents say. PCWorld Facebook’s Timeline profiles may be getting a redesign, but this one probably won’t trigger a backlash. The new Timeline design, spotted by TPM Livewire, condenses the biographical information at the top of the page, so it’s nested within the user’s banner image instead of appearing below. Links to the user’s friends list, photos, locations and likes are tucked neatly underneath the banner, next to the user’s profile picture. Alongside those links, a new button called “Summary” leads to a list of major life events. CNET A federal judge has refused to order a Norwegian website that describes itself as “the number one socializing porn and sex network” to turn over its name to Facebook. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White last week ruled that the court had no jurisdiction because Facebook, which sued in California, had failed to show that the owner of website Faceporn had targeted residents of the state. Read more
Last May YouTube celebrated its sixth birthday with an announcement that more than 48 hours of video were being uploaded every minute and that the site was racking up 3 billion daily views. In January of this year, they increased that number to 60 hours of video per minute and now, to celebrate birthday number 7 YouTube has announced that a whopping 72 hours of video is being uploaded to the site every minute!
Happy Friday, ladies and gents! The workweek is coming to a close and we’ve put together a list of laugh-inducing videos to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. This week’s Friday Morning Laughs includes a Lamborghini crash, a funny kid, a hilarious bachelor party prank, gingers and more. So sit back, relax and get ready to laugh.
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Study: Google Ads Work Better Than Facebook’s (Boston Herald)
Facebook may be this week’s stock market darling, but when it comes to online display advertising, search engine Google provides advertisers with “significantly more value” than the social media giant in terms of growth rates, performance, targeting options and formats, according to a study released Tuesday. The study compares the value of Facebook advertising to Google’s Display Network. PC Magazine Facebook moved quickly — again — to address concerns that it wasn’t doing enough to satisfy mobile users, buying the developers of the Lightbox Android photo app. However, the company also made it clear that Facebook was not acquiring the company or the photos that users had stored on the Lightbox website, just the developer team. AdAge General Motors said Tuesday that it is “reassessing” its spending on Facebook advertising — about $10 million — but “remains committed” to the social network as part of “an aggressive content strategy with all our products and brands.” Meanwhile, Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, said that the automaker is bullish about Facebook ads — particularly “sponsored stories” that contain a social layer — and intends to “accelerate” spending on them. AllFacebook Facebook followed up last week’s introduction of its app center with two new metrics to its insights for applications: app ratings and negative feedback. The new app ratings dashboard will bring developers information on how users rated their apps with the five-star ratings system Facebook recently implemented. The negative feedback feature shows developers how many times stories from their apps have been hidden or reported as spam, as well as how many times the app itself has been blocked. Mashable Two Colombian criminals almost got away with robbing an Internet cafe, but one of them checked Facebook first — and ended up being identified and arrested because he forgot to log out. The two men whipped out guns at the cash register to demand money and made a clean getaway on a motorcycle. After the men escaped, an employee at the cafe called the police turning in information from the Facebook page that led to his arrest. Read more
At the beginning of a video of Steve Garfield’s presentation from Blog World & New Media Expo LA 2011, Paul Colligan offers up a quick tip that can do wonders in making your videos more discoverable in Google.
