Home � � Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Skype and Facebook to Announce Partnership [RUMOR]”

Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Skype and Facebook to Announce Partnership [RUMOR]”

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Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Skype and Facebook to Announce Partnership [RUMOR]”

Skype and Facebook to Announce Partnership [RUMOR]
Dunkin’ Donuts Seeks Ultimate Coffee Fan on Facebook
Nintendo 3DS Comes to Japan in February
Plastic Boxes Make for Greener Moving Days
Find the Android Apps You Really Want with AppESP
Dating Site Where Gamers Pay to Play with Girls Opens for Business
What You Missed at the Mashable and 92Y Social Good Summit [PHOTOS]
Mark Zuckerberg’s Version of “The Social Network” [PARODY]
Which Words Does Google Instant Blacklist?
AOL Acquires Thing Labs and Brizzly
How Social Media Marketers Can Convert Attention Into Action
Motorola Aims to Optimize Comfort with Oasis Bluetooth Headset
Foursquare for BlackBerry Gets Push Notifications and Upgraded Interface
Why We Need to Reframe the “Women in Tech” Debate
5 Ways to Use Google Voice for Your Business
Dating App Survey Finds that Bed Bugs Kill the Mood, Who Knew?
Google Voice Approved for iPhone [REPORT]
Twitter Now Getting More Traffic Than MySpace
Top 5 Emerging Brand Trends on Facebook
Hulu Plus Headed to Roku and TiVo This Fall
AOL Acquires Technology Blog Network TechCrunch
Office for Mac 2011 Coming October 26
“The Social Network”: Mashable’s Complete Movie Review
11 Trends in Web Logo Design: The Good, the Bad and the Overused
Last Minute Tickets Available for Mashlanta 2.0
Twitter COO: New Ad Format for Gaining Followers Launching “Very Shortly”
Start a Digital Book Club on Your BlackBerry [APPS]
Twitter Shelves @EarlyBird Deals
Kindle Comes to the Web
LinkedIn Upgrades Company Profiles

Skype and Facebook to Announce Partnership [RUMOR]

Posted: 29 Sep 2010 04:30 AM PDT

Facebook and Skype are working on a deal that would integrate Facebook Connect with Skype accounts, AllThingsD has learned citing sources familiar with the situation.

ATD has managed to get a hold of a screenshot showing the new features in action: once you connect Skype with Facebook, you’d be able to SMS, chat with or call your Facebook friends directly from Skype. You should also be able to login into Skype with your Facebook credentials.

The new features should go live in Skype 5.0 when the new version goes out of beta in a couple of weeks.

It’s a logical step for both companies. Facebook’s chat capabilities are somewhat limited compared to Google Talk, which is deeply integrated with Gmail, and offers voice and video chat capabilities. Enabling new ways to communicate with your Facebook friends is definitely one of Facebook’s goals. Skype, on the other hand, will be very happy to extend its user base with Facebook’s 500+ million users.

If the rumor turns out to be true, it would be interesting to see whether Facebook will also integrate Skype features into its web interface, or perhaps its mobile application.

Image courtesy of ATD

Reviews: Facebook, Gmail, Skype, google talk

More About: facebook, Skype

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Dunkin’ Donuts Seeks Ultimate Coffee Fan on Facebook

Posted: 29 Sep 2010 02:59 AM PDT

Dunkin’ Donuts, no stranger to the grandiose social media campaigns, is at it again with a new social media endeavor: the coffee and donut chain is seeking its number one coffee fan via Facebook.

With the Ultimate Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee Fan Contest, as it’s called, the company is hoping to find its most passionate fan through a Facebook Page video call-to-action.

Fans can enter to win the grand prize — a trip for two to Costa Rica, a tour of Dunkin’s Coffee Lab and 60 months free coffee — by submitting a video, 60 seconds or less, describing why they deserve the title of ultimate fan.

The contest and announcement were timed to celebrate the company’s 60th birthday and pay tribute to September 29 — otherwise known to us caffeine-aholics as National Coffee Day, a nationally recognized day in the U.S.

Interested parties can navigate to the Ultimate Fan tab on Dunkin’ Donuts Facebook Page to view rules, contest details and enter to win. Should you wish to enter, you’ll have until October 20 to make and submit your video. On October 21, Dunkin’ will start the public voting portion of the contest, which means you’ll be able to solicit support from your Facebook friends through November 4.

Public voting will only take you so far. Seventy-five percent of your video’s overall score will come from Dunkin’ judges, who will be assessing videos based on passion for the brand (40%), overall video appeal (30%) and originality (30%). After the internal judging round, the ultimate fan will be announced on November 19. Ten additional Facebook fans will win 12 months of free coffee.

Dunkin’ Donuts is taking its first pass at a Facebook-only fan contest, whereas in the past the brand has opted for campaigns with social media components that are tied back to its corporate website. Dunkin’ Donuts reasons that its more than two million Page fans warrant the change in strategy. Of course, Dunkin’ isn’t the only brand to go the Facebook-only route, in fact it’s part of a growing trend we’re seeing thanks to the social network’s size, reach and viral sharing possibilities.

Reviews: Facebook

More About: dunkin donuts, facebook, MARKETING, video

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Nintendo 3DS Comes to Japan in February

Posted: 29 Sep 2010 12:54 AM PDT

Nintendo’s handheld gaming console with 3D capabilities, the Nintendo 3DS, now has an official launch date: February 26.

According to Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata, the 3DS will first launch in Japan, and it will cost about 25,000 yen ($300). The U.S. and Europe release date is sometime in March, but the price for those markets is still unknown.

While Nintendo’s original announcement left room for speculation that the 3DS will launch by the end of 2010 and in time for the holiday shopping season, the folks from Nintendo claim they originally planned to launch it by the end of March 2011, and then hurried the release date to February.

