A weekly wrap-up of interesting articles, resources and developments in the world of social media.

1. How to hail a London cabbie using Twitter. Why would you hail a cab when you could tweet one? Social media finds a pratical application in cab reservations with @tweetalondoncab. Or is sending a DM for a cab ride more complex than it needs to be? Next time you’re in London try it out and let us  know, perhaps we’ll have Tweet a Sydney Cab soon.

2. Finding a new buddy through social networks. Need a travel friend or perhaps you want to find someone with similar goals? Chances are there is a site out there to help you. Try comotive, an Australian site that allows you to find people with shared goals and keep each other motivated.  GlobeTrooper is designed to help you find a travel buddy whereever you’re from and whereever you happen to be going.

3. Confessions of an online moderator. It’s a tough gig moderating blogs, forums, bulletin boards and the like. The moderator of the  ABC’s Drum Unleashed website (with the tagline ‘robust community debate’) shares some of the challenges of community management, plus some tips for communicating effectively and not being a jerk online.

4. Twitter: 10 psychological insights. Apparently, 41% of tweets are pointless babble. You’ll be pleased to know that doesn’t include the tweets of the Switched On Media team! Other intesting insights include: the average age of a Twitter user is 31, Twitter ‘informers’ account for only 20% of users, men lead the charge on Twitter, and the average number of tweets for a user is…1. That sounds a bit sad, doesn’t it? Read more.

5. Twitter movie trailer on YouTube. This social media news might not be very useful, but we thought it was hillarious. A Twitter Movie spoof mocking The Social Network movie trailer is growing in popularity. Other mocks have shown up as well, including the The Auction Movie (eBay Movie). What will they come up with next?

Seen anything noteworthy in the world of social media this week? Feel free to post your observations below – see you again next week!

Posts from Switched On Media you may have missed this week…

• What do you consider to be branded content? by Wai Chim
• Switched On Media listed in Smart Company 50 awards by Andy Jamieson

If you want an iPad, I wouldn’t bother buying one – they’re the flavour of the month in social media giveaway-land! Check out: ‘Who can form the longest list of places to win a free iPad?‘.

This morning I noticed a campaign that Ministry of Sound is running to win an iPad:

It’s a great idea, but perhaps a little complex (especially the system of points scoring). I’m also wondering how it fits with Facebook’s rigorous promotion guidelines. What do you think?

What do you think is an example of a best practice social media contest?

Recently, Twitter released their official ReTweet button. Which allows users to share links directly from the page they are on. When you click on the Tweet Button, a Tweet box will appear — pre-populated with a shortened link that points to the item that you’re sharing.

Included with the new button is automatic integration of the Twitters new URL shortening service http://t.co which shaves 2 characters off bit.ly.

It’s great to see Tiwtter finally creating their own social media integration tools, but honestly what took them so long? These tools have clearly been in demand for sometime, yet the industry has been left to cater to their own needs. Still, at least Twitter have sorted themesleves out now.

Further more, wouldn’t it be awesome if Twitter released an official plugg in for Twitter? I think so, I was shocked to realise they hadn’t, if you are looking for it here is the un-official WordPress ReTweet plugin.

A weekly wrap-up of interesting articles, resources and developments in the world of social media.

1. TigerTweet.Me. In this Year of the Tiger, this tool provides you with a fun way of trimming excess Twitter followers – by feeding them to the tiger! The site is also available in Japanese, if that’s your thing.
2. Steer clear of your ex-boyfriend. Avoidr is a service that uses Foursquare “to keep your friends close, and your enemies at the bar down the street”. Another interesting use of geo-location services. Read more on Mashable.
3. HP and measuring Twitter influence. Cnet reports on a study by HP that discovered that “influence is better measured by those whose tweets spread far and wide–something that is not so correlated as one might think to the number of followers that a particular person has.”
4. Hootsuite Freemium. Hootsuite is my favourite platform for scheduling and monitoring social media accounts. This week, Hootsuite announced it will launching new paid services, as well as maintaining the free service that has made Hootsuite so popular. Take a look at the pricing plans.  Hootsuite users – will the new prices turn you away? If so, which service will you turn to?
5. Mentos Rainbow: Spider. An ad that will appeal to the much maligned spider-fearers amongst us:

Seen anything noteworthy in the world of social media this week? Feel free to post your observations below – see you again next week!

