Looking at the social and emotional climate associated with social media, the study found that overall, people’s experiences on social media was positive overall with 85% of users saying that this was the case. On top of that, roughly 39% of people said that they frequently saw acts of generosity while 36% sometimes saw such moments. By comparison, 18% of adults said that they saw helpful behaviour ‘only once in a while’ while 5% said that they never saw generosity exhibited by others on social networking sites

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a small percentage of users associate the medium with negative experiences, the most frequent outcomes was that it ended a friendship (15%), resulted in a face-to-face argument (12%) or caused a problem with their family (11%). On top of that, 13% admitted that someone had acted in a mean or cruel way toward them in the past twelve months. Also teenagers were much more likely to see such an incident with 88% saying they had in comparison to 49% of adults.

The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between the months of July and August. A sample of 2,260 adults from the U.S. were surveyed and the report kindly says that it can say with “95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.” The full report can be found on Pew Research’s website here. 

Just for a little bit of fun I thought I would come up with something similar for social media given how much time most of us spend using it. The list is made up of 50 items and if you answer positively to ten or more then you officially have a problem with social media addiction and probably need some sort of help:

1. You post photos of your dinner to social networks.
2. You check-in to places like airports to show how cool you are and how much you travel.
3. You’ve used a #hashtag in a text message.
4. When people ask “where were you when X happened?” you immediately think “Twitter”.
5. You check your @replies before you go to bed.
6. You check your @replies when you wake up in the morning.
7. You upload your photos to more than three social sharing websites.
8. You refresh your Facebook feed more than 20 times a day looking for the next information fix
9. You refer to Twitter as “new Twitter”
10. You refer to Twitter as “new new Twitter”

11. You know what friendfeed is.
12. You wish Twitter was a little more “real time”.
13. You find it impossible to watch TV without a second screen of some kind.
14. You can’t do more than ten minutes work without checking a social network.
15. You think of some people using their @username rather than their real name.
16. You’ve checked-in to a physical location in any shape or form.
17. When something annoys you in the real world, you immediately want to vent to your followers.
18. You know what a Foursquare swarm badge is.
19. When out with friends, you check your phone while using the bathroom for updates.
20. You’ve talked a family member into downloading the latest great app.

21. You know what your Klout score is and you’ve actually checked it.
22. You knowingly signed up to Google+.
23. You had the new Facebook way before everybody else.
24. You get your news via Flipboard rather than newspapers.
25. You’ve heard of Quora.
26. You are the mayor of anything.
27. You own any sort of virtual goods; virtual crops in particular.
28. You have used a #hashtag in a real world joke.
29. You know more about your Twitter followers than your own friends and family.
30. You’ve been to a tweet up.

31. You know what Facebook subscribers are.
32. You heard about the Path privacy fiasco.
33. You know what RSS actually is.
34. You have four or more social networking apps on your phone.
35. You’ve scanned a QR code.
36. You’ve wondered when Twitter are ever going to monetize.
37. You have used the word #fail in any sort of real world context.
38. You know what frictionless sharing is.
39. You’ve made a Twitter list.
40. When talking to somebody, you think “They are so boring! I could be checking Twitter right now”.

41. You’ve updated your status while driving.
42. You know how to use the subscribe button on Youtube.
43. You check your social networks while the plane is still taxiing.
44. You sort your Facebook feed by “all updates” over “most updates”.
45. You “favorite” tweets.
46. You are all over Pinterest.
47. You know what Yammer is.
48. Your Linkedin profile is “100% complete”.
49. You follow more than 500 people on Twitter.
50. When not able to sleep in the middle of the night, you check your social networks only to find Americans tweeting.

I don’t know about you, but I answer yes to well over half of them which quite frankly terrifies me. How did you do? Do you need help?

This year’s speakers so far include Kevin Rose (founder of Digg, angel investor, entrepeneur), Chad Hurley (founder of Youtube, CEO of Delicious), Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit) and Susan Crawford (professor in New York). There’s also lots of other cool events at the conference, including a startup rally and hack battle. And of course, you get an excuse to visit one of the most amazing cities on the planet.

Full price tickets are selling at €999 but we’re giving you the chance to purchase a ticket for €590 (excluding tax). We only have five available at this price so we’re going to make you work, just a little bit. And what better chance than to roll out a picture of our office cat. For your chance to win, just leave a comment with your best caption for the picture below. You have until 12pm (GMT) on 13th March to enter, with winners announced later that day. Good luck!

