Groupon Stock Drops 12% As Customer Refunds Increase

While other IPOs such as LinkedIn and YELP have had tremendous recent success, social buying startup Groupon has been on a bit of a roller coaster ride and it looks like they just went over a steep drop.  The stock is down over 10% today on news that four-quarter revenue and income is down due to a higher than expected number of customers asking for refunds.
Groupon is a social buying service that allows users to buy specific items at discount as long as a large number of people participate in a given deal.  For example, a massage parlour can offer 30% off their regular price, as long as 100 people purchase the deal.  This incentivizes users to invite their friends to participate in the deal, and if the 100 number is hit, the deal is activated.
The problem is that a lot of businesses have not prepared themselves for the influx of customers, and the poor service has sometimes led to users demanding refunds.  Another anecdotal reason for the refunds is that the deals are often so enticing that people begin to hoard massive numbers of deals, but then realize they probably won’t need to cash in on 6 massages in the next few months.  Read more about the refund issue here.

As we can see in the chart, the stock began to rebound after a big hit in November during the IPO, and had reached heights above 20.  As reported in MarketWatch, Justin Post of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch had recommended a buy on the stock, but the company has not performed as well as hoped.

“Groupon has been our most disappointing call in 2012 as we thought 4Q margin upside, a rebound in 4Q take rates, and data suggesting an improving competitive landscape would improve sentiment on the stock,” wrote Justin Post of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch in a note to clients on Monday.

This is a far cry from when Google was attempting to buy the company at a valuation of $6B, although today’s price does have its market capitalization at $8B… but that number is falling fast.

Foursquare Shuts Down Location API for “Girls Around Me” App

A recent application that allowed users to spot the girls that were within their vicinity has had some of its rights revoked by Foursquare.  The app, called “Girls Around Me”, was scanning public Foursquare and Facebook to determine whether there were any females in your location.  If a girl had checked in to a location near you or had listed personal location information on Facebook, GAM would find this and show their position overlaid on a map.  Obviously, when this came to light people were a bit unnerved by the whole thing.
The app was first discovered by John Brownlee over at Cult of Mac and has since gone viral.  John tells the interesting story of showing this app to friends to set their “skin crawling”, and explains how the most worrying thing about the app is how it uses public information — nothing the app is doing is technically forbidden.  It raises a few questions for platform creators — questions that other services Tumblr have been facing recently: Do you draw moral and ethical boundaries on the content on your site?
It seems like the answer is yes for extreme cases like these.  There’s no reason to let this application continue to provide potentially dangerous information to people, and Foursquare took the opportunity to emphasize this by shutting down GAM’s access to the Foursquare location API.  This was followed by Apple taking the application down from the App Store.

4 Facebook Features Marketers Can’t Afford to Ignore

Justyn Howard is the CEO of Sprout Social, a social media management platform that empowers leading companies to effectively manage their social channels. Follow him on Twitter @justyn and read his blog at SproutInsights.
If you have a brand or a business to market chances are you’re using a social media management application to monitor online mentions, schedule updates, and generate reports. But if you really want to be an effective marketer, you need to develop a deeper understanding of which networks are most vital to your company, and what network features are key. In Facebook’s case, we’re talking about some powerful community management components that are unmatched by its competitors, and often overlooked by marketing pros. Here are the four that simply can’t be ignored.

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1. Activity Log

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Facebook’s activity log is like a Facebook Timeline for every interaction that fans have with your page. It also includes updates you’ve made, like comments or Facebook Questions. What makes this tool unique and powerful is that it offers an archive of your Facebook interactions that you can review at any time. This is useful for tracking how well you’re following up and engaging with fans, and what kind of feedback you’re getting from them during specific events.

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2. Demographic Targeting

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The manage tab in Facebook Page’s Admin Panel allows you to publish updates to specific demographic groups. The feature isn’t as robust as it should be, but it lets you reach out to people who, for example, speak a certain language. This is useful if your page serves audiences in different countries.
Netflix is a prime example. Due to the nature of its content licensing deals, the site offers different movie and TV-show libraries in the United States than it does in Canada. If the Netflix page administrator wants to announce a new movie that’s only available in one country, he or she can hide that update from fans in the other. Other options include making a post completely invisible to people outside of a certain location, or to people under a certain age.

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3.Twitter Linking

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Cross-promoting between social networks is a critical component of any social media marketing strategy. Facebook recognizes this, which is why it offers the ability to link your Facebook page to Twitter for the purpose of publishing updates to both sites.
The one caveat is that the implementation here is slanted pretty heavily towards promoting Facebook. This means tweets that originate from your Facebook page always have a link back to Facebook. If that’s not your thing, you can supplement with a third-party tool.

