Today Facebook confirmed the launch of Facebook Places -Until now, Facebook knew who you were, what you are doing and when you did it. Now they add an even richer dimension–where you are–that completes the picture. Facebook Placesenables members to share where they are and who they are with, find people near them and discover new places of interest. So if you travel to town and are craving tapas, you can see where your friends have “checked in” and what they thought about the experience. The leading web strategy consultancy Altimeter group, think there are three game-changing elements to Facebook Places:

1. A new dimension to the online experience. By introducing location awareness to Facebook, the company has added a critical layer to the online experience–who, what, when, and now where you and your friends are. In doing so, it has brought the online experience one step closer to the way people interact in the real world.
2. Scale. By adding location to its massive user base (500 million strong and counting), Facebook has thrust location awareness squarely into the mainstream.
3. A user-curated “Place Page.” Once a user has checked in to a particular venue, Facebook will populate a Place Page that includes the activity stream of everyone who’s visited. This is a window not only into user opinion, but actual behavior. It’s similar to walking by a busy restaurant; visitors immediately see which locations are popular, and which are not.

This is going to be big and incredibly useful for businesses looking at CRM and their customers' real time activity

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A collection of recently published patents and a new hire at Apple suggest that future iPhones may carry built-in features to replace your credit cards.

More information on this article can be found here

 

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Just found this really interesting article about brands, their websites and using other social platforms. Worth a read...

http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=145351 

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Promoted tweets and promoted trends are two ways of advertising on Twitter. Big advertisers such as Sony, Starbucks, Disney and Nike have been using them but are they working? Nobody really knows as there have been no results issued and this article on Clickz conjectures how well they are doing.

Promoted Tweets are the original Twitter ad format, having beenintroduced in April. They appear in Twitter search results, targeted to keywords. For instance, in Starbucks' recent campaign, search queries for "Starbucks" and "coffee" produced a brand appearance at the very top of the results.

Promoted Trends, meanwhile, came into play last month and entail an all-day listing at the bottom of a list of worldwide trending topics oneach user's Twitter homepage. Clicking through the Promoted Trend buttons takes a user to a search results page with the brand's tweet at the top. Links to landing pages are typically incorporated in the tweet. For instance, Disney linked to a Fandango.com tickets page with a discount code while pushing "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" on the micro-blogging site. 

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Open Leadership a great book by social web guru, Charlene Li. 'Be open, be transparent, be authentic' are the current leadership mantras - but companies often push back. Traditionally business is premised on the concept of control and yet the new world order demands openness. As Li explains, openness requires more rigour and effort than being in control. This book explains how leaders can tap in to the power of social technology and use social media to be open whilst maintaining control. It shows how Facebook Twitter, YouTube et al can improve efficiency, communication and decision making for organisations. A must read.
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