Stop Kony – This Is Powerful Social Media

This is how to utilize social media!

KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice. Pledge your support by donating here: bit.ly/konydonate and continue to share this story. GOAL: 500,000 shares

Sink or Swim School of Engineering Talk by Instagram Founders

Co-Founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger were able to launch Instagram without being computer science graduates. Krieger is proud of this fact, as it shows students from other disciplines can start companies in the technology space. He recalls his most valuable Stanford courses as the ones that taught him to define questions and then allowed him the freedom to seek the answers. In this clip, fellow Co-Founder Kevin Systrom also talks about the importance of connecting with other members of the entrepreneurial community. (via ecorner)

Subjot Is Not Just Another Twitter Clone

Do we really need more social networks? Looking at New York based Chris and Becky Carella’s latest venture, Subjot, the answer could well be ‘yes’. Subjot, on the other hand, makes a decent effort in terms of setting itself apart.

It’s not just another Twitter clone. There’s no denying that there’s a ton of similarities but there is one feature in particular which is pretty interesting – and that is the ability to curate the content you follow from other users. So instead of following all of their status updates, you can view a list of the topics they ‘jot’ about, and select only the ones that are of interest to you.

How does it work?

When sending an update, which is limited to 250 characters, you can accompany that update with a ‘subject’ of your choice. People who follow you can then select from your subjects what exactly they want to hear about. Read full article…

GIF Shop – Brilliant New iPhone App

Love it! The animated .gif maker for your iPhone. Easily create and edit looping animations, upload to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr all on the go! get it at the app store

Horsemaning Is The New Planking

“Horsmaning,” or fake beheading, was a popular way of taking pictures in the 1920s. It’s currently experiencing a revival and is basically the new planking. Join the group on Facebook.

Big Idea! Event-driven Programming For The Masses – ifttt.com

ifttt – Short for “if this then that”.
New Service with the potential to make a significant impact.

In today’s time-pressured world, people are constantly looking for ways to speed up their daily tasks. Hoping to help towards that end, we recently came across ifttt — an application that allows users to exercise their creativity in automating certain online activities. Ifttt hopes to automate digital tasks so that they can trigger a function for which they were not originally designed. This is made possible through a “trigger” and “action” model. For example, a trigger could be “If I’m tagged in a photo on Facebook”. When this occurs, it will automatically execute an action, such as “create a tweet on twitter”. Tibbets gives another example: “For instance, you can use Google reader starred items to share images on your Tumblr blog, or customize how and which photos from your Flickr stream show up on your Facebook wall.” These tasks can be turned on and off, with a maximum of ten being turned on at once. Ifttt ultimately relies on the creativity of its users to effectively automate their online activities. However, by making this a simple and intuitive process, Ifttt has the potential to make a significant impact.

Related articles

• Use Ifttt to Make the Internet Work for You (appreaders.com)
• ifthisthenthat | Web Task Automation (rubbishcorp.com)

Daytum Founders Hired by Facebook

Facebook continues to expand its crack team of creative types with the hiring of Nicholas Felton and Ryan Case. The duo displayed their knack for beautiful data visualization with recent project Daytum, an eye-catching app that transforms mundane daily goings-on into fancy charts.

Felton and Case relocated to San Francisco to join a newly assembled team in Facebook’s creative division that includes recent hires like former Google Labs employee Ji Lee and Mark Darcy, formerly of Time Warner Media Group.

Full story at FastCoDesign

Related Articles

• Daytum Article on Frank’s blog
• Your Digital Memorial (core77.com)
• Daytum (daytum.com)
• Facebook Acquires Daytum (Ryan Case and Nicholas Felton) (daytum.wordpress.com)

Wow – 1 in every 13 People on Earth are on Facebook. Great Stats Video

Thanks Alex Trimpe for putting this video together. Brilliant work and a helpful source in terms of Facebook stats.

The world is obsessed with Facebook, but it’s hard to fathom just how obsessed until you’ve seen the numbers. Video wizard Alex Trimpe lays bare our collective Facebook-loving souls in a new video called, appropriately enough, “The World is Obsessed With Facebook.”

The stats are beautifully laid out and animated. 500 million active Facebook users. 750 million photos uploaded in one weekend. 48% of us checking Facebook right when we wake up. And if that’s not scary enough, check out Trimpe’s snapshot of the activity on the site every 20 minutes. It’s insane. (via urlesque.com)

2011: The Year Social Marketing Grows More Popular

Companies will continue to stress return on investment and the real value of the customer voice.

The report on Bazaarvoice also includes a number of fascinating insights in the industry. For instance:

• 73 percent of CMOs report participating in customer reviews
• 59 percent of CMOs reported seeing average or significant ROI
• The two most popular places of interaction with customers were company blogs (87 percent) and brand communities (86 percent)

Related Articles

• ROI of social-media explained by Gary Vaynerchuk
• CMOs share top insights on the bottom line of social (bazaarvoice.com)
• CMOs think they’ll find the “missing link” in 2011 (bazaarvoice.com)

The New City – First Episode Of BMW Documentaries Launches Today

(via Faris Yakob)

The first episode of BMW Documentaries: Wherever You Want To Go launches today.

I’m excited.

It has Buzz Aldrin in it. He’s completely awesome.

For the last 100 years, cities have been designed around cars.

In 1800, only 3% of people lived in cities.

In 2008, we became a primarily urban species for the first time – more of us now live in cities than in rural areas.

Soon, many of us will live in megacities [cities with more than 10 million people] and living at this level of human density will represent a shift of similar magnitude.

So, when BMW wanted to explore the future of mobility, we started with The New City.

When we developed the concept, we wanted to create a documentary that was of and for the web.

Content that reflected how content is viewed, discussed, and propagated online.

So, while the films are available at all good videosharingsites, the website provides an enhanced viewing experience.

The films are designed to be non-linear, hypertextual. So you can explore additional pieces of content around the primary narrative, in real time, inside the video player, and then jump straight back into the primary narrative.

The films are designed to precipitate discussion from different points of view, so, by logging in with Facebook, you can comment on specific moments, creating conversations around them.