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4. Smart Moderation

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You probably already know how to moderate individual comments on Facebook, but you can also dive into your Facebook Page’s settings and add specific terms you want to automatically block. While it’s better to allow open conversation on your Facebook page — customers don’t like to be censored — there will be specific situations that call for more control. This tool will give you that.

Tumblr Hits 20 Billion Total Posts

Tumblr has hit a major milestone — 20 billion posts — a huge increase from the 12 billion posts figure it reached in November.
“Forgot to make a big deal of this earlier, but Tumblr crossed the 20-billion-post mark Monday night,” said a tweet from the official Tumblr account, with a link to Tumblr’s About page, which sports a counter showing the total number of Tumblr posts.
Currently, the number sits at more than 20 billion posts, 51 million of which were created today. Tumblr currently has more than 49.7 million total blogs and is due to hit the 50 million milestone any day now.
The rapid rise of Tumblr in the past year has been nothing short of amazing. In June 2011, Tumblr announced it had more blogs than WordPress.com — more than 20 million. It took less than nine months for Tumblr to double that number.
For comparison, WordPress powers more than 72 million blogs, about half of which are hosted on WordPress.com.

The simplicity and ease of use of Tumblr on one hand and similarity to microblogging services such as Twitter on the other, have apparently hit the right spot with a large number of users. One thing Tumblr still lacks is a viable business plan — despite significant funding. 

25 Outstanding Kitty-Themed Tumblrs [LOTS OF CATS]

1. Cats. Where They Do Not Belong

 

From the creator: "I decided there is not enough internet space devoted to pictures of cats trying to fit into anything they can, so I have graciously decided to take on this challenge."

We thank you.

2. Contortion Cats!

 

As far as "collections of contorted cats" go, this is particularly fine one.

 

3. The Kitten Covers

 

You'll get nothing but whiskers and win by following The Kitten Covers.

4. Dream Cats

 

With images of "girls and cats, cats in soft focus, cats on film and dream cats" you're sure to find something Pin-worthy here.

5. GIF Cat

 

A GIF-based blog slaving to "make the internet a better place."

6. Writers and Kitties

 

"Where literature has whiskers and pointy ears." You'll find plenty of vintage pics of literary types and their feline friends.

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7. Cats in Clothes

 

There are no surprises here. Just cats. In clothes.

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8. Garfield Minus Garfield

 

"Dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle," Garfield Minus Garfield is surreal and funny.

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9. F*** Yeah Kitties

 

Simply celebrating cats.

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10. C$shcats

 

Cats plus piles and piles of cash make for strangely compelling viewing.

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11. Review of My Cat

 

This blog contains reader "reviews" of their cats, rating them on appearance, sociability, usefulness, huggability and a final, overall grade.

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12. Cat Watching You Have Sex

 

"You've always pretended they weren't watching you get it on. You've always been wrong."

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13. Worldy Cats

 

Cats from all corners of the globe feature on this feline-themed travelogue.

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14. Cats That Look Like Ron Swanson

 

Even if you don't know who Ron Swanson is, you should get some laughs here.

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15. Barely Feral

 

Barely Feral says it answers the question "what if there was a porn site designed by cats for cats?"

It's an X-rated answer, so adult-only click-throughs, please.

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16. I ♥ Cat Gifs

 

"All cat GIFs, all the time."

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17. Stoned Cats

 

Drugs are bad. If you're not convinced, check out what they have reduced these poor animals to.

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18. Cats in Front of Macs

 

This blog shares the "pain" of cats getting in the way of your laptop/iPad/iMac, etc.

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19. Aw Yeah Pudgy Kitties

 

If you like a cat with a bit of meat on its bones, this blog is for you.

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20. Celebrity Pussy

 

As "your premier source for celebrities with cats," Celebrity Pussy is both a fabulous online image library and we to like imagine, a constant source of disappointment from, ahem, certain Google users

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21. CAT SCIENTISTS OF THE 1960S

 

Lest we forget the important work done by cat scientists during the Sixties.

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22. F*** Yeah Cats

 

More cats.

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23. We Are the 99 Purrcent

 

The Tumblr home of the occu-paw movement.

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24. Cats in Ties

 

There's a joke somewhere about "The Long Tail," but we'll just say this is splendidly niche.

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25. The Cat Scan

 

Finally, our favorite cat-themed Tumblr is the glorious The Cat Scan.

It is probably responsible for a large percentage of cat scratches in recent years as kitty-owners try and persuade their recalcitrant pets to sit still on a humming, flashing box of evil long enough to be scanned.

Those that succeed -- we salute you!

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How Is Social Media Evidence Used In Divorce Cases? [Infographic]

A new trend is emerging within the realm of family law—lawyers are turning to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to help them with their cases.  An exclusive infographic provided by California Divorce Attorneys takes a deeper look at this trend.

