Here’s the good news AND the bad news: social networking platforms allow everyone to know where you are, and when. That could be useful information for your wife. And your wife’s former boyfriend who just got out of jail.

Boy Van Amstel, creator of PleaseRobMe.com, attempts to prove that very point with his creepy-named website. Van Amstel’s site proves how easy it is for people of ill-repute and dubious intentions to track down and locate houses where the owners are not around, for one reason or another.

The advent of new technologies, such as Twitter and Foursquare, are often greeted with a spectrum of reactions from utter naivety to outright paranoia. In this case, we’re dealing with naivety. The amount of private up-to-the-moment information available about individuals revealed on social networking sites is staggering – and Van Amstel saw the inherent risk in this.Continue reading...

Social media is quickly becoming just as relevant, if not more so, than traditional media, but are brands – and their advertising campaigns – keeping up?

Savvy marketers know how to balance defined, actionable goals with the inherent flexibility needed to achieve them. But in the brave new world of social media where the possibilities for both success and failure are overwhelming, competing brands are quick to recognize the success of others, and implement similar objectives. When this happens, however, brands begin to lose their edge, uniqueness, and focus.

Establishing a presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, FourSquare or blog posts isn’t enough. Brands must back up their social tools with timely, influential content that consumers will respond to – content specific to particular brands distributed via various forms of online platforms from videos and interactive images to networking groups and empowered brand advocates. Does this sound familiar?

It should. Here comes that word we all hate to love: synergy.Continue reading...

Amidst the land of email, tweets, status updates, text messages, and IM’s comes yet another social networking tool – this time from Google.

In a quest to capture more of the social web market share, the Internet search leader has launched Google Buzz – a new networking service for their Gmail customers which gives users an opportunity to network and share updates, photos, and videos with their current email contacts through their computer, hand-held device and mobile phone.

And even though Buzz was just announced yesterday, it already has fellow industry techies buzzing about the potential for customers to get stung with this service.

With no separate set-up or establishment of a new friend list required, Google Buzz allows consumers to automatically share updates with the people they already email and chat with the most. Similar to Facebook, users can communicate with one person or their entire network at a time.Continue reading...

Foursquare fans – those who find Facebook updates too static and oh-so-2009 – will soon “check in” to learn that the geosocial networking site has executed partnerships with several media brands, according to Mashable.

Foursquare, which runs on mobile devices and leverages their GPS locators, takes status updates to another level: As the New York Times describes the service, it’s not about what you’re doing right now, but “Where are you, and can I come join you?”

A Foursquare user “checks in” at her current location so friends know where to find her. Foursquare encourages frequent check-ins by presenting itself like a game, offering virtual badges that are unlocked by visiting particular venues. Many of these venues, along with their related brands, offer their own badges, as well as tangible rewards such as discounts or freebies.Continue reading...

Who knew that a little site for Harvard students would become a worldwide phenomenon?

Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes probably had little idea that their brainchild would eventually become a global platform for connecting friends, spreading political and humanitarian causes, posting cute cat videos, and hosting time-sink applications like Farmville and Mafia Wars. But here we are.Continue reading...

People are more likely to trust information that comes from people they know. So, not surprisingly, the clever folks at Google have created a new type of “social” search engine that includes personal online networks.

In a tutorial on YouTube (above), Google gives the example of “wanting to know more about Zurich.” In the video, Google outlines how in past searches, one could only find information about Zurich on the usual travel sites – but with Google’s new “social” search, your friend’s Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social networks will pop up if they’ve mentioned “Zurich” in the past.Continue reading...

As brand-owners worldwide brainstorm to figure out how to leverage social media to their advantage, Tasti D-Lite thinks it has its answer: Put a bounty on brand-promoting Tweets.

The potential flaw in the brand's scheme? It involves math. Continue reading...

Vitrue's second annual ranking of social brands, which studies the "share of voice" of particular brands, was recently released. The survey's methodology involves measuring Internet conversations over a spectrum of social networking sites, blogs, photo and video sharing sites, and other online media.

The top ten "social" brands (in order) are iPhone, Disney, CNN, MTV, NBA, iTunes, Wii, Apple, Xbox, and Nike. Of course, there are several interesting observations, and even more questions, that arise from an examination of the results. (The full list is available at Vitrue's site.)Continue reading...