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I am not Jonathon Paige. There is no Jonathon Paige. There is no SummerHoopScoop. In fact, there never was. A little over two months ago the college basketball season ended and the long off-season of recruiting events and commitment speculation began. Messageboards and popular basketball news sources began to populate with recruiting interviews, videos, news stories, and rumors. The summer circuit circus began and college basketball fans dug in for the slow rolling waves of recruiting information to parse through. Of course, the real issue is-- who's information can be trusted? Sometimes it feels to fans like recruiting services and "experts" are just sorting through twitter feeds and regurgitating third-hand information. However, a funny dynamic develops as a result. When a recruiting "source" brings good news to a fan base, it is instantly credible and plenty are willing to defend the source with recollections of previous information provided that proved correct. When a recruiting source brings bad news, it is open season. "Never heard of this guy"... "probably some opposing fan base's blogger" .... "I doubt he knows what he is talking about." In short, fans believe what they want to believe. So, out of boredom and sincere interest in the relationship between the internet, recruiting services, and consumers, I created Jonathon Paige.

Location based social network Foursquare celebrated 10 million registered users yesterday but how are businesses and organizations using the platform? I wrote a year ago next month about the incredible potential offered by Foursquare accounts for organizations: following a Foursquare page as a user is like opting-in to view the world through the lens of that organization's geo-annotations. It can be awesome. (My favorites? History Channel and Eater.) Are businesses getting into it? For one perspective on that question, I extracted some data from the 128 most recent Foursquare Pages that have been created. The 128 most recent Foursquare Page holders have added 728 tips in 311 cities so far. They've amassed a total of over 8,000 Foursquare followers and they came in with some social media experience as well: those organizations already had an aggregate of over 800,000 Twitter followers.

The FBI has long been known for its straightforward "Just the facts, ma'am" approach, an image reinforced by Director Robert S. Mueller III's stoic presence and reluctance to court the media. But in a sign that the online revolution is infiltrating that most traditional of agencies, the bureau unveiled Monday a publicity campaign featuring public service announcements in 14 cities and billboards in New York's Times Square, along with a heavy dose of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Mobile quiz startup Qrank will announce next week that it has raised a seed round of funding, including an investment from early Twitter VP of Product Jason Goldman. Qrank is building out a platform that will let any organization with a backlog of content use it to create smart, fast-paced mobile trivia games. The games incorporate social networks, location, chat and other social features. It sounds awesome. Goldman is one of five investors in a convertible note of $350,000, ReadWriteWeb has learned and the company has confirmed. The company will use the funding to build a self-service platform, acquire more high-profile customers and complete an analytics dashboard. The existing consumer app gets high marks for responsiveness and user engagement.

"On the day of the United Nations General Assembly's vote on upgrading Palestine to non-member observer status, the @UN official account sent out a tweet that seemed to undercut support for the move. The tweet was deleted soon after posting and a correction issued, but not before it received around 100 retweets, as well as comments and screenshots for the record."

Colleges do not have to actively monitor the social media accounts of their athletes for NCAA rules violations, according to a ruling released Monday. Last summer the NCAA said it was investigating nine rules infractions by the University of North Carolina football program, including not being vigilant enough in monitoring social media for evidence of rules infractions. As ESPN columnist Sarah Spain wrote at the time, the NCAA was setting itself up to open a potential can of worms.

"In a move to boost sales through social recommendations, online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos, which is owned by Amazon, has added a new feature called "PinPointing" that offers recommendations based on Pinterest accounts. Unfortunately, the feature doesn't work very well yet."

This website is designed as a social mirror to show the prevalence of casual homophobia in our society. Words and phrases like "faggot," "dyke," "no homo," and "so gay" are used casually in everyday language, despite promoting the continued alienation, isolation and - in some tragic cases - suicide of sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ) youth. We no longer tolerate racist language, we're getting better at dealing with sexist language, but sadly we're still not actively addressing homophobic and transphobic language in our society. Let's put an end to casual homophobia. Speak out when you see or hear homophobic or transphobic language from friends, at school, in the locker room, at work or online. Use #NoHomophobes to show your support. And visit one of our resource websites to get more involved.

These Tubes Are Old!: Vintage Website Ads

Look around any organization and chances are you'll be able to find at least one person whose negative behavior affects the rest of the group to varying degrees. So much so, say two University of Washington researchers, that these "bad apples" are like a

Study highlights the importance of hiring people of good character

Guest Blogger How Zappos makes social media a part of its company culture By Guest Blogger on January 10, 2011 | 1412317 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fsmartblogs.com%2Fsocialmedia%2F2011%2F01%2F10%2Fhow-zappos-makes-social-media-a-part-of-its-company-culture%2FHow+Zappos+makes+social+media+a+part+of+its+company+culture2011-01-10+13%3A32%3A19Guest+Bloggerhttp%3A%2F%2Fsmartblogs.com%2Fsocialmedia%2F%3Fp%3D14123 * * Share94 * * * Email * * Share94 * * * Email This post was written by SmartBrief technology editor Susan Rush. When it comes to social media, Zappos.com just gets it. Social media is not just a business strategy, it should be part of the culture, said Zappos' Thomas Knoll during the "Social Media in Action: Philosophies, Strategies and Tactics That Consistently Win" panel discussion at the International Consumer Electronics Show on Friday. Knoll said too much emphasis is often put on the "media" part of social media, adding that he is "a much bigger fan of the social part." The goal of social media is to connect and build relationships with customers.