The infographic, ‘How Family Law Attorneys Use Social Media Evidence In Court Cases,’ not only explores how social media is used in litigation (and specifically divorce cases), but also explores a number of cases in which social media was key.

The infographic reports that, “Since 2010 social media has been a key part of nearly 700 cases.”  It is used to determine a person’s state of mind, evidence of communication between individuals, evidence of time and place (i.e. check-ins), and evidence of actions.

Check out the full infographic below and let us know what you think.  Does it make you want to go into Facebook, Twitter and other social media services and delete anything that may be incriminating?

Viralheat Adds Social Media Publishing With Version 2.0,

Viralheat is launching version 2.0 of its social media tools today, an upgrade that takes the product beyond the standard monitoring and listening.
One of the biggest changes in version 2.0 is a new feature that Viralheat is calling engagement, and which basically means you can post comments to Facebook and Twitter directly from the service. Posting to social networks may not sound like a big deal, but CEO Raj Kaddam says it makes life a lot easier for customers.
Instead of using one tool (such as, well, Viralheat) for monitoring social media mentions and sentiment, then jumping to a different application (such as CoTweet) to actually publish content, Viralheat allows you to do both in one place. Wherever you are in the service, there’s a button at the top right that lets you post to social networks. When you’re reading through Facebook and Twitter comments, you can hover over them to get more details about the commenter, then click to respond directly.
Viralheat 2.0 also refreshes the product’s user interface to one what Kaddam says is “more of an inbox-type layout.” One of the big goals, he says, was to make it easy to access all of Viralheat’s reports with fewer clicks. And the upgrade also incorporates Facebook Insights, giving companies more information about the conversations on the Facebook Pages, and more data from Twitter.
The company’s investors include Mayfield Fund. You can see a demo of the new version below.

LinkedIn Chairman Sells Small Stake of Facebook Stock

Bloomberg is reporting that Reid Hoffman, the visionary CEO of LinkedIn, is selling some of his Facebook stock that he had purchased as an early investor in the social network.  It only represents a minority of his overall share in the company, and he claims it is part of a “general diversification strategy.”  This makes sense, but it does raise the question about whether Facebook will actually maintain its current valuation of nearly $100 billion.
Hoffman was part of the seed funding round in 2004, and has held on to the stock since then.  An estimate of his stake is 0.5% of the company, and seeing as he’s holding on to the majority of his shares we can estimate his sale to be up to 0.24% of Facebook – a hefty amount.  Reid is also the largest shareholder of LinkedIn (LNKD) with $1.9 billion of stock given its current price of $99 giving it a market capitalization of 9.8B.
Facebook’s IPO looks to be about $5B worth of stock, and at about 5% of the company, which gives them the $100B valuation.  For more news about the IPO, check out AllFacebook.

Employee Passwords Are None of Your Business, Says Facebook

If the growing number of companies and law enforcement agencies asking job applicants for Facebook passwords was encouraging you to do the same, think again.
Facebook Friday issued a warning to employers that requesting passwords is an invasion of privacy that opens companies to legal liabilities.
The world's largest social network also is threatening legal action. Wrote Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, in a lengthy post: "We'll take action to protect the privacy and security of our users, whether by engaging policymakers or, where appropriate, by initiating legal action, including by shutting down applications that abuse their privileges."
The company says it has seen a "distressing increase" of reports of employers attempting to access user accounts, Facebook's Egan wrote. "The most alarming of these practices is the reported incidences of employers asking prospective or actual employees to reveal their passwords," she said.
A user should never be forced to cough up private information just to get a job—"and as the friend of a user, you shouldn’t have to worry that your private information or communications will be revealed to someone you don’t know and didn’t intend to share with just because that user is looking for a job," Egan wrote.
The company has changed its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, making requests to share or solicit a Facebook log-in a violation of the rules.
The American Civil Liberties Union this week used the reports to urge support for its "Demand your dotRights campaign."
ACLU attorney Catherine Crump called the password solicitation an "invasion of privacy."
"You’d be appalled if your employer insisted on opening up your postal mail to see if there was anything of interest inside," she said. "It’s equally out of bounds for an employer to go on a fishing expedition through a person’s private social media account."
The ACLU of Maryland currently is fighting for a social media privacy bill in the state, where the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services asks applicants to "voluntarily" provide access to their social media accounts during interviews.

New Facebook App Suite Turns Brand Pages Into Crowdsourcing Hubs

Name: Napkin Labs

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Quick Pitch: Napkin Labs makes interactive marketing tools for Facebook.
Genius Idea: A suite of customized apps that make brand pages interactive.