Nintendo 3DS is a portable gaming console that doesn’t require the user to wear glasses to experience the 3D effect on the screen. The device, which we previewed at the E3 conference in June, looks quite similar to the previous model, the Nintendo DS. However, the 3D effect – its most important new feature – cannot be captured on photos: you have to experience it first hand to appreciate it.

Nintendo’s biggest competitor in the 3D gaming is Sony, whose PlayStation 3 recently got updated with 3D capabilities (which work only if you own a 3D-capable TV).

More About: 3ds, console, gaming, Nintendo

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Plastic Boxes Make for Greener Moving Days

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 11:18 PM PDT

This post is part of Mashable's Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: ZippGo

Quick Pitch: ZippGo rents and delivers moving boxes made from 100% recycled plastic.

Genius Idea: If you’ve ever had pangs of guilt over using cardboard boxes to move, ZippGo is an alternative for you to consider.

The company provides reusable plastic boxes for anyone to use during a move. The boxes are delivered to your door and can be picked up again by ZippGo at your convenience. ZippGo’s boxes are made from 100% recycled plastic. They’re study, almost infinitely reusable and don’t require packing tape.

A package of 25 boxes runs around $120 and is marketed towards one-bedroom residential movers. For those in larger homes, the company recommends a $249 package that includes 75 boxes. Users of the service are allowed to keep the boxes for two weeks, which includes packing time, moving and unpacking.

Currently, this service is only available in the San Francisco Bay area.

Although the startup claims the service it offers is less expensive than buying cardboard boxes from a conventional moving company, we didn’t exactly find this to be true. Boxes from ZippGo are roughly twice as expensive as boxes from U-Haul, for example; with U-Haul, you don’t have to give the boxes back after two weeks, which is especially convenient if some of those boxes end up storing seasonal items in your garage.

Moreover, ZippGo only provides boxes and other supplies for packing and moving — not trucks and not moving-day assistance.

While this San Francisco-based startup is definitely onto something, we don’t see the ZippGo solution as a practical one for time-pressed and money-tight movers. It adds yet another step to an already complicated process; it’s cost-prohibitive and it requires a quick turnaround time, adding more pressure to an already stressful process. On the other hand, it might be interesting to see full-service moving companies such as U-Haul integrate plastic boxes into their offerings, perhaps through a ZippGo partnership, in a way that preserves convenience and lowers ZippGo’s prices.

What do you think of this startup’s service? Would you pay more for a set of plastic box rentals? Let us know in the comments.

Supporting Sponsors

Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for non-profit organizations, enabling them to improve operational efficiency, build strong relationships, and raise more money to support their missions. Since 1981, Blackbaud's sole focus and expertise has been partnering with non-profits and providing them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide. For more information, visit www.blackbaud.com.

Johnson & Johnson is committed to helping achieve the Millennium Development Goals, particularly in the areas of maternal and child health by applying innovative mobile technologies. The rapid proliferation of cell phones has made it possible to provide timely health information in even the most remote locations. In February 2010, Johnson & Johnson launched Text4Baby in the U.S. through its partnership with the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB). In September 2010, we announced a five year initiative with our affiliate, BabyCenter, focusing on mobile health outreach to mothers in six countries starting with China, India and South Africa.

P&G's purpose is to improve people's lives, and its Children's Safe Drinking Water Program (CSDW) is a non-profit initiative that has provided over 2.4 billion liters of clean drinking water to people in need since 2004. CSDW has partnered with a diverse network of organizations to help distribute PUR™ Purifier of Water packets. These packets, developed by P&G and the Centers for Disease Control, use some of the same ingredients as municipal water systems to remove pollutants from contaminated water. To learn more about the CSDW program, and see how the PUR™ Purifier of Water packets work, please visit www.csdw.org and get involved at http://givehealth.changents.com/.

Reviews: Facebook, Flickr

More About: social good, social good summit, social media

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Mark Zuckerberg’s Version of “The Social Network” [PARODY]

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 06:41 PM PDT

If you’ve been interested in reading Mark Zuckerberg’s opinion on “The Social Network,” you might have to wait a while — the Facebook founder and CEO has stated he has no plans to see the movie. However, that hasn’t stopped the gang at Babelgum and Landline.TV from creating their own “The Social Network” parody, this time from Mark Zuckerberg’s point of view.

You can read our in-depth film review for our perspective on the real film, but we have to say, we liked this version of Mark Zuckerberg as an action hero too.

Who’s your favorite fictionalized Zuck? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Facebook

More About: Babelgum, facebook, landline tv, Movies, parody, the social network

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Which Words Does Google Instant Blacklist?

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 05:02 PM PDT

Some folks at the Hacker publication 2600 decided to compile a list of words that are restricted by Google Instant.

Except in extreme and special cases, Google is known for anything but censorship, but as we’ve said before, there are some terms the web giant’s new instant search feature won’t work with.

We understand Google’s intentions; the team over there is trying to make sure that no one sees pornographic or violent results they might fight disturbing unless they really mean to search for them. When asked about this feature a few weeks ago, Google's Johanna Wright said the restrictions are in place to protect children.

But Google has opened itself up to a potential PR problem, because some of these omissions will be at best bewildering and at worst offensive to particularly sensitive (or progressive) users who don’t understand how Google Instant actually works.

For example, “bisexual” and “lesbian” are among the restricted words. Type them in to Google and the instant search will immediately stop delivering new results. You have to hit enter to confirm, yes, you really do want to know about something in some way related to bisexuals or lesbians.

Why Did Google Block These Words?