Posts from Switched On Media you may have missed this week…

• Twitter’s recommending who we should follow

Finally, we welcome Hannah to our social media team! Go on, follow Hannah on Twitter!

I just noticed today that Twitter is providing me with recommendations when I follow someone:

It’s also providing recommendations on user profiles:

Found a post over at The Next Web on this very topic. What do you think? Will you find this helpful?

A weekly wrap-up of interesting articles, resources and developments in the world of social media.

1. Perth granny influencing election result. This is why I love social media – the little man (or in this case, a 66 year-old grandmother) gets a big voice. According to BuzzElection, Lesley is the second-most influential election tweeter.
2. Bye bye Google Wave. When I received my much sought after invitation to test out Google Wave, underwhelmed would be an understatement. Google has now announced that it hasn’t seen the adoption it would’ve liked, and is ceasing development. When you’re as big as Google, I guess you can afford for some ventures to fail, but it does make me wonder how their rumoured ‘Facebook-killer’ will go. Read more at The Guardian and Switched On Media.
3. #FlyFwdGiveBack. Virgin America ran a 24 hour sale on Twitter using the hashtag #flyfdwgiveback. $5 of each booking went to donorschoose.org. Great idea, the only problem for Virgin America was keeping their site from crashing. Read more on TechCrunch.
4. Free book for Twitter followers. Venture capitalist, founder of Alltop and social media guru, Guy Kawasaki is offering his first book free, to his Twitter followers. I was impressed with the nifty ‘verify you’re following’ tool that checked I was following Guy before giving me the book. Have you seen this done for any other promotions?
5. 50 Viral Images The Web Shared In 2010. A collection of inspiring, moving, funny, challenging and beautiful infographics, photos and screenshots. Chances are, you’ve seen some already!

Seen anything noteworthy in the world of social media this week? Feel free to post your observations below – see you again next week!

Posts from Switched On Media you may have missed this week…

A weekly wrap-up of interesting articles, resources and developments in the world of social media.

1. The ChipIn Millionaire. An Australian has laid down the challenge – “Can I make a million dollars just through word of mouth, the kindness of strangers and sitting around talking about how much I’d like to have it? I’d like to think so.” So far the ChipIn Millionaire has raised $21.26 – he’s off to a slow start!
2. Twitter as a time capsule. On September 28, 2009, Masterchef winner Adam Liaw tweeted: “Seriously considering flying to Sydney to audition for Masterchef.” I’m sure he’s very glad he did! Is it just me, or is Adam’s Twitter profile pic a bit freaky?!
3. Masterchef as told by tweets. On a related note (and I’m allowing two Masterchef posts in this post-final week!), the Sydney Morning Herald wrote this week about the emerging trend of tweeting while watching television – about the show you’re watching. This adds a whole new dimension to television watching, and has transformed my experience watching ABC1′s Q&A as I engage with other viewers from around the country in real-time.
4. Geosay. Type in your location, and Geosay will let you know what others are saying in that location. It draws content from Twitter, FourSquare and Geosay itself, but it seems to be quite Foursquare-heavy at the moment (via Hannah Law). Speaking of Foursquare, did you notice that even Barbie’s getting in on the action?!
5. Ford Explorer revealed on Facebook. Ford launched their re-invented Explorer on Facebook this week, including videos from Ford engineers (below) in the lead-up to the ‘reveal’. According to Mashable, Ford reached their goal of attracting 30,000 fans to their Facebook page before the launch, but this seems to have translated into only a modest number of views of their YouTube videos (via Kevin Lo).

Seen anything noteworthy in the world of social media this week? Feel free to post your observations below – see you again next week!

Posts from Switched On Media you may have missed this week…

A weekly wrap-up of interesting articles, resources and developments in the world of social media.

1. You’re talking tosh. For a company that makes potato chips, Pringles sure knows how to engage an audience! They’ve created a Facebook overshare button where you can “tell your mates when their status updates are dull or too much information”. They’re also encouraging their fans to create an over-sharers video, which reminds me of The Oatmeal’s ‘How to suck at Facebook‘ comic. Read more about Pringle’s campaign.
2. Durex Baby. The condom manufacturer discovered that guys are more fearful of creating babies than getting sexually transmitted diseases. So they developed an app (well, not really, but it’s a good idea!) where two iPhones can rub against each other and produce a baby. Yikes! Check out the video about Durex Baby.
3. Ready to roll. This YouTube video is an advertisment for Cadbury’s roll packs. It was mildly cute the first time, but has very limited long-term appeal. How many times can you watch a hampster run?! To be fair to Cadbury though, it’s always going to be difficult for them to beat the ‘drumming gorilla’ advertisement!
4. #crustgate. Many lessons were learnt in March this year about how not to use social media when Nestle responded to Greenpeace’s ‘Have a break?’ campaign. No doubt, more lessons will be learnt from Crust Pizza when they tweeted a link to a video about women drivers and it back-fired. Read more about #crustgate on Mumbrella.
5. Does your man smell like an Old Spice man? These short videos are guaranteed to produce a chuckle – there’s 87 in total, and part of the genius and appeal is that some of the videos are responding to individual tweets. The variety of channels used to promote the campaign has been extensive, including controversial site 4chan. Read more about the campaign on ReadWriteWeb.

Seen anything noteworthy in the world of social media this week? Feel free to post your observations below – see you again next week!

Posts from Switched On Media you may have missed this week…

• Spammers still thriving on Twitter

When email came out, spammers weren’t far behind – we’re now used to receiving updates with hot deals to buy viagra, invest a dollar and make a million and invitations from the Nigerian royal family. Thanks to Gmail, spam is becoming more and more a concern of the past.

When blogging took off and comments were enabled, blogs were flooded with spam comments gushing praise like ‘I found this information usefull.’ from ‘Flirting Tips for Girls’. Thanks to Akismet, spam comments on blogs are often filtered out and never see the light of day.

It’s not surprising that spammers are using Twitter, but it’s still annoying. And if you let your guard down for a moment, your followers will be infiltrated by spammers, most of them trumpeting the next way to get rich quick.

Here’s a couple of examples I’ve cleaned out recently:

Some of them have a larger following than others – although I do wonder who follows these accounts (perhaps it’s other spammers who automatically follow other Twitter accounts!).

It’s a constant task to stay on top of Twitter spam to keep your account free of spam followers. A tool I’ve found useful for checking my account for spam is TwitBlock. Twitter has an account set-up for notifying them about spam, and I’m also pretty ruthless at clicking the ‘report for spam’ link – it’s easy, and the sooner Twitter is rid of spammers the better!

Now, don’t get me started on the porn spammers using Twitter…

A weekly wrap-up of interesting articles, resources and developments in the world of social media.

1. Trade your dinosaur with a Dell. AdNews reports that Dell is ramping up its social media activity, centering on a Facebook page where users can upload a photo of their prehistoric laptop, with an accompanying story. (h/t Hannah Law)
2. Earn cash for check-ins with WeReward. Gowalla, Foursquare – check-in apps are popping up all over the place. WeReward adds an extra dimension – offering cash rewards for check-ins, purchases, and completing tasks (e.g. taking a photo). Currently only available in the U.S. – could it work in Australia? Learn more about how it works for users and businesses.
3. The Influencer Project. Described as a project to ‘find out how influential you are’, users sign-up and are provided with a custom URL that they then share with as many people as they can, and encourage them to click on. The more clicks, the more influential (so the story goes). Laurel Papworth has written a great piece on why this is a dumb idea, and how easily it can be misused.
4. How Google works. An infographic, depicting the complex processes behind a Google search (h/t Chris Redshaw). Speaking of infographics, last week Mashable shared ‘10 beautiful social media infographics‘.
5. Top World Cup Players on Facebook, Day by Day. Choose a day of the week, and this application will display each player in a different size, according to the percent of all Facebook status updates, wall posts, comments, shares, and likes containing the player’s name. Good idea, however, they’ve added an extra step to sharing this website on Twitter which probably isn’t necessary.

Seen anything noteworthy in the world of social media this week? Feel free to post your observations below – see you again next week!

Posts from Switched On Media you may have missed this week…

• Don’t judge a tweeter by their followers
• Twitter for small business promotions