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Brands are set on getting customers to Like their Facebook pages. But then what?
Napkin Labs launched a new suite of Facebook apps this week that it hopes will help answer this question.
The company offers four different apps. “Brainstorm” is a basic crowdsourcing platform that lets brands ask their community a question. “Photoboard” collects and displays community-sourced images. “Pipeline” turns Facebook pages into open forums. And “Superfans” shows who participates the most in campaigns, then rewards them. Most of the tools come with analytics and moderation features.
“I think a lot of brands are starting to realized their Facebook pages can go beyond ‘great, you like us now,’ and actually shape the future of the brand,” Napkin Labs CEO Riley Gibson tells Mashable.
Napkin Labs adapted some functionality of the new Facebook apps from its previous product, which created a separate online “lab space” for brands to collaborate with their customers on products, design and anything else. The separate space had game features — such as a points system and rewards for participation — but it was still asking customers to visit someplace new on the web. Convincing such migration is no easy feat, so it’s not surprising Napkin Labs eventually decided to instead build on existing brand pages.
As Gibson puts it, “We realized the ecosystem within Facebook was perfect.”
Napkin Labs recently demonstrated how its Facebook apps will work with a custom app it made for Domino’s Facebook page called “Think Oven.” Users could submit their designs to the page in the hopes of winning one of $200 rewards.
The startup says pages experience a 29% increase in Likes after running a Facebook contest. But brands will have to decide for themselves how much that’s worth. This is not your average Facebook app installation. Napkin Labs works with clients to customize the pages, and thus its campaigns start at $1,000.
Would you pay that much to customize your brand page, or are there better ways to engage the community that don’t involve expensive customized tools? Let us know in the comments.

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

How Booze Goes Social for Saint Patrick’s Day

Saint Patrick’s Day is known for heavy boozing, and major Irish brands like like Guinness, Jameson and Baileys are taking the annual opportunity to full marketing advantage.

Thanks to digital and social media, these beverage companies have devised innovative ways to make consumers feel a part of the party without even setting foot out the door.
Using livestream, social media and interactive tactics, these brands are able to turn the Irish holiday into one big global party — in fact, some are going as far as attempting to achieve a Guinness World Record for it.
Whether it’s for VIP vacation prizes or simply more likes on Facebook — here are the big and small digital things brands are doing in marketing for St. Patrick’s Day.

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Jameson

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Jameson is sending out a global invitation to “embrace your Irish spirit,” relying on 35 radio stations from 11 different countries that will broadcast from the Old Jameson Distillery. On top of that, there will be a livestream available online from ten different Jameson global parties.
Looking for party decoration or drink recipes? Jameson has made a St. Patrick’s Day Guide with a party pdf that includes cocktail ideas, party banners and even a guide to Irish slang.
If whiskey tasting’s your thing, Jameson regrets to inform you it has yet to discover a way to make that virtually possible. However, there is a video that gives a good introduction to the Irish whiskey. You can even download a comparative tasting mat to use as you watch along.

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Guinness

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Guinness is gearing up for St. Patrick’s Day with hopes to achieve the Guinness World Record for “Largest St. Patrick’s Day Celebration.” This year, the company is launching a global online campaign to officially make it the “Friendliest Day of the Year.”
“Every year, St Patrick’s Day is celebrated by millions of people all around the world as a special occasion imbued with the spirit of true Irish friendliness – it has become the perfect opportunity to get together with friends, raise a pint of Guinness and enjoy one of the greatest days of the year,” says Guinness’s master brewer Fergal Murray.

After signing the campaign, Guinness has an animated interactive infographic filled with facts about its beer and St. Patrick’s Day. For example, did you know every year 13,000,000 pints of Guinness are poured on St. Patrick’s Day? That’s enough to fill 60 percent of the Empire State Building.
Each factoid on the infographic is sharable to your social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and email.
There’s also a Guinness Storehouse app, available for Android and iOS, that lets you tour the storehouse from your phone and browse the Dublin skyline. Additional features include an extensive timeline about the company’s history and recipes.

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Baileys

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For users in need of a little Irish spirit on their Facebook profile, Baileys Irish Cream has an app for that. You can jazz up your profile picture with a “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” logo from an app on the Baileys Facebook Page.
Whether you want a hot drink, cold drink or dessert, the Baileys website has plenty of recipes when you’re ready for a St. Patrick’s Day nightcap.
Is St. Patrick’s Day a big seller for your company? Let us know in the comments how you’re celebrating.