You can still search for these terms. The issue is that when you type them, Google Instant stops reporting results on the fly, and you must hit “enter” to see results.

That happens because Google Instant doesn’t just use what you’ve typed to display results. It reads data collected over the years about previous users’ searches to predict what you’re going to type. It’s the same algorithm that handles auto-complete, or the Google Suggest pop-ups in the old, not-so-instant Google search. Google searches only display for the exact text that you’ve typed after you’ve hit enter.

When results fail to appear after you’ve typed “lesbian” or “butt,” it’s not because the results are being censored. Google is struggling to prevent the text of offensive searches users have made in the past (there have been other controversies on this subject before) from jumping up in front of you when you’re looking for something innocuous.

Since countless users may have followed the word lesbian with “porn,” generating results inappropriate for children, Google’s algorithm has decided not to immediately throw 20 links to lesbian porn sites in your face when you type “lesbian,” even if that’s the most common search based on the algorithmic data.

When we contacted Google for comment, we received this statement from a spokesperson:

“There are a number of reasons you may not be seeing search queries for a particular topic. Among other things, we apply a narrow set of removal policies for pornography, violence, and hate speech. It’s important to note that removing queries from Autocomplete is a hard problem, and not as simple as blacklisting particular terms and phrases.
In search, we get more than one billion searches each day. Because of this, we take an algorithmic approach to removals, and just like our search algorithms, these are imperfect. We will continue to work to improve our approach to removals in Autocomplete, and are listening carefully to feedback from our users.
Our algorithms look not only at specific words, but compound queries based on those words, and across all languages. So, for example, if there’s a bad word in Russian, we may remove a compound word including the transliteration of the Russian word into English. We also look at the search results themselves for given queries. So, for example, if the results for a particular query seem pornographic, our algorithms may remove that query from Autocomplete, even if the query itself wouldn’t otherwise violate our policies. This system is neither perfect nor instantaneous, and we will continue to work to make it better.”

Google’s highly effective SafeSearch algorithm still applies to instant search results. SafeSearch can filter out potentially offensive search results quite effectively after a user has hit “enter” — the first page of results for “lesbian” with moderate safe search enabled is completely innocuous — and it works for searches in progress too.

Google’s current implementation is far from perfect — the company rep admitted that. If nothing else, we’d like to see Google manually re-enter safe suggestions for some common terms that have been restricted because they’re sometimes connected with sexual, violent or hateful results.

The rep told us that Google is working on improving the system, but wouldn’t give us any specifics about future changes. In the meantime, check out the complete list at 2600 if you’re curious.

[Via Nerve]

Reviews: Google

More About: blacklist, censorship, controversy, Google, Google Instant, Google Instant Search, instant, Instant Search, search terms, semantic search, sex, terms, trending

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AOL Acquires Thing Labs and Brizzly

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 03:36 PM PDT

What do former Googler Jason Shellen, video website 5min and TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington have in common? All three parties announced AOL acquisition deals this week.

Back in the summer of 2009, Shellen and fellow Googler Chris Wetherell, who were instrumental in creating Google Reader, founded Thing Labs, a social app shop. Their freshman product was Brizzly, a web-based social reader and third-party Twitter and Facebook client.

Brizzly was never in a position to compete with hard-hitting apps such as Seesmic and Tweetdeck, but this fact alone would have made Thing Labs a more palatable acquisition target for AOL. The latter company has struggled to integrate modern social aspects for years with little or no success; their strategy seems to have revolved around buying second-tier applications and frittering away those startups’ talent and userbases.

We recall the 2008 acquisitions of FriendFeed competitor Socialthing (the product was “transitioned” into AOL Lifestream at the end of 2009) and Bebo (the faltering social network was sold three months ago).

Today’s string of acquisition announcements — acquisitions of an online video network, a popular tech blog and a Twitter/Facebook client — are a repetition of a lesson AOL should have learned in the past: You can’t buy Silicon Valley-grade social.

Rather, you can buy it, but integrating it into a network of old products and old problems is nearly impossible, and it will take more than a rebranding to fix and revitalize AOL.

We’ll be intently watching Brizzly’s (d)evolution as part of the AOL family, and we’ll be watching Thing Labs’ talented staff even closer. How long these brilliant entrepreneurs and technologists continue working for the 90s-era tech giant may be entirely up to AOL.

Reviews: Bebo, Facebook, FriendFeed, Google Reader, Seesmic, TweetDeck, Twitter

More About: 5min, aol, bebo, brizzly, jason shellen, Socialthing!, TechCrunch, Thing Labs

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How Social Media Marketers Can Convert Attention Into Action

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 03:11 PM PDT

Brian Solis is the author of Engage, and a leading authority in digital branding and marketing. Connect with him on Twitter or Facebook.

According to a recent report, while upwards of 70% of businesses are said to operate under a formalized social media strategy, many plans don’t include measurable goals. Gimmicks, viral videos, and creative campaigns aside, social media marketers must learn to introduce “clicks to action” and outcomes that steer consumer experiences toward desirable results.

Engagement through conversation is a start, but reaching people where their attention is focused and compelling them to take an action is powerful. Clearly defined objectives and milestones, combined with a little conversion science, will increase the value of engagement and drive desired outcomes.

Conversion Science: Actions Speak Louder Than “Likes”

As social networks are rooted in conversations and connections, denizens are open to the idea of business participation as long as they do so authentically and transparently. Talk is cheap however, and actions speak louder than words. As such, the opportunity to convert attention into impact is largely untapped. Many of the celebrated examples in commercial social media have yet to define what it is that they hope to accomplish and measure beyond conversations, views, comments, RTs, Likes, and the population of their “tribe.”

Once attention is captivated, the real question is, what are you going to do with it?