1# Twitter Journalist Clampdown: BBC reporters have been warned not to break any news stories online via Twitter before they tell their newsroom, the Guardian reports. This comes after Sky News came out with similar guidelines telling their journalists not to repost information from any Twitter user who aren’t employed by Sky.

2# Google In The Cloud: Google are nearing the launch of their new cloud storage services, the Wall Street Journal reports. ‘Drive’ is expected to launch in the coming weeks or months and will be free for most consumers and businesses, with those wanting to store a large amount of files having to pay a fee.

3# Path Apologises: Path CEO David Morin has apologised to users for uploading users’ address book information without asking for premission. In a blog post, Morin said “We made a mistake…we are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.” Path also say that all the details collected have now been deleted from their servers.

4# Groupon Q4 Loss: Daily deals site Groupon has announced its Q4 2011 results, posting a tax related loss which amounted to 2 cents a share. Despite this, revenue rose to $506.5 million from $172.2 million while its active customers jumped up to 33 million, an increase of 275% year-over-year

5# Techmeme Events: Tech news aggregation site Techmeme has launched its new events page dedicated to highlighting the major web and tech events happening across the world. The events highlighted will be what Techmeme define as the most newsworthy events to cover.

6# Patent Rights: Microsoft, alongside Google and Apple, have issued a statement promising to make “essential patents” available to competitors at fair and reasonable licensing rates. Ars Technica report that the company promised not to sue companies making products that infringe these patents, combating the numerous legal battles companies have over patents.

7# Facebook Stock Valuation: The value of Facebook stock has risen up to a high of $103.4 billion after the latest SharesPost auction. The figure is based on the company still having 2.35 billion outstanding shares and being worth $44 each, the figure given when the latest auction closed.

8# paidContent Takeover: Technology media company GigaOM has acquired ContentNext Media, the parent company of paidContent from Guardian News and Media. Writing on GigaOM, founder Om Malik said that the purchase will help the company grow by improving their presence in New York and Europe.

9# Foursquare Explore: Foursquare have released an update of their app which revamps their ‘Explore’ feature, making it easier for users to find new hotspots in their city. The update is part of the group’s attempts to make the app appeal to non-users and build upon their 15 million userbase.

10# Google Retail: Google are considering opening its first stand-alone retail store at its European headquarters in Dublin, according to one of its filings. The document states that the store would be open to the public and sell unspecified Google Merchandise as well as covering about 123 square meters of space if it does open.

Finally, on Simply Viral, how do you emphasise the issue of hiring those with disabilities without coming across as patronising? Your answer is this simple yet creative advert.

The service, which has been used by the likes of the Economist, Buzzfeed, the New York Public Library and Pepsi, is now available for all brands and businesses to try out starting from today. Like all optimisation services, SocialFlow looks for the most optimal time for you to tweet or post your status updates.

While there are numerous services which offer the same services, the main difference behind SocialFlow is that instead of optimising tweets and posts for times when the majority of followers are online. Instead, it uses an algorithm to determine the best times to post. Factors like topic interest, language and relevant messages posted/tweeted are taken into consideration before posting so that your message is posted at the most optimal time.

Scheduling works similarly to third-party apps such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, but users can set the minimum optimisation score that their messages should be sent. The score is ranked out of 100 so the higher the figure, the better the time to send your message. In their case study involving the New York Public Library, they found that while SocialFlow accounted for 44% of tweets sent out, it was responsible for 84% of the clicks they got on Twitter in total.

The catch is that this services doesn’t come cheap. The standard service costs $99 a month while the business account costs $149 per month although for those wanting to test the service out, they’re allowing users to try out either standard or business settings for $1 for the first month. While it’s admittedly an expensive option, for those who are struggling to find the best times to engage with their followers and fans could find this to be the solution to their problems.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

With the aim to stimulate tourism in the country, Japan’s Foreign Ministry is inviting popular bloggers and twitter users from around the world to visit areas devastated by the earthquake and tsumani which struck on March 2011.

According to the Mainichi Daily News, the ministry has invested 21.5 million yen (roughly $280,000 or €214,000) into the project. It hopes that foreign guests will write about the progress made in rebuilding the communities that were affected and to show an international audience that the area is still an attractive holiday destination.