Posterous Acquired By Twitter

Twitter has acquired Posterous, the blog-posting service that grew out of the Y Combinator program in 2008. The terms of the sale were not disclosed, but Posterous seems to have traded its staff for Twitter’s wider audience.
In September Posterous launched Spaces to give users more sharing control over their content and so far, the new features have been successful in increasing engagement. According to the company’s blog, “four times as many photos and five times as many videos are shared on private Spaces as on public Spaces.”
Shortly afterward, the company started raising money. The most recent round of funding through Redpoint Ventures and Jafco Ventures brought in $5 million, for a total of $10.1 million since the founders first participated in the Y Combinator fundraising and mentoring program in 2008.
News of the acquisition follows a report in late February that Posterous had “absolutely no plans to sell,” according to TheNextWeb’s sources.
But sometime between then and yesterday’s announcement, Posterous changed its tune. They wrote, “We couldn’t be happier about bringing our team’s expertise to a product that reaches hundreds of millions of users around the globe.”
Twitter explained in a blog post, “We’re always looking for talented people who have the passion and personality to join Twitter. Acquisitions have given us people and technology that have enabled us to more quickly build a better Twitter for you.”
They weren’t kidding. Gawker got a hold of Twitter’s 2011 financials and learned that the company was hemmorhaging money, in part by doubling its team of 450 employees in mid 2011 to nearly 900. Twitter has since been working on new sources of revenue, including a self-serve ad platform, paid access to historical tweets, and smartphone ads.
Twitter has assured Posterous users that the blogging platform “will remain up and running without disruption,” while Posterous has an FAQ page that will at some point have more information on how to transfer your files in the event that this changes. But our sister blog, AllTwitter, advises users to start packing now.

Ethics and Social Media: Where Should You Draw The Line?

As social media usage continues to rise, it’s only natural that statistic correlations will be made about the individuals who use the medium. This isn’t a bad thing; it’s common to deep-dive into demographic information and behavioral data. While there will always be exceptions to the "correlations" that emerge from such data, universal truths about social networking usage and user behavior can be valuable.
The Ethics Resource Center (ERC) is the oldest non-profit organization in the U.S. dedicated to independent research and advancement of high ethical standards and practices in both public and private institutions. Since 1994, the ERC has produced the National Business Ethics Survey (NBES), available for free to the public, to gather information about employees’ perspectives of ethics in the workplace. Dr. Patricia J. Harned, president of the ERC, says the NBES is the only longitudinal study that represents the views of the U.S. workforce in business.
The ERC’s latest report is one of the first to explore the possible connection between ethics and social media. “Social networking has become very important in our culture, and we wondered if the technology is influencing employees’ views about ethics at work," Harned explains. "Additionally, over the past few years, we have seen companies establish policies concerning social networking in the workplace, so this year it seemed fitting to add questions on the topic.”
National Business Ethics Survey results
One of the most fascinating conclusions in the report is that "active social networkers show a higher tolerance for activities that could be considered unethical." But Harned says the findings are not an indictment about the character of social networkers: “It appears that they are more willing to consider things that are ‘gray areas’ – issues that are not always clear in company policies as wrong; and that’s an area for further study.”
The report also points out that active social networkers are at higher risk for observing misconduct. Harned stresses that it's observing wrongdoing, not necessarily participating in it. “You could also look at another set of our responses – particularly the high number of active social networkers who reported misconduct – and say that social networkers behaved appropriately,” she explains.
Defining ethics and influence Factors
In order to understand any potential connection between ethics and social networks, it only makes sense to step back and discuss what ethical behavior means. Jay Shepherd, author of the book Firing at Will: A Manager’s Guide, sums up unethical behavior with a sentence.
“It’s like pornography: You know it when you see it. It’s as simple as knowing the right thing to do, then doing the wrong thing.”
Harned adds that perceptions of ethics are influenced by many things. “One influence is the values that we learn as children. But another aspect is the influence of people along the way in our lives," she says. "It could be that there is something about the conversations and the world view that comes through the connections of social networks that influences employees’ views about what is right and wrong.”
Is there a logical connection between ethics and social media?
There is some skepticism about trying to draw conclusions about ethics based upon social networking usage. Shepherd suggests the study perpetuates old-school thinking. “The idea that social networkers are more apt to be unethical is absurd. It’s just that you’re more likely to hear about it. In my experience, social media participants are likely to be more advanced in terms of relationships and thoughtfulness – not less.”
One definition in the study that drew attention was the classification of “active social networker” as one who "spends 30% or more of their work day participating on various social network sites.” Shepherd says his reaction was, “Seriously? That’s a ridiculous amount of time. Those employees aren’t even working; who cares what they think?”
Maybe it’s exactly this time-wasting factor that creates the perception toward connecting social networking and ethics. Dwane Lay, human resources director at Missouri Baptist Medical Center, also feels the connection might not be directly causal. “Social media tools are the latest in a long line of time-stealers in the workplace, following in the footsteps of March Madness brackets, afternoon golf games, morning water cooler gossip or cigarette breaks," Lay explains. "But social media like Twitter and Facebook are more visible from a distance (of both time and space), so they are easier to criticize and quantify.”
Should ethics blend into social policies?
Both ethics and social media are important in the workplace, so the question becomes: What is the best way to manage them? Should they be treated as two distinct conversations? Or should ethics be addressed in social media policies? Shepherd recommends keeping it simple. “My social media policy is just two words but covers everything: ‘Be professional.’ Unprofessional employees are going to act unethically whether or not they’re plugged in to social media.”
Kristen Fyfe, senior communications manager at training and development association ASTD, points out the component that both ethics and social media must have in common to be successful. “Clarity is the most effective element for both ethics and social media policies," Fyfe says. "Companies that have not incorporated behavior expectations into their employee handbooks should make that a top priority.”
Ensuring both ethics compliance and social media success
Whether you choose to incorporate ethics into your social media policy or handle the topics independently, there’s agreement that setting expectations, conducting training and holding people accountable is necessary. Lay shares some practical advice on how to ensure employees are in compliance with corporate ethics, but it really applies to any policy, including social media.
“First of all, read the policy. Not fun, granted, but educational," he says. "Second, remember that if you identify yourself as a member of a company or organization, you are always on stage. Act like it. How you respond online will have as much or more resonance than in person, so either be on your best behavior or don’t act as a brand advocate.”
More questions than answers
Perhaps there aren’t any definitive conclusions about ethics and social media usage. After all, social networking is still in its relative infancy in the workplace. But we’re learning that social influence exists, and its true impact is just coming to the surface. Further exploration across the social landscape is needed.