The answer is to introduce a "call to action" in new media to generate intentional outcomes. This is why conversion science is at the heart of the best digital campaigns today, as well as those that improve over time.

Conversion science is essentially the study of converting impressions into actions and how to then improve engagement and conversion rates over time. It’s through the introduction of conversion events that we can measure reactions. As such, the ever-elusive ROI in social media is not only measurable, it is perfectible. This is why conversion science is critical to success.

In order to convert attention into desirable outcomes, we must:

Create programs with an "end" in mind. What do you want to cause, change, inspire, sell, build, or organize?
Introduce conversion opportunities through existing and emerging touchpoints.
Learn where campaigns or click paths break down.
Measure performance.

Conversion science isn't new. It’s how the best web professionals in search, e-commerce, design, analytics, advertising, and direct marketing achieve astounding results. Through the study of conversions and corresponding behavior, we learn to introduce meaningful and relevant initiatives each and every time.

Adapting on the Fly

The real-time nature of discovery, interaction, and sharing is influenced by many factors. How these factors impact the performance of the campaign is revealed only through study and experimentation, even while it’s underway.

This fine tuning improves the:

Definition of the actions we wish to trigger
Mechanisms to capture activity
Systems and channels we use to attract attention
Focus and caliber of the individuals who help us carry our intent and value across relevant social graphs
Relevance of the social objects we create and distribute online

For example, I was part of a team that lead a widely publicized campaign to raise the visibility of an important cause. Our goal was to raise awareness and donations, and by standard numbers alone, the campaign was deemed a huge success. The team however, took the cause to heart and felt that based on the number of total conversations and participants, the resulting donations could and should improve.

Conversion science was then employed to analyze the activity of those introduced to the program and what eventually led to donations or abandonment. We learned that while every facet of the campaign led to desirable actions, the click path from tweet to payment was far too cumbersome for the real-time web. It was easier to retweet and “Like” than it was to donate.

Fine tuning the words, click paths, and specifics of the intended outcomes allowed us to focus on awareness and donations separately. As a result, friction was removed, payment was simplified to appease the social web, and awareness and donations increased exponentially.

Data is a Fountain of Inspiration for Social Marketers

Conversion science fosters creativity and innovation through analysis and adaptation. Social media programs that are data driven are inspired by insight, not guesswork, and as such, will outperform any program driven only by great ideas. Analyzing, ideating, researching, and learning create a virtuous digital cycle that benefits business performance.

Perhaps one of the most profound benefits of introducing science and data into the mix is that they consist of the language spoken by the decision makers that greenlight our programs. Information can be presented in such a way that merits support and justifies larger budgets over time — just like everything else we do in business.

It is this marriage of data, analysis and creativity that saves time and energy in the design of social campaigns. As attention is scarce, conversion science helps us tell our story in a way that is consumable, shareable and actionable. As Elvis Presley once famously sang, "a little less conversation, a little more action."

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More About: analytics, business, MARKETING, metrics, monetization, small business, social media, social media marketing

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Motorola Aims to Optimize Comfort with Oasis Bluetooth Headset

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 03:10 PM PDT

The Motorola Oasis Bluetooth Headset will be released on October 3 through AT&T stores and online retailers. Motorola has developed the Oasis with a behind-the-ear design and a set of customizable gel ear cushions for optimum comfort.

From a technological perspective, the Motorola Oasis isn’t a slouch. Not only does the device allow you to connect to two phones, it also has a sweet swivel boom mic with noise and echo cancellation for clear sound in crowds and wind. The Motorola Oasis Bluetooth Headset will be available for $80 on October 3.

The price tag will put the Motorola Oasis squarely in contention with the Jawbone Icon and the Plantronics Discovery 975, which are generally considered two of the best Bluetooth headsets currently on the market. That said, if your primary objective is comfort, the Oasis might be a better bet.

Here’s a video that shows the headset from all angles:

Reviews: Bluetooth

More About: bluetooth, Motorola, motorola oasis

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Foursquare for BlackBerry Gets Push Notifications and Upgraded Interface

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 02:51 PM PDT

Popular location and checkin app Foursquare has just announced push notifications for BlackBerry.

With this new feature, BlackBerry users will instantly be able to know when and where their friends check in, all without having to leave the app running in the background (and eating up battery life).

This is just one of the new features for Foursquare’s BlackBerry app. Push notifications are one way the app is saving on battery life; the company says it made a few other tweaks to ensure Foursquare’s app won’t unduly drain your battery, as well.

Foursquare also says everything in the app will load faster and touch navigation has been improved.

Do you use Foursquare on your BlackBerry? If so, will push notifications help you out — either by saving your battery or by helping you meet up with friends?

Reviews: Foursquare, Tvider Blackberry App

More About: blackberry, blackberry app, checkin, foursquare, geolocation, location, Mobile 2.0

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Why We Need to Reframe the “Women in Tech” Debate

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 02:20 PM PDT

Carla Thompson is an emerging technology analyst and the CEO and Founder of Sharp Skirts, a network for women entrepreneurs. You can find her on Twitter @carlat.

The song-and-dance has been the same for years, but the drum beat lately is deafening: Where are the women entrepreneurs and their startups? Why aren't they funded? Are their businesses successful? Ad infinitum. These are all questions worth asking, to be sure, and there will continue to be a need to revisit them from time to time. But doesn't it feel like we're spinning endlessly in this particular hamster wheel? It’s time to change the conversation.

The reality is that women entrepreneurs are everywhere, in every industry and from every career phase. And they're eager to coalesce. Since launching a company exclusively for them five months ago, I've had trouble keeping up. They're coming out of the woodwork to talk and network, many of them aggressive in their desire to connect with fellow entrepreneurs and have real conversations about building their businesses.