The ministry aims to invite a total of ten guests to the country by the end of March. The first guest arrived in December with Spanish blogger Roger Ortuno Flamerich paying a visit. He was followed by Chicago food blogger Louisa Liu Chu and editor-in-chief of ikhanweb, Khaled Hamza arrived on January 31st. Two other guests,  a Chilean university professor and a Chinese children’s storywriter, will visit the country later this month.

The news comes after Japan recently considered the idea of offering 10,000 free flights to visitors who would then use blogs and social media to talk about their holiday. The idea was raised but rejected by the Japanese tourism board, who instead opted for a more targeted approach involving social media.

1# Chrome For Android: It’s finally here. Google have brought the world of Chrome and Android together by releasing the beta version of Chrome Mobile. It’s available for Android 4.0 smartphones & tablets (Ice Cream Sandwich) in the Android Market.

2# Ecommerce Records: comScore have released their report for Q4 of 2011 showing that online spending reached $49.7 billion for the quarter, up 14% when compared to a year ago.

3# Profit for Pinterest: While there’s no advertising on the site, it seems that social media darling Pinterest is monetising the site without users’ knowledge. Josh Davis on LLsocial.com has found that linking to an ecommerce site results in the site modifying the link and adding in their own affiliate tracking code. This comes after the news that the site has 10 million U.S. monthly unique views, faster than any standalone site.

4# Amazon Video: Amazon is close to announcing a deal with Viacom which will see them launching a standalone subscription service which will compete with Netflix. Viacom, who own shows and movies from MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount, would join CBS, Warner Bros, NBC and Disney in launching the service.

5# Path Privacy: Developer Arun Thampi discovered that social media app, Path, uploads your entire iPhone (full names, emails and phone numbers) onto its servers without obtaining the user’s permission. This is in contrast to Apple’s App store guidelines which state on 17.1: apps cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining permission and 17.2 any app that requires users to share personal information such as email and DOB in order to function will be rejected.

6# Live Streaming Sports: More than 2.1 million people streamed the Super Bowl on Sunday, according to NBC. The match, which had an average of 111.3 million viewers at any time, said that the live stream represented the “most-watched single-game sports event ever online.”

7# Blackberry Apps: Despite the numerous problems RIM has faced over the last few months, the VP for Developer Relations Alec Saunders, has revealed that there are over six million daily downloads from the BB App World – amounting to 174 million downloads per month – and has more paid downloads than Google Android Market.

8# Siri & Wolfram Alpha: Having misinterpreted numerous accents since its release, its been revealed that Siri accounts for 25% of queries made to the Wolfram Alpha site. The fact-based site gives users answers from its data instead of searching the web.

9# Nokia Job Losses: Former mobile giant Nokia is planning to cut 4,000 more jobs at its plants in Finland, Hungry and Mexico as it aims to cut costs by moving smartphone production over to Asia. The company, which has a considerable presence in India, will be making the cuts in phases and will bring the total planned job cuts to more than 30,000.

10# Apple vs Twitter Earnings: Forbes has revealed that Apple generate more revenue in a day than Twitter does in an entire year. The company posted revenue in excess of $46 billion while Twitter only generated $139.5 million in ad revenue last year.

From Simply Viral, ever wondered what a normal Facebook conversation would sound if it had a dramatic interpretation? A comedy troupe have done just that with the aid of a public conversation between three 13-year olds.

Promote products with pricing information

Pinterest features a section on the site called ‘gifts’ which contains information on products categorised by price, with links through to purchase. It’s actually incredibly easy to get your products listed in this section. When you’re uploading a pin to your board, just make sure you include the price in your tags and your product will be pulled into the gifts section. Add your price in to the description and tags :

And it will then be pulled in automatically to the gift section, with the price displayed :

At the moment, gifts are only listed in dollars but this will hopefully change as the site leaves beta.

Add a follow button to your site

Pinterest has a few goodies that can be used on your own site, to help grow your followers and promote your pins/boards. The first of these that you’ll find useful are the follow buttons that can be added to your website. Here you simply select the style of button that you want, click on it and the embed code will be displayed. This code will be automatically populated with the url of your own Pinterest account when you’re logged in :

Add a ‘Pin It’ button to your site

The second of these goodies is a pin it button, which can be added next to a particular image on your site, to allow people to easily pin the image/product to their own board. Again you simply fill out the required information : web page the pin is on, the specific image url (found by right clicking on the image) and a short description. This will generate code which your developer can add to your site :

