I get a lot of events everyday, so obviously people are aware of the feature and are using it prolifically. Well, I am about to get an onslaught of events soon. Now via the “What’s On Your Mind” box you can simply click on the event icon and go publish out the event to all of your friends. It will auto-sync to the actual events application where you can control the event further.

This is an excellent move by Facebook since I see peopleveryday put out via status updates “Who wants to go with me to…” and then usually it turns into a thread about the details of the event. This eliminates the need for that, now all I have to do is glance and say yes or no, if I even bother to answer.

Currently the feature is not yet implemented across all accounts but I have talked to one of my friends who does have the feature. So rest assured, it will come out eventually to us all.

Via Mashable

After the flurry of blog posts about Best Buy’s social media job the people behind the initiative are now letting you contribute to the qualifications. One of the most controversial aspects of the social media opening was the fact you needed 250+ followers to qualify for the job, a ridiculous measure of success, especially considering how easy it is to game Twitter.

You have until July 14th to contribute your thoughts and opinions on the qualifications you think Best Buy should consider for the opening over at IdeaX. You can also further converse with @joshuakahn if you like.

Glad they are reconsidering. Now lets get some actual qualifications that mean something. The official blog post that goes into further detail is here if you’re so inclined to read further.

eBuddy, a long standing start-up in the web IM arena has finally released their own iPhone application free through the App Store. Previous to this, eBuddy already had an application on Android due to the fact it allowed multi-tasking. This is now a moot point for at least IM clients being built on the iPhone due to push notifications.

Earlier, while submitting an article to Mixx, I was asked to go through the whole CAPTCHA (a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer) routine. Imagine my surprise when I saw this:

Seriously. What the hell? Did the Mixx just show that their inherent racism caused the CAPTCHA to become polluted? </sarcasm>

Last month, it was reported that St. Louis Cardinals’ manager Tony La Russa was suing Twitter because someone had created an account under his name and was “hurtful to the 64-year-old manager,” says ESPN.

Today, however, news has come out that the suit has been dropped. Here’s what the official court documents say:

Pursuant to Rule 41(a)(1)(A) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Plaintiff Anthony La Russa hereby dismisses with prejudice all claims in this action against Twitter, Inc., with each party to bear its own costs and attorneys’ fees. No payment was made by Twitter to La Russa in exchange for this dismissal.

This is great news for Twitter. This was an idiotic lawsuit that would have been nothing but a waste of time and money for all parties involved. It’s one thing it La Russa and his lawyers had decided to go after the author of this fake account, but why would you go after Twitter itself? Because of how popular the service is right now?

On the bright side, however, at least we now have verified Twitter accounts.

One of the things that FriendFeed has implemented is the ability to change themes. While the themes are attractive and delicately made I fear one thing: Myspace.

One of the highlighting features of Myspace is the abiity to customize your page. This has been of the contributing factors to Myspace’s now steadily failing social platform. While people like the ability to customize, they also need direction whether they like it or not. That is one of the reasons why Facebook has been growing at such a rapid pace. There is uniform design but you can still your space your own.

I hope FriendFeed keeps these customizations in check and if they choose to expand them, do not make them public for people visiting FriendFeed profiles to see. This will degrade the overall community and uniform design that FriendFeed has created for themselves. Let’s hope that they learn from past failures of other companies and do not commit the same mistakes

Here’s the debate that’s been raging for over a year now, ever since FriendFeed went live: which is better, Twitter or FriendFeed? This is an argument that has been covered by everyone, but most notably by Michael Arrington last year. Arrington had stated that Twitter had better watch out because FriendFeed stood poised to snag many users. Here’s a part of the article. Keep in mind that when Arrington wrote this, you were much more likely to spot a Fail Whale than to find your stream of friends.

If the early adopters move on, there’s a reason (they never abandoned YouTube for the shinier competitors that popped up over the years, for example), and it doesn’t bode well for Twitter in the long run.

By the way, that dip in traffic on Twitter, if real, and coincides with recent downtime issues. Twitter’s runway may be shorter than people think. Open source/open standard competitors certainly don’t help things, either.

A lot has changed in the past year. Twitter has managed to take care of most (if not all) of their capacity issues, and has netted some of the biggest names, including Ashton Kutcher and

On Tuesday, July 7th, 2009, at about 10 am Pacific Daylight Time, social media will have yet another first: Michael Jackson’s funeral. I would expect CNN, NBC, CBS, and all the other major networks to be broadcasting from Los Angeles, CA, and one would think that nearly every newspaper will have a spread about the events at The Staples Center the following morning. For this event, however, Twitter, FriendFeed, and Hulu will be there alongside the conventional media.

Here’s the announcement from @BreakingNews:

According to Michael van Poppel (@mpoppel), founder of @BreakingNews and BNONews, the service will be filmed by AEG, in high definition video, which will then be given to all the networks, to Hulu, and will also be streaming here, courtesy of BNONews. Van Poppel also says that the event will be live blogged right next to the video stream, and will also be covered on Twitter and FriendFeed.

This is a true testament to the rise of social media, away from …

I am a firm believer that businesses need to leverage social media in order to be successful online. It has never been easier, more cost-effective and quicker than ever to connect and help your customers. There are a vast amount of tools you can leverage on the web to help your customers, but how do you choose the best one? Sure, you can manage multiple social networking accounts such as Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed but that can become a bit much to keep track of. Instead, I urge you to use one, maybe two platforms to provide customer support to your customers, and no I am not talking about Twitter. Rather, I am talking about using FriendFeed as your de facto CS support. Why is this you ask? I have three reasons,reliability, discussions and real-time.

Reliability

Twitter is infamous for downtime, if I didn’t know any better I would say it is one of their main features. While the standard user can live with this (and obviously they are) a business cannot. Once you set up a Twitter account for business to connect with the customer it automatically becomes your fault, not Twitter’s, that you aren’t available.  Unfair for customers to think this …

Remember Myspace? Well I still do and I do actually still use it, I know, blasphemy. Tom has been the iconic image of Myspace since the beginning of the social network. He has been the default friend on everyone’s Myspace account and the bridge between the corporate Myspace and consumers. But ever since the fallout of the old guard over at Myspace, Tom’s position has always been in question.

Turns out Tom is getting paid a good chunk of money to do absolutely nothing. For the next two years Tom is going to be paid $500,000, total of $1 million, to be the iconic image he is and keep out of day to day affairs.

Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

You can be sure though that after the two years are up that Tom will be faded out over time and will not have an extension on this particular contract.