So the question we need to be asking right now is, “Why do we perceive there are so few of them?” And it's time to move this discussion out of the comments section and into the business pages.

The Problem

There’s no doubt that outright bias still exists, but there are so many ways to work around it now. The real issue is perception vs. reality.

A main cause of this incorrect perception is the way we ask questions. Let's say you're a woman thinking of launching a tech startup. As you're thinking through your business plan and company creation, you understandably go looking for resources online. When your initial search for "women tech startups" returns countless headlines like, "Addressing the Lack of Women Leading Tech Startups," you're likely going to feel at a disadvantage before you've even started.

While researching the competitive landscape for my company, I found that a large majority of websites targeted at “working women” are littered with motherhood references, ads for envelope-stuffing “home-based businesses,” and fashion tips. There's perhaps nothing more disheartening as an entrepreneur than having your ideas belittled, no matter your gender. When you've forsaken sleep, food, and time with loved ones to build a company, the last thing you need when looking for resources is a bunch of diaper ads, or worse, an article saying you don't exist and have no hope of being funded.

But despite this disheartening media and marketing-spun perception, real numbers certainly exist to support a more positive outlook. A February 2010 study by Illuminate Ventures titled “High-Performance Entrepreneurs: Women in High-Tech” takes a decidedly different view of this issue, and I encourage you to download the full report. Predicting that "women entrepreneurs are poised to lead the next wave of growth in global technology ventures," Illuminate's study found that:

Women-owned or led firms are the fastest growing sector of new venture creation, representing nearly 50% of all privately held businesses.
Women-owned businesses are more likely to survive the transition from startup to established company.
The number of U.S. software patents held by women has increased 45-fold since 1985; three times the national average.
Women currently make up more than 30% of the technology workforce, but receive less than 10% of venture funding.

The numbers are there, and the biases are becoming less powerful. So what now?

The Solution

The solution lies in an old truism: If you don't like the answers, change the questions. We need a fundamental shift in the conversation around women entrepreneurs and women in business overall. We need opportunities to ask the questions that matter about the companies we're building. We need answers that spark discussions from women who've been there. We need brainstorms around innovative ideas that will eventually turn into companies. In short, women need what any entrepreneur needs: support, ideas, energy, creativity, and answers. And you don't have to paint it pink or make it heart-shaped to appeal to us. (Really, please don't.)

Imagine what would result if we replaced every “Where are the Women” article with something weightier — perhaps an examination of why some women are less inclined to sell themselves and their businesses, out of fear of being viewed as egoists. Maybe we need to look at all those software patents cited above and how they've affected key sectors, or explore the rapid growth of female entrepreneurs and what effect its having on business overall.

Now imagine like-minded women gathering online and off to discuss these issues and share their experience toward a goal of enriching all. If we took our collective knowledge, energy, experience, and motivation, shared it and built on it, we'd be able to move the world.

The number of organizations that have emerged in recent years — to encourage, foster, develop, and sustain women-owned businesses — is overwhelming. We need to establish a more central repository for these, so women looking for resources can easily find communities in which to coalesce. We’re out there. We simply need to find each other more effectively.

I'm a woman. And I've started a business. And I know at least 500 more like me. I'm betting you do too.

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Yuri_Arcurs

Reviews: iStockphoto

More About: business, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, small business, startups, tech, women

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5 Ways to Use Google Voice for Your Business

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 01:17 PM PDT

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Google Voice, which the search giant introduced in 2009, recently became freely available to everyone in the United States. Even though the service hasn’t dramatically changed since then, it’s still very useful to those that run small businesses, because it can give them an extra edge and make professional life much easier — at least, it can if you know how to use it.

When you register you can choose a virtual phone number in any area code. You can use that number to send and receive text messages, record voicemails and even receive and make calls over the Internet, but it becomes particularly useful when you attach it to the number associated with your mobile or landline phone.

There are some features we’d like to see added, but the current suite is still impressive. Google Voice can forward calls directed at your virtual line to your physical line, record voicemails and calls at both numbers, transcribe voicemails, share those voicemails with other contacts, block callers, apply special rules for individual callers or groups of callers, receive e-mail notifications of calls and text messages, and make unlimited free domestic calls and very cheap international calls. It even enables you to listen in on voicemails as they’re being recorded, giving you the option to pick up if you want to talk to the person who’s leaving the voicemail.

Here are our picks for five ways you can use all these features to make your small business more efficient. Add your tips in the comments below.

1. Search and Prioritize Your Calls

Most of Google Voice’s features fall into this category, but be aware that you have to actually provide contacts with your Google Voice phone number to use them. You can’t use many of the features we’re listing for calls received at your old number. This is a huge problem for small business owners who have already amassed an extensive list of contacts using their old number(s), but if you’re planning on switching pace and only handing out your Google Voice number, you’re all set.

Google will record voicemails on your behalf, then e-mail or text message you digitally made transcripts of every voicemail you receive. The robot transcripts aren’t perfect, but they’re usually clear enough that you can tell who is calling and what he or she is calling about. More importantly, they’re searchable.

Just like you can search your Gmail inbox or the web using Google, you can search the transcribed text of your voicemails. Voicemails have never been searchable before. If your business gets a high volume of calls, this is a killer feature because it allows you to avoid losing important calls.

Since voicemails and text messages are all up on the web for you to search and sort, you can process a lot of calls more efficiently than you would be able to with a regular, call-in voicemail system.

2. Use Different Rules and Greetings for Different Contacts

You can assign contacts to user-defined groups when you dig into Google Voice’s settings menu, then adjust behavior for those groups. You can say that certain individuals or groups should be connected to certain numbers when they call, or block some people from contacting you at all should you become harassed by unnecessary calls.