Encourage employees to Pin to their Timeline

Pinterest recently added the option to add a Pin to your Facebook Timeline. This is a great way to build very visual awareness for your Pinterest account and encouraging employees to get involved to promote your account. Until Facebook implements Timeline for Pages, this will have to be kept to individual Timelines. To feature your Pin in this way, there are 2 options. You will either see a banner at the top of the screen when you log in to Pinterest, asking you to turn Timeline on. If you don’t see this however, simply go to the settings in your account and turn on Facebook Timeline :

Note that this will automatically add any new pins to your Timeline

Create group boards

When you create a board on Pinterest, you have the option of whether to make it a group board or not. If you’re trying to build a community through your account, I’d recommend you make it open. To do this, you need to invite people to join the board when you create it. Select ‘me and contributors’ and type in the name or email of who you’d like to add. You will only be able to add people that you are following :

Contribute to group boards

As well as creating your own group boards, make sure you are also contributing to other’s group boards. As you’ll need to request to be added, you can always leave a comment on a particular pin asking to be a contributor to that board, letting them know that you’ll have lots of interesting content to add! As with anything in social media, this shouldn’t be too sales-focused. As well as posting your own products, make sure to source other interesting content that people will be interested in. This is a great way to build your profile within Pinterest, whether running a personal or corporate account.

Add an RSS feed of your board

You can generate an RSS feed of your whole account by using the following url, replacing ‘laurenfisher’ with the username on your account :

feed://pinterest.com/laurenfisher/feed.rss

You can then use this RSS feed on your Facebook Page for example, or encourage people to add it to their own Readers to subscribe to your latest pins.

Featured Pins

This is a little trick that you shouldn’t use too much, but it’s a nice way to get your account featured on the ‘popular’ page of Pinterest. When pins are featured on the homepage, there is the option to comment on any of them. As Pinterest is only just starting to gain traction, there are relatively few comments left on pins, increasing the chances that you will get shown. You shouldn’t spam users of course and only comment where you genuinely have something to say, but keep an eye on this page for new pins that may be relevant to you that will gain visibility for your account by commenting :

Use keywords

As Pinterest functions much more like a social search engine than a social network, it’s very important to pay attention to how you tag your product, to increase the chances of your content getting found. Add in relevant keywords to the product itself, but also the categories it may relate to etc.. Also try and pin content that is topical. If you see that a particular type of pin is getting featured on the ‘most popular; page – i.e. cakes, then see if you can pin content that is similar, tagged correctly.

Invite other members

You will have probably learned by now that your fans on Facebook and Twitter are always looking for fun new content. While Pinterest is starting to pick up users massively, there’s still a long way to go before it reaches the mainstream. Integrate Pinterest with your other social network accounts. If you’ve got a Twitter or Facebook account, link to Pinterest on there and ask people to join. They’ll always like to be seen ahead of the curve in front of their friends, jumping on the next big site before it hits :

Find who’s pinned your content

If you want to get an easy overview of who’s pinning content from your website, simply enter the url below, replacing simplyzesty.com with your own site url :

http://pinterest.com/source/simplyzesty.com

This will take you to a page with all the content that’s been pinned from your site :

This is another great opportunity to build your community. Leave comments on these pins and also make sure to follow people from your corporate/personal account to let them know you’re interested and start sharing more content

Pin videos

Videos are somewhat under-used on the site, as it was a new feature that Pinterest enabled late last year, to enable you to pin videos. The good news is, it’s incredibly easy to do but it will add a lot more depth to your boards and provide a bit of different content than scrolling through videos. To pin a video, you simply add a pin in the same way you normally would, either through the site or the bookmarklet :

Re-order your boards

With Pinterest the emphasis is largely on how visually beautiful your boards are. Take time to select products carefully, and also rearrange your boards to give the best impact, with the most important boards at the top. You can do this by going to your boards and clicking on ‘rearrange’ on the top right hand corner :

Happy Pinning

We’ve seen lots of great awareness campaigns through social media that have made a real difference to charities. But sometimes the charity angle gets taken a little bit too far and a campaign that’s intended to do good can actually end up doing the complete opposite. A new campaign that’s just been launched by NBC provides a good example of this and will hopefully provide a bit of perspective for when you’re planning your next social media campaign. Yesterday NBC 10 launched a campaign in association with the Ocean State Animal Coalition. If the NBC 10 Facebook Page reaches 50,000 fans by February 29th, they will donate $5,000 to the center, which is committed to fighting against euthanasia in unwanted pets.