Army Warns Of Danger Of Geotagging

While for an ordinary civilian the automatic geotagging of your photos or check-ins might be convenient, in the military it can be a lethal mistake. In 2007, geotagged photos of a new fleet of helicopters allowed enemy forces to mortar the base and destroy several of them; it could just as easily have been a field hospital or barracks.
The Army has therefore published an article calling attention to this fact, though its casual tone suggests that they aren’t ready to take serious action on the issue. A warning is all it is, and perhaps also an acknowledgement that sometimes it’s better to bend with the breeze than fight it.
While soldiers in the field aren’t likely to be checking in to engagements or taking pictures of their fortifications for the kids, such things are still going to happen. Whether it’s enlisted personnel or people like embedded journalists, DoD researchers, civilian contractors, or what have you, the risk of someone posting sensitive information is real. And with the speed of sharing today, such data can propagate rapidly enough that it’s a serious security risk.
The army’s power to control the devices used by its soldiers and those around them is limited. And any attempt at locational lockdown would almost certainly end in failure. Luckily, it can still minimize the risk by making social media part of a soldier’s situational awareness. It’s a testament to the power and reach of social media that it should be entered into tactical calculations.
And while location sharing is framed primarily as a risk today, it’s obvious from the military’s pursuit of smartphones as an integral part of a soldier’s equipment that they value it as a potential asset as well.

ContraVille? Konami Signs Up to Make Games for Zynga.com

There are no allegiances in gaming anymore.  There was a time when developing games for the Nintendo Entertainment System meant that you were strongly pressured not to make games for other consoles.  For me, I was on the Nintendo ship until they lost Square and Final Fantasy VII was produced for the Sony Playstation.  Well, these days platform creators like Nintendo and Sony have new competition in the form of Zynga and OnLive, and Zynga just recently announced that Konami, one of the largest console game makers in the world, will be producing games for their new Zynga.com platform.
The news was reported by Rob Dyer, the head of publishing at Zynga who’s heading up the Zynga.com platform, at GDC in San Francisco on Thursday.  In addition to Konami, Zynga has recruited Playdemic and Rebellion as well, and explained a few details of the payment process.  When using Facebook credits as most of the games use right now, these publishers will be getting 70% of the 70% of revenue that Zynga gets, putting publishers at receiving 49% of revenue from a sale on Zynga.com.
That said, games that appear on Zynga.com will take advantage of massive cross-advertising opportunities and will join one the fastest growing social gaming company on the web.  It may be a great long term strategy to join the network and make your games known to gamers as Zynga.com continues to expand and provide new offerings.  Inside Social Games points out that “Konami and Rebellion also make for strange bedfellows as both developers have little to no experience in social games.”  This is true of Zynga’s strategy at this point, and speaks to the fact that Zynga must be aggressively courting small game publishers right now to get them to join the network — it would be quite difficult to persuade even mid-size game publishers to join and give 30% of their revenue to Zynga.
We’ll see how things progress for Zynga.com, and whether they begin to mould themselves into their own social network in the future.  Are they attempting to go the route of something like OMGPOP?

