socialnetwork

Two-thirds of New Zealand children aged six to nine are using social networking sites for kids, according to a survey.

LinkedIn Corp.'s splashy initial public offering of stock earlier this month underscored the company's status as a major professional network. But several start-ups are banking that the future of career networking is actually on Facebook Inc

Do@ blends social and mobile search, helping you find mobile sites with the information you want. For example, if you search "iPhone," Do@ will suggest searching with the tag "iPhone @ technews." This helps the app find more relevant results.

Mobile devices are helping connect the poor to medial and financial services in Bangladesh. "Social innovation is having a dramatic impact on the lives of the poor and underserved. Digital technology is being used to improve the lives of the poor. We hear about projects that increase financial inclusion in Bangladesh; mobile-based medical services and why large corporations can profit from doing good."

The E-G8 is supposed to be representative of the Internet society. Two elements are missing: young people and women.

Everything you need to know about getting up and ruining with Foursquare.

Marketers understand that user-generated content such as ratings and reviews are required elements of a comprehensive location-based search program.

Social media sites increasingly factoring into SEO -search engines are paying attention to Likes and Tweets.

A Weavr is essentially a smart avatar, a fictional character that you create, with any attributes you like. You then set your character free online, to roam the internet for information relevant to those attributes. According to the parameters you have set, it will return with images, tweets, blog posts and even venue details as it lives its digital life. "It started really as a wild idea," says David Bausola of Philter Phactory. "The biggest users of the internet are bots, so we wanted to give people their own bots. One of my early ones is based on Inspector Morse. The internet's full of stuff about Morse, so my bot constantly trawls the internet for mentions of Oxford, or the murder scenes, or Morse's favorite pubs, and brings them back to me. It's creating its own narrative."

Uganda's draconian proposed laws on homosexuality may have been shelved thanks to a social media campaign pressurizing the government.

Some great points on social media from the New Zealand State Services Commission wiki. Make it findable. Search is good, but tangible evidence that the discussion is happening is better. 'Most viewed' or 'latest discussions' are simple ways of showing that evidence, and are based on how people click their way through your site. Make it navigable. Create linkages between related contributions, so that one contribution leads to another, which leads to another, and so on. This breaks down isolation between participants, gives them a sense of discovery and encourages them to respond to new things they've found. Tagging and tag clouds are one great way of making user-generated content navigable, by helping people see connections between their ideas and the ideas of others. Make it portable. Prompt people to bring the discussion into their own context -- at home, at work, or on other sites. This will draw in more people to the discussion and help everyone feel connected to what's happening on their own terms. APIs, widgets and gadgets are key tools for doing this. Make it personable. It's important to know that there is a someone -- not a something -- behind the ideas. Social media, like blogs, are compelling because they have personality and a sense of authenticity behind them. Seek ways for people to add personality to their contributions.

The Washington-based Medic Mobile non profit recently released a video promoting a test version of one of its new products called PatientView. Its aim is to give hospitals in rural African areas the ability to manage patient information through cell phones.

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Things are changing so rapidly that the way we think of social media could be vastly different in the very near future. In the next three years alone spending on social media marketing will skyrocket in the B2B space from $11 million in 2009 to $54 million by 2014, according to a Forrester Research study. With new tools like Gowalla and Shopkick shaping how brands and consumers interact, marketers are recognizing how positioning themselves as industry thought leaders can help generate quality leads.

"The future of technology is the future of ever better storytelling, both receiving and telling, says the woman paid by the world's largest chip maker to understand how we use technology."

The Organic Farmer radio shows in Kenya use mobile and radio technology as a platform for collaboration and sharing farming information in local communities. "The Organic Farmer shows the value of using SMS and radio together. While text messaging offers a method of interaction with listeners, John says, "We can't rely on SMS alone, since we can't send a whole paragraph, only the basic information." Radio provides a platform to explore topics in depth, but John suggests, "Radio is not a stand-alone medium - radio must be supported by other tools. SMS allows us to do that.""

Tip on using social media for deeper collaboration in the workplace.

UNSOCIAL addresses a key need for more advanced networking tools to drive real-time relationships for business. Through its location-based networking and smart-tagging platform, UNSOCIAL connects users with business professionals they should meet based on shared information and proximity, making it the ideal tool to find and be found at business events, tradeshows and conferences. In the rapidly growing tech arena of mobile, location-based services and events marketing.

T-Mobile USA is getting into the voice over IP market with a new application that will allow people to make voice calls from Facebook.

Being made up of islands, wireless coverage appeals more to the country than creating a fixed network, and most mobile carriers are offering their own wireless Internet flavors that range from USB broadband dongles to the more recently available portable WiFi hubs. WiMax is fully implemented, yet still has insufficient coverage in hard-to-reach areas, and the telcos are already at the LTE testing stage. Users' Internet connectivity is seen to be booming at a growth spurt of 61.74% since 2009, placing it in second place internationally.