The implication being that if they don’t reach these numbers…..more animals will die?

While the video uses the quirky Facebook angle to generate interest, unsurprisingly they have ominously left out what will happen if they don’t reach the target number of fans.

Something has gone wrong

Something has gone a little bit wrong with social media, when a campaign like this is run, literally leaving the fate of animal’s lives down to something as trivial as a Facebook Like. Should the charity/animals not be deserving of the donation regardless? It has added an element of gamification into something that shouldn’t really be gamed. Some perspective is needed here, to understand the role that social media plays in society. While of course the awareness gained for the charity is a good thing, the campaign is an unfortunate casualty in the race for numbers and Likes in social media, seeing this as the ultimate currency.

Surely NBC can gain more social currency with a well thought out campaign that sees the charity get the money regardless, but uses Facebook in a fun way to build awareness of the cause? This then turns into the story of a company doing good to help those in need, instead of using those in need to help them reach an arbitrary goal.

1# Twitter Censorship: Twitter’s decision to block tweets and its ramifications have been put to the test as the Brazilian Federal Attorney’s Office has filed a lawsuit against the company. The office wants to suspend and block Twitter profiles that warn of traffic controllers or share the location of mobile road control points.

2# Original Netflix: The first of what’s planned to be many original programmes has been released by Netflix yesterday. ’Lilyhammer’ is a show about a New York Gangster brought to Norway for witness protection and is available for U.S. and Canadian viewers.

3# Facebook Mobile: Facebook is expected to introduce adverts for their mobile platform in March. The company is considering different ways to integrate them into the app without ruining the user experience, possibly in the form of sponsored stories.

4# Amazon Store: Amazon are close to rolling out their first retail store, Good E Reader are reporting. The store, which will be opened in Seattle over the next few weeks, is seen as a test to gauge the market and see if a chain of stores would be profitable.

5# Solve For X: Google have finally revealed their home page for their new crowd sourcing forum ‘Solve for X’. The initiative aims to tackle global-scale problems in the areas of technology and science.

6# Zynga Disillusionment: An alleged ex-Zynga engineer has posted a “ask-me-anything” thread on Reddit willing to answer any questions regarding the company. Among the information revealed include the company being obsessed about measuring metrics and that contract workers have almost no feedback or say on their work schedule.

7#Google+ Developers Page: Similar to Facebook, Google+  has launched its own developers page to try and get more users to develop the service. The page is expected to become a hub for news, events, and community among others.

8# Wolfram|Alpha Pro: Popular information database, Wolfram|Alpha will be expanding its service by releasing a pro version tomorrow, allowing users to become more involved in both input and output. Subscriptions will start at $4.99 per month while students only need to pay $2.99 per month.

9#  Apple App Fraud: Apple have come out and warned developers not to trust services which claim they can guarantee a Top 25 spot for their app. Apple had posted a reminder regarding this by telling developers not to manipulate App Store chart rankings.

10# Google Goggles: 9to5Google have confirmed that Google are developing HUD glasses and that they are “coming soon”. Features include a front facing camera used to gather information and a navigation system where users tilt their head to scroll and click.

Finally on Simply Viral, Chevrolet are known for the crazy publicity stunts which include bringing their car for a skydive and bungee jumping. This video, shot for the Super Bowl brings all of these stunts together to create one massive commercial.

Who owns the gateway?

In many ways, search is the last bastion of web 1.0 that is yet to fall. All around us, the internet is fostering a new social order – much less top down and much more grass roots. There is no one central owner of content. While it may originate from one source, it then reaches online, is republished, interpreted, redistributed and the community has complete control. With search, this is not the case.

Google is, quite simply, a monopoly struggling to survive in a system that no longer supports monopolies.

That is not to suggest that we don’t have a few very key players in social media (hello Facebook, Twitter and Youtube), but that the way Google operates as a search engine is no longer applicable. While the social search platforms may be the places in which some content is distributed, it is inherently social. Yes, you may be within Facebook’s walls but they have little to no control over what you can and can’t say, and also how quickly you can leave that walled garden to communicate via another social platform. This is not how Google operates. At the moment, they are the gateway to content. They are the ones in control of what you can and can’t find. This worked well, very well, for a long time but the hinges are starting to fall off because this is not what the future of social search looks like.

