Facebook To Launch Memorial Profiles of Deceased Users

This is a good solution to a question I have wondered about ever since I first started using social networks.  What happens to your profile when you die?  The friends and family of people who have passed will now be able to contact Facebook in order to have the deceased person's profile page memorialized.  Facebook will remove the person's status updates and contact info, but will leave photos, videos, profile info, and other media there for confirmed Facebook friends to see.  There is also a function that lets users put memorial posts onto the wall of the dead person's profile.  Check out the full article here.

10 Ways to Get Fired For Building Your Personal Brand

Today's post is by Dan Schawbel at Personal Branding Blog. 

"For all of you employed readers, this post is directed at you because I wouldn’t want you to become unemployed, as you build your own personal brand. Branding has become very personal these days and the relationship we have with our companies is changing very fast, so I think it’s important to focus on what you shouldn’t do at work, not just branding and career strategies.  I view web 2.0 technologies at the driving force that converges our professional and social lives.  Who you are and how you behave outside of work can impact how you’re perceived inside of work and visa versa.  The way the world works now is that you have to spend more time thinking about your actions than you did ten years ago because words spread faster and they are accessible by everyone."

Read the rest of the list here.

Twitter Users Are Now Younger on Average Than Facebook's

The Pew results are in!  Those crazy young people are more prone to use Twitter while the older demographic have drifted towards Facebook.  I can't say I'm surprised, but it's a cool article with several interesting graphs.  Check it out here.

Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter

Today's article is from Steven Levy over at Wired.  It has some great insight into how people on Twitter have unintentionally caused a hostile takeover of the social networking service and to some extent have prevented the inventors and owners of the site from making any major interface changes.  Twitter is working towards changing that, but for now it is still basically governed by those that use it.

You can read the article here.

 Illustration: Christoph Niemann

15 Most Annoying Types of Twitter Users

I think about half of my Twitter followers need to take a nice, long look at this list from Soshable and re-think how they Tweet.  Yes, I'm talking to you "@networkingmlm".  You fit into about 8 or these categories.

Check out the hilarious (and sadly true) list of annoying types of Twitter users here.

The New FTC Rules For Internet Marketers

Today's internet marketing item of interest is episode 58 of the Web Video University podcast.  Apparently the FTC has a new set of rules being enacted December 1st that will hopefully spell the end of "get rich quick" schemes and "Get 10,000 Twitter Followers Fast!" e-books.  This makes my Twitter account's direct message inbox very happy.  You should listen to the episode here.

MySpace becomes social-media "ghetto"

This article from CNN poses the question "Does your social class determine your online social network?".  I believe it does and MySpace is its ghetto.  You should check out the article here.

On a related note you should also take a look at the article "MySpace is dead... the Prostitutes and MLM'ers have left." from The Naked Entrepreneurs.

Fans help rock stars write music

This is cool idea.  It's a website where music fans can submit lyrics and bits of songs that could end up on the final album.  Read the article here for more.

Smarter Food: How Social Media is Making Our Cities Tastier

Here's a brilliant feature from Mashable about how social media is changing the way businesses and people promote, find, buy, and sell food.  This was particularly interesting to me as I currently run the social media campaign for City Flavors, a directory and review site for restaurants in the Indianapolis, IN area.  You can check out the article here.

Study: 54% of companies ban Facebook, Twitter at work

Everyone's favorite work time distractions are apparently not too popular with companies.  Computer World has posted this extremely interesting study showing that most businesses limit or just plain ban the use of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites in the workplace.

...in other (and more sarcastic) news, productivity has nearly tripled for all companies that have chosen to ban social media.

Music Labels Emphasize Artist-Specific Social Networks, Websites

Today's article comes to us from good old Wired.  Apparently, social networks and websites made for specific bands and musicians are getting increasingly better traffic than larger websites that have lots of artists with similarly styled pages (for example MySpace, Last.fm, etc).  This is very interesting to me as I have been doing work for a musician by helping him build MySpace and Last.fm pages and am very involved in music myself.  You can check out the article here.

The Speed Of Share

Here is an amazing article by MG Siegler from TechCrunch.com about data sharing.  Facebook may have more users, but Twitter seems to be the best way of data sharing by far.  Check out the article here.

Social Media Blues

This has been a monumental week for the blog.  Updates are being posted regularly, the new Twitter feed is setup, the blog is running on the Networked Blogs for Facebook and my Technorati page is complete.  So to celebrate I've decided today's post is going to be a little more fun.  I give you "Social Media Blues".

Google Doesn’t Use Meta-Tags - It’s Official

Today's article, once again, comes from The Naked Entrepreneurs except this time from Chris "The Brain" Hoyt.  Apparently Google no longer grants any value whatsoever to meta tags.  Check out the article here for more.