For example, you can determine which contacts will be calling to discuss business development deals and which contacts will be calling for product support, and forward those calls to the appropriate team member inboxes automatically.

You can also create custom voicemail messages for important clients or to represent certain divisions of your business. For example, the voicemail messages for your customer support and sales divisions could greet callers in different ways and with more relevant information on who to contact.

3. Share Calls with Your Assistant or Partner

Because calls, text messages and voicemails are sent to you via e-mail, you can easily forward them to other people working at your business. But that’s not all you can do. You can actually embed the audio recordings of voicemails and share them via e-mail or other communications media with anyone you want.

Furthermore, you can press a button while on a call to begin recording that call. The recorded audio will appear on the web, and it will be shareable as well. This can be very helpful for collaboration, or for looping a partner in on an important conference call that he or she couldn’t attend.

As we mentioned in the previous point, you can configure calls from certain contacts to go to specific team members, but you can easily transfer a call to a different number once you’ve received it, too. This is of course standard for normal office phone systems, but many of today’s small businesses are operated via mobile phones on the go. This is a welcome feature for business owners in that situation.

4. Set Up Shop Anywhere, or Nowhere At All

Google Voice allows you to pick virtually any U.S. area code, and that can be a boon for small businesses in a big world. Do you have a large concentration of clients in Chicago, but you’re based in San Francisco? Set up a Google Voice number in the 773 or 312 area codes so they have a local number to call for support.

From your perspective, the area code is completely irrelevant because all your domestic calls through Google Voice are free, but that might not be the case for clients, customers and other important contacts.

Let’s say you run a consulting business for Hollywood screenwriters, but you’re actually working from Dallas. Some of your potential clients won’t take you seriously if they feel you’re not connected to the City of Angels, so set up a number in area code 323 — downtown Los Angeles.

You can also use Google Voice to make dirt-cheap international calls. That can save you a sizable sum in this age of Internet business and e-commerce, when national borders have little bearing on who you might do business with.

5. Specify When and Where You Want to Receive Calls

You can tell Google Voice which times of day you’ll be at which numbers, or recover your sanity by saying you don’t want the phone to ring at all outside of business hours. You can also change these rules for specific contacts or groups, as described above.

Let’s say you’re about to go on vacation; you’re leaving the office at 1:00 p.m., then you’ll be in transit until 7:00 p.m. After 7:00, you want to clock out. Just tell Google Voice to connect calls received before 1:00 p.m. to your office landline, to connect calls received between 1:00 and 7:00 p.m. to your mobile phone and to block all calls after 7:00 p.m.

And of course, you can make exceptions for important contacts, such as your business partner, who’s holding the fort while you’re gone and who knows what news is important enough to merit an interruption. Specify that his or her number can reach you on your mobile at any time and you’re all set.

Do you use Google Voice for your small business? If so, let us know how you’ve found it most helpful or hindering in the comments below.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Advertise Inside Social Games on Facebook
- 6 Free Web Tools for Managing Time Differences
- 37 Productivity Tips for Working From Anywhere
- 3 Business Tools to Spice Up Boring Work Tasks
- 5 Beautiful Tumblr Themes for Small Businesses

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, BryanHoward

Reviews: Gmail, Google, Google Voice, Internet, iStockphoto

More About: business, Google, Google Voice, how to, List, Lists, small business, smb, tech

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Dating App Survey Finds that Bed Bugs Kill the Mood, Who Knew?

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 01:16 PM PDT

File this under “weird things people study on the Internet”: AreYouInterested.com, a dating app on Facebook, recently conducted a study of more than 100 of its Facebook Page members on how bed bug infestation is affecting their love lives.

As a result of the recent bed bug explosion, the dating hub (which has previously done studies on topics such as whether or not you would break up with someone via Facebook status) decided to delve into the dark catacombs of the human psyche to answer one, deep, abiding question: Hugs for bugs?

Clifford Lerner, CEO of SNAP Interactive, Inc. (the folks who make AreYouInterested.com), says of the study: "I never imagined using the words 'bed bugs' and 'dating' in the same sentence but with the recent wide-spread infestation, many singles are taking extra precautions. While asking about bed bugs may create a slightly awkward and embarrassing first encounter when meeting a date, our survey shows many singles believe it's necessary."

Read on for some interesting stats from the dating website. “I have bed bugs” is officially the new “I have to wash my hair.”

56% of responders would leave their date if they noticed bed bug bites on his/her skin.
45% would use bed bugs as an excuse to get out of a bad date.
47% would ask if their date had bed bugs before going back to his/her place.
45% would cancel a date if someone admitted to a bed bug infestation.
35% have changed their usual dating spots because of a fear of bed bugs.

Image courtesy of Flickr, sludgegulper

Reviews: Flickr

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Google Voice Approved for iPhone [REPORT]

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 01:03 PM PDT

iPhone users could see a Google Voice app for their mobile devices within a few weeks, according to reports flying all over the web.

The latest round of rumors begins with a story on TechCrunch, whose sources say the Google Voice app has been approved and will be arriving in the App Store soon. We’re more inclined to believe these rumors for reasons we’ll highlight below; but first, let’s take a look at the long and winding road that this app and platform have covered already.

The Google Voice/iOS saga began in the summer of 2009 when Google Voice and all Google Voice-related apps were banned from the App Store. In January 2010, Google rolled out an HTML5 version of Google Voice. As a web app, it was a handy workaround for iPhone users.

Over the past few days, however, we’ve seen a few Google Voice-powered apps returning to the App Store. After more than a year of banning these applications, Apple allowed GV Connect, a $3 native app for Google Voice on the iPhone, to be approved for sale in the store. The following day, we noticed GV Mobile + had been App Store-approved, as well.

Given this sudden reversal of policy, we can only assume that the Google Voice HTML5 app has made an impression on Apple execs; iPhone users apparently want Google Voice, and they’ll take a workaround or third-party app if they have to, but there’s little reason at this point not to simply let Google’s app go through.

Do you think Apple should have resisted the inevitable this long?

Reviews: App Store, Google, Google Voice

More About: App, apple, Google, Google Voice, iOS, iphone, iphone app

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Twitter Now Getting More Traffic Than MySpace

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 12:54 PM PDT

Twitter’s number of monthly unique visitors finally surpassed that of MySpace in August. Though it ranked third among social networking sites, Twitter ranked #50 in the list of top 50 properties overall. The numbers were crunched by the marketing research firm comScore.

Twitter’s lead over MySpace was marginal — 96 million versus 95 million — but the trend over time paints a prettier picture of the microblogging service. Between August 2009 and August 2010, Twitter grew 76% while MySpace dropped 17%.

It’s apples and oranges, though. Twitter is now a social publishing and news discussion platform more than anything, and MySpace is attempting to position itself as a destination for young people to discover new music, movies and games. Both appeal to brands that want to reach new people, but they’re very different tools for very different kinds of brands.

Both sites look quite small next to Facebook, which reached 598 million monthly uniques in the same month. It grew 54% over the past year. The second most popular social network, Windows Live, managed 140 million uniques, putting it closer to Twitter than to Facebook.

Twitter has been moving quickly to capitalize on this growth. First it announced a new version of the front page that will make it easier to access photos, videos and other information without using other websites or programs. Many of Twitter’s users rarely visit the website at all; they instead use desktop software or third-party interfaces on other websites to access their tweets. For that reason, Twitter’s actual reach might be higher than the numbers from comScore imply. A revamped website could lead people to use Twitter.com instead of whatever they’re using right now however, increasing the number of unique visitors the site receives now and in the future.

Twitter already cashed in on its numerous users with Promoted Tweets, and now it will reach out to businesses with the “Promoted Accounts” system, which allows companies to buy visibility among their target market’s “Who to Follow” suggestions.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

Reviews: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter

More About: ComScore, microblogging, myspace, pageviews, social media, social networking, traffic, twitter, unique visitors, Uniques, visitors, web

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Top 5 Emerging Brand Trends on Facebook

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 12:01 PM PDT

This series is supported by the Buddy Media Platform. Seven of the world’s top 10 brands drive their brand on Facebook with the Buddy Media Platform. What’s your plan? Visit buddymedia.com today.

Field of Dreams may have popularized the notion that, “If you build it, they will come,” but in today’s Facebook generation, brands are beginning to go where the masses are, instead of relying on the masses to come to them. With 500 million members, Facebook represents real-time access to the online mainstream.

For years, brands have been using their Facebook Pages to connect with customers. As Facebook blossoms, so too does brand ingenuity, and in recent months we’ve seen a surge in campaigns that inspire Facebook giving, incorporate Facebook Places and feature Facebook as a prominent part of product reveals and fan exclusives. Application makers are also building tools that small and big brands alike can use to sell their products and offer Facebook-tailored customer support.

What follows is a deeper look at how and why these five emerging brand trends are bubbling up on the world’s largest social network.

In researching this piece, we solicited input from Facebook, several app makers and even our own Twitter followers. We encourage you to use the comments to share your thoughts on these brand trends on Facebook, as well as other trends we may have overlooked.

1. Facebook Exclusives

Risk-taker brands and agencies are adapting their product release cycles and marketing campaigns to account for the opportunity that Facebook’s platform promises.

Big brand names including Ford and Nike are going so far as to release on Facebook first. In Nike’s case, the athletic wear company opted to debut its three-minute World Cup advertisement on their Facebook Page before they released it anywhere else. The ad then went on to break viral records.

You also probably recall Ford’s ambitious 2011 Ford Explorer Reveal. The car maker decided to forgo the auto show and reveal its new car on the web, with Facebook as the centerpiece of the company’s online reveal strategy.

The campaign proved to be more successful than anticipated. On reveal day, Ford produced the number one trending topic on Twitter in the U.S.; the Explorer was the number two most searched for term on Google; Ford’s YouTube reveal video garnered 11,000 views; more than 50,000 Ford Explorer Facebook “Likes” flooded in; and, perhaps best of all, 25,000 potential car buyers built and priced new Explorers on the company’s website.

Other brands including Vitamin Water and Papa John’s have handed over new product creation to Facebook fans.

Vitamin Water cooked up the “flavor creator lab” and invited Facebook users to dream up a new flavor and label design for the company’s next flavor release. Sarah, a Facebook member from Illinois, won the $5,000 grand prize for her help in bringing Vitamin Water Connect to life.

Papa John’s used Facebook to host the Papa’s Specialty Pizza Challenge. Pizza fans were encouraged to mastermind the chain’s next great specialty pizza recipe using an application custom built for the purpose. Of the more than 12,000 entries, three Facebook finalists were chosen — Blair Dial, Barbara Hyman and Kendra Chapman — and their pizza creations were featured as a part of Papa John’s menu during the month of August.

VEVO is exploring its own Facebook-exclusive opportunities, as well. The service recently launched an original web series, dubbed “ASK:REPLY,” designed to connect Facebook fans to big name artists. VEVO uses its Facebook Page to ask fans what they want to know about a top notch artist. Fans respond, and VEVO posts the artist’s video response.

“One of VEVO's core strengths is our access to many of the world's top artists. We're able to let fans share in that access and peek behind the curtain with concepts like ASK:REPLY. Fans seem to get a huge kick out of watching their favorite artists call out their names and directly answer their questions. Plus, the fans come up with much better interview questions than we do,” says VEVO General Manager, Fred Santarpia.

2. Facebook Places Experimentation

The Facebook Places> location product is just weeks old, but because Facebook’s checkin features integrate so tightly with the entire Facebook experience, Facebook Places is a business opportunity in the making.

One early adopter is the Westfield Valley Fair mall. The business is offering a checkin special to its Facebook members who promote their shopping behaviors through Facebook Places. The special in question offers a coupon — powered by Fan Appz — for 15% off at Betsey Johnson in exchange for a checkin. The special may resemble the variety we’ve seen on Foursquare, but it’s still an ingenious effort to turn Facebook fans into offline buyers.

Social marketing software provider Context Optional is exploring how they can serve burgeoning brand interest in Facebook’s location offering.

“Marketers have been struggling with making global brands local. Brands that have been early to the game with Foursquare, Loopt and other location-based services are now realizing that Facebook — with its population of 500 million plus — offers an invaluable marketing opportunity in the form of Places,” explains Context Optional CEO Kevin Barenblat.

To meet demand, the social CRM company released the Facebook Places Check-in Leaderboard application (as seen in action on their Facebook Page). The application is designed to help brands create their own personalized ranking system for their Facebook Place Pages. Once installed, guests who check in will have the chance to claim ownership — a feature obviously inspired by Foursquare’s mayor system. With Context Optional’s leaderboard solution, a brand can then reward top fans, based on checkins, with special deals and offers.

3. Facebook Commerce

Facebook’s brand-friendly Pages are proving to be more than just wall-centric places for fan and brand comments and photos. Businesses of all sizes are finding that they can make their page double as a store front, and in so doing sell their products and goods to window-wall-shopping Facebook users.

Huge corporate entities like Disney and Delta are in the business of selling on Facebook. Disney, for instance, built the Disney Tickets Together Facebook application so that fans could pre-order tickets to Toy Story 3 without leaving the social network.

Even more traditional businesses are anxious to hook customers and get them to book through Facebook. Delta Air Lines released the Delta Ticket Window Facebook application in August to do just that — sell plane flights to patrons without ever forcing them to leave Facebook.

Alvenda is the application maker behind Delta’s Ticket Window. They also help power the Facebook commerce experiences for 1-800-Flowers, Brooks Brothers, Mark by Avon, and Hallmark.

The big guys aren’t the only businesses capitalizing on Facebook’s sales-friendly platform. Small businesses are enlisting the likes of Wildfire and Payvment to help them create and manage their own Facebook store fronts and deal centers.

With so many sales opportunities out there, some brands are finding that Facebook is fast becoming a shopper’s paradise and the new mall of America (and the world).

4. Facebook Support Centers

Social media has long been touted as a vehicle for brands to provide better customer service. The challenge is that so many customers are social media savvy, which means complaints and requests can get lost in the fray.

Once, a brand’s Facebook Page was a less trafficked place for a customer to get one-on-one service. Today, that customer is lucky if their comment is ever seen. The customer still has the expectation of personalized service on Facebook, which makes it the brand’s responsibility to find a customer service solution that scales.

In recent months, Get Satisfaction and Parature have stepped in to help businesses tackle this new challenge. Both companies are reporting rapid adoption for their inside-Facebook customer service platforms.

Get Satisfaction’s Social Engagement Hub, built by Involver, extends the functionality of its popular customer support service to Facebook and offers full-featured support that integrates with the client’s existing dashboard.

“Get Satisfaction has 122 clients using the Facebook integration, reaching an aggregate of hundreds of thousands of users and fans,” reports a spokesperson for the company.

Parature is a bit newer to the space, but the Parature for Facebook customer service application is already getting traction from brands hoping to channel Facebook for direct customer engagement. Recently, the company announced that 25 clients have signed on since launch to purchase Parature for Facebook. A company representative details that some of those brand names include H&M, Konami and Rosetta Stone.

5. Facebook Giving

Even for-profit businesses have an interest in the greater good, and one of the bigger trends is for them to solicit fan action on Facebook to ensure their charitable causes get greater exposure. The social good trend obviously extends beyond Facebook and to social media sites in general, but Facebook Pages and “Like” buttons are doing their part to inspire collective action.

Last year, Target launched the “Bullseye Games” Facebook application and let fans choose where the discount retailer should spend its weekly $3 million charitable contributions.

More recently, Kohl’s started the Kohl’s Cares Facebook initiative to give away $10 million to 20 schools; nearly 2 million Facebookers voted for their schools. Chase also gravitated towards Facebook to distribute $5 million to charities through the Chase Community Giving campaign.

In furtherance of the donation by action concept, Yahoo enlisted Facebook for a massive charitable undertaking designed to raise funds for Stand Up To Cancer earlier this month. Yahoo pledged $1 for every “Like” to their OMG! Facebook Page. In just nine days, Yahoo surpassed their goal, attracting more than 112,000 “Likes” and committing $100,000 to help fight cancer.

Let us know your thoughts on these five brand trends on Facebook in the comments below.

Series supported by the Buddy Media Platform

Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Get Satisfaction, Google, Twitter, World Cup, pages

More About: brands, business, cause marketing, context optional, facebook, facebook apps, Facebook Marketing Series, Facebook Places, ford, get satisfaction, MARKETING, Nike, parature, payvment, trends, wildfire

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Hulu Plus Headed to Roku and TiVo This Fall

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 11:42 AM PDT

Hulu Plus, the premium subscription service from Hulu, is coming to a bevy of new devices this fall, including Roku and TiVo Premiere set-top boxes.

Hulu