We are the engine

In much the same way that social media has lead to a proliferation of individual control online, separate to control from larger organisations, this is ultimately the way that social search will go. We are, without even realising it, turning into expert search engines as individuals. We are becoming adept at scanning through content ourselves, from a variety of sources including our offline and online communities & conversations, direct site visits, RSS subscriptions and, for now, Google search. What we then do is to absorb all this information, analyse it and then decide what might be worth sharing with our own communities. The search engines no longer hold the best content – we do – and we’re starting to take over.

This can perhaps be confirmed by looking at a recent study which found that 25% of the content we see on Twitter is deemed to be useless information not worth reading. Rightly so, the findings of this study have been disputed not in their accuracy but in their relevancy. Yes, there is going to be a large amount of content in social media that is going to be irrelevant, but that doesn’t devalue it. That is just part of life. We can optimise our brains as much as we want but there will never be an automatic filter for ‘usefulness’.

And herein lies the reason that the future of search lies in the human, not in the engine. While I can determine whether something will be interesting for my followers – and importantly – which followers will like which content – a search engine can never tell you that. There is no algorithm that can take into account individual authority on a subject, context, relevance, spontaneity and personal interest to return the best content for you. This is the job of humans and the humans are taking over.

Fighting the wrong battle

For pretty much everyone except Google, this presents a unique opportunity. While there have been challengers to Google’s authority over the years, these have pretty much fallen by the wayside as Google reigned supreme. But there has never been a challenge as significant as this, because Google is dealing with an unstoppable shift within the technological revolution that is being lead by people. But the battle needs to be taken out of the search arena directly. Bing are now making their own announcements for how they will improve social search, waving on the ride of Google’s negative publicity. A recent interview with their director of search outlined plans to use Twitter and Facebook more in their search results.

This is largely unsurprising, but Bing may be missing out on their best opportunity yet. They have far more favourable relationships with Twitter and Facebook (not forgetting Microsoft’s stake in Facebook) and what they need to do is forget about a standalone search product at all. What they instead need to do is bring their search capabilities to the platform themselves. Attempting to place a gateway between people and content that requires us to leave the social search site we’re on is going to have a very limited shelf-life. Search, and social search will stand to gain most when it goes the way of social media and relies on communities of people instead of engines to provide the gateways to content in completely new ways.

1# Social Media Advertising: 89 per cent of agencies have said that they would use be using Facebook for their social media campaigns. Zdnet.com report that this was more than double the percentage of agencies that said they’d use Twitter and Youtube for advertising.

2# Super Bowl Tweeting: The Super Bowl XLVI has become America’s most tweeted about sporting event after hitting a record average of 12,233 tweets per second (TPS). The final saw the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots 21 – 17 in Indianapolis.

3# Facebook’s Deleted Photos: If you’ve ever uploaded a photo onto Facebook only to later remove it, chances are the image is still online. Ars Technica have reported that three years after bringing up the issue with Facebook, it’s still possible to access photos that you once thought were deleted, provided you have the direct URL address.

4# Microsoft Vs Google: The bickering between Microsoft and Google continues with Fusible.com discovering that Microsoft has now trademarked “People Powered Stories”, alluding to them incorporating Twitter and Facebook related searches onto Bing and taking another pot shot at Google.

5# Facebook Mobile Advertising: The New York Times are reporting that Facebook is now preparing to introduce mobile advertising onto their site as another way of generating advertising revenue for the company.

6# Objectionable Content: A court in India has ruled that internet firms such as Google and Facebook have 15 days to remove content which it described as objectionable content. NDtv.com report that the civil case accused 22 different firms of allowing “anti-religious” and “anti-social” content that could provoke communal tension.

7# Google Poaching: Google have reportedly poached an Apple employee to be part of its own staff. 9to5Google are reporting that Apple’s (former) Senior Director of Product Integrity, Simon Prakash, has been hired by the company to work on a secret project. Prakash was responsible for product quality across Apple’s products ranging from the iPhone to the Macbook.

8# Android Apps Appeal: Google have lost its final appeal in Taiwan after it was fined NT$1 million ($34,000) after the city of Taipei issued a complaint regarding a seven day trial period where users could request a refund. Google were the only company that refused to budge, not changing its 15-minute refund window and ceasing to offer paid apps in the country.

9# Publicly Trading SM sites: The transformation of social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter could signal a move from privately owned companies to public enterprises. It’s expected that more companies such as Dropbox will follow on from the likes of Linkedin and Groupon and become public to remain competitive.