Foursquare Co-founder Naveen Selvadurai Checks Out

Three years after launching Foursquare in New York City, co-founder Naveen Selvadurai announced that he is leaving the company.
During his tenure, the Foursquare community grew from roughly one hundred Beta testers to 15 million people using the check-in service and 750,000 businesses on the merchant platform.  The site has logged more than 1.5 billion check-ins to date.
With over 100 employees, the growing company has moved its headquarters to a bigger office in SoHo and added a satellite office in San Francisco.
GigaOm writer Om Malik was suspicious when when Spark Capital, one of Foursquare’s investors, bought $50 million worth of employee stock last month. Today, Selvadurai confirmed in a blog post that he would be leaving the company at the end of the month.
“After three years, I feel I’ve done all I can do and I’m moving on,” wrote Selvadurai. “[Co-founder Dennis Crowley] and I have been discussing timing for a while, and we decided that now, on this anniversary, it feels right to begin the transition.”
Selvadurai will oversee the release of a few “final projects” before he leaves, and will remain on the board of advisers as the rest of the company moves forward.
“But spring is time for things that are new,” Selvadurai continued, “and I realize that I have a desire to do something new as well. I’m not sure about my exact next steps, but I’ll probably get back to what I love most – being an entrepreneur, learning and building new things.”

Turkish Social Ad Network Co-Founder On The Growth Of Social Networking In Turkey [Interview]

Usually we tend to focus on the world of social media and the statistics surrounding social media in North America, so when a Turkish Social Ad Network reached out to me with a pitch I thought I’d take the opportunity to find out what’s going on in the Turkish social networking world.  Gülseren Arslan, co-founder of adnboost, shared some interesting statistics with me that reveal that social networking in Turkey is booming.  Read on to find out more.

Before asking Arslan about social media usage in Turkey, I asked her to provide a bit of background on adnboost.  She founded adnboost with co-founder Cevdet Süer and Ahmet Arslan in April 2011.  She tells me, “adnboost is a new social advertising network in Turkey and is the first and only Facebook ad providing company in Turkey.”
The company recently announced a partnership with SupersonicAds, an international leader in virtual currency monetization for online games.  Arslan tells me, “SupersonicAds’ experienced team and technology combined with the company’s know-how and our strong background in Turkey’s internet advertising industry will enable us to be the largest social media ad network in Turkey with a reach of more than 20 million people performing an estimated 200 million activities on social networks per month.”
Because adnboost specializes in Facebook advertising I asked Arslan if she could provide any statistics about Facebook usage in Turkey.  She explained, “the most popular social network in Turkey is Facebook.  Currently there are 31,247,120 Facebook users in Turkey, which makes it number 6 in the ranking of all Facebook statistics by country.”
But Facebook isn’t the only popular social network in Turkey.  There are an estimated 6.5 million Twitter users in Turkey, 1 million LinkedIn users, 1 million Google Plus users and 1 million Eksi sozluk users (Eski sozluk is a collaborative hypertext ‘dictionary’).  Arslan points out the impressive fact that “Only 4% of Turkish online users do NOT use social networks.” This could have something to do with the fact that Turkeys population is very young, with the average age being 29.2.
Gülseren Arslan hypothesizes that the “large percentage of young people in the country increases the popularity of social media” and explains that “70 percent of the Turkish population is under 35 years of age.”  Additionally, she points out that Turkish people like engagement.  “Turkey has been named the most social and flirtatious country in the world by a new study by social network Tagged.  Turks, and specifically Turkish men, sent the most friend requests as well as the most “winks”—a flirty communication method on Tagged similar to the Facebook Poke.”
Are you familiar with the Turkish social networking scene?  We’d love to hear your experience below.

“Halal Facebook” Set to Help Muslims Get Social

A new social network called Salamworld is set to launch during the month of Ramadan (between July and August) and plans to serve Muslims as a place to get to know one another and socialize.  Chairman Abdulvahit Hiyazov emphasizes that the project is a business project and has no agenda related to political movements.
If you check out the Salamworld site, you can see that what the site is trying to do is give Islamic web users a social home and a place for various communities to connect.  The Salamworld team has clearly been working hard to establish strong ties with various Islamic communities around the world, as evidenced by their current edition of the newsletter.  Whether this will translate into government-backed promotion of the network is yet to be seen, as there are currently parts of the Islamic world such as Iran that are brutally fighting against social media, attempting to ban users from using it.
Unfortunately, the Salamworld project is still behind the curtain.  There aren’t any sneak peeks or screenshots at this point, despite the fact the project is launching in a few months.  So will this social network be the next big international social media trend?  Salamworld thinks so: they are hoping to achieve 50 million users within the next 3 years.  The company chairman estimates that there are 300 million Muslim users on Facebook alone.  Whether those users will flock to Salamworld will largely depend on the quality of the user experience.  We’ll keep you in the loop.

Yammer Raises $85 Million In Funding

Social ERM (employee relationship management) software provider Yammer have raised another $85 Million from investors.  This comes after a round of $17 million and shows that the company is planning to continue it’s aggressive growth and platform improvement strategy.

The money will specifically be used to hire more sales and engineering staff members and also improve advertising.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to see Yammer using the money to acquire other, smaller start-ups in the space as well.
After tripling sales growth in 2011 the company has acquired a net total of 4 million users of their social networking service.  The software is best described as Facebook for your company.  Every employee has a profile and wall, and users are able to exchange ideas and stalk each other just like on Facebook.  The home news feed is extremely useful in Yammer, and you can see what your colleagues are up to at a glance.
Yammer’s not alone, though.  The space is heating up, and public company and competitor Jive recently announced their revenues had surged by 53% over the last quarter.

Google’s Plan To Compete With Apple’s Multi-Platform Siri? Google “Assistant”

The tech world woke up today to reports of an imminent Apple TV, as Apple works to solidify deals with content providers. The rumored television product could indeed be ground-breaking, not just for television, but for computing as a whole. We’re hearing exactly what Nick Bilton reported earlier this year, that Apple is going to integrate Siri into Apple TV as well as other iOS devices.
In fact a multi-platform Siri could be unveiled as early as next week, when Apple announces the iPad 3.
Hardcore right? Well our friends over in Mountain View, never ones to miss out on an opportunity to compete, have come up with their own answer to Siri, Google ‘Assistant’ (earlier reports had it pegged as ‘Majel,‘ I have no idea whether that name was scrapped but do know that ‘Assistant’ is not a part of GoogleX as Majel was).
Google has had the in-house voice technology for ages — it hired Mike Cohen, the guy who started Nuance. But ‘Assistant’ is set to go beyond Siri in many ways, most importantly in that the search company will retain complete control of all the layers involved.
The project, helmed by the Android team with the involvement of search engineer Amit Singhal, has three parts according to a source.
1) Get the world’s knowledge into a format a computer can understand.
2) Create a personalization layer — Experiments like Google +1 and Google+ are Google’s way of gathering data on precisely how people interact with content.
3) Build a mobile, voice-centered “Do engine” (‘Assistant’) that’s less about returning search results and more about accomplishing real-life goals.
Unlike Apple with Siri, Google is planning on extending this service to developers so they can build novel things. Imagine the possibilities for apps, websites, etc interested in hooking into ‘Assistant’?
From what I know, Google has now set its ambitions beyond social and is focused wholeheartedly on building this “Do engine,” or goal oriented search: 2011 was the year of social for Google. 2012 is the year of ‘Assistant.’
According to one source, Google higher-ups plan on unveiling the ‘Assistant’ product by the fourth quarter of 2012, though they themselves are uncertain. Because our details are sparse for now, the fact that we might be missing a huge piece of this puzzle is also a possibility.

Twitter Surrenders One User’s Data to Police Investigation

Three months after being subpoenaed by a Boston district attorney, Twitter has handed over user data from one account that tweeted data allegedly obtained by hacking into police websites.
The district attorney of Suffolk County had subpoenaed Twitter in December, requesting “all available subscriber information” for @p0isAn0N, @OccupyBoston, #BostonPD and #d0xcak. The subpoena also included the name Guido Fawkes, which is associated with the @p0isAn0n account.
On December 28, after the subpoena was issued, @p0isAn0n tweeted: “Haha. Boston PD submitted to Twitter for my information. Lololol? For what? Posting info pulled from public domains? #comeatmebro.”
Twitter spokesman Matt Graves told Boston.com that @p0isAn0n is the only account for which Twitter ultimately provided any information, and he declined to comment when the website asked about how Twitter dealt with the request for information related to the Occupy Boston account.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was among the most public opponents of the subpoena, and it challenged the measure in court. All court proceedings and documents involved in that challenge were sealed.
A judge ruled last week against the challenge and Twitter complied with the decision, according to Boston.com.
“We continue to believe that our client has a constitutional right to speak, and to speak anonymously; and that this administrative subpoena both exceeded the scope of the administrative subpoena statute and infringed our client’s rights under the First Amendment,” ACLU lawyer Peter Krupp said in a statement Thursday. “With the turnover of these documents any subsequent review of these issues will be moot.”
Should Twitter be obligated to hand over information about its users to law enforcement? Do you see such requests as necessary to investigations or as attacks on free speech? Let us know in the comments.