10# Twitter Addiction: How much time do you spend on Twitter daily? A team from Chicago University’s Booth business school have discovered that Twitter can become “more addictive than alcohol and cigarettes“. The Drum report that the likelihood of self control failure rates were highest when social media is involved.

Finally, on yesterday’s Simply Viral, this has to be the best Siri parody made so far, a fantastic short film where the personal assistant ends up becoming a psychopathic killer.

You won’t make it through them all in one sitting but it’ll bring you up to speed with this week’s happenings. So just sit back, grab a coffee and enjoy what’s on offer!

What the appointment of John Browett as Apple’s new retail boss means for the company.
Twitter CEO Dick Costello gives his views on censorship, Twitter as a platform for the 2012 elections & the company’s decision to block tweets. [Video]
How Microsoft’s Kinect will change the way laptops work.
Reuter’s fray into reporting via social media with their new service, Social Pulse.
Foursquare planning to introduce auto check-ins to help increase its user base.

The real face behind Facebook’s IPO: the company’s CFO David Ebersman.
Why Apple should shift from reinventing products to reinventing manufacturing.
The obstacles faced when a site achieves popularity and the need for moderation.
Why the inclusion of Mint on Android could end up boosting its user base.
The story of the graffiti artist who could walk away with $200 million because of Facebook’s IPO.

Why the perks enjoyed by advertisers on Facebook could be coming to an end.
The dirty little secret behind Silicon Valley’s Startup boom.
The awkward moment when Motorola sells used tablets and forgets to delete the personal info still saved on them.
The free fall experienced by About.com and whether the New York Times Company can reverse it.
Does iOS apps crash more than Android apps, a data report.How the venture capital fund Andressen Horowitz raised over $2.7 billion in three years.
A breakdown of Facebook’s revenue over the past three years.
How iMessage conversations has been interpreted and could end up in the wrong hands.
Bing finally speak out about Google’s new ‘Search Plus Your World’ feature.
Having trouble figuring out whether you’re working on a fake Apple project or not? A handy flowchart [Comic]

Finally, remember that commercial where Samsung poked fun at iPhone owners? Well they’re back with a second advert entitled “You’ve just got Samsung’d”, effectively continuing the same theme from the last one.

Also out of the 200,000 companies that Yammer has using its site, roughly 85% of those make up the Fortune 500 list . It’s very impressive how the company has grown even tripling its number of employees over the year from 80 to 250. With the company reportedly in the process of raising $40 million this year, 2012 is shaping up to be a very bright year for the site.

Commenting on the launch, Alex Leo (Director of News for Reuters Digital) explained that the hub is “designed to show you the most talked-about news, companies and influencers across the Web.” This is being done through a number of features on the site, that refreshingly focuses on the community of journalists online, as well as socialising news itself.

This is socialising news in a new way because it adds authority to the spread of news online. One feature of the dashboard features the hottest news – which isn’t necessarily the news that’s getting the most comments, tweets etc.. but is the news that’s being discussed by the newsmakers themselves, that Reuters follow :

One of the other most notable features is their graph that plots social sentiment against stock prices for tech companies, such as Google, Apple and LinkedIn :

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen efforts to combine social media with the stock market, as Derwent Capital last year launched a hedge fund that used Twitter to predict movements in stocks and guide their investments. But this is a great public facing tool that could provide a whole new insight into the effects of social media sentiment into a company’s actual performance.

The dashboard has a number of other features, unfortunately including Klout scores for the most social CEOs, which I think is a fairly arbitrary measurement, but it’s a great project nonetheless.

Tumblr writes about itself

In a more bizarre movement in social news, Tumblr this week started hiring a raft of journalists to cover the world of…Tumblr. That’s right, Tumblr is now considering itself a news product in its own right. Correspondents have been recruited from organisations including BlackBook Media and the Daily Beast. The 2 journalists that have currently been hired will be tasked with documenting the world of Tumblr users, with real, investigative journalism to provide insight into what’s going on within Tumblr. Jessica Bennett, one of those hired who came from Daily Beast and NewsWeek said “Basically, if Tumblr were a city of 42 million, I’m trying to figure out how we cover the ideas, themes and people who live in it.”

This concept may be a little tricky to get your head around. First, we had social media socialising the news and allowing anyone to become a creator of content, and now those content creators will become the news themselves, with journalists dedicated to covering their stories. It is a complete 180 for the news industry, who not only first had to get used to the world of social media, but they are now reporting on it directly. Surely a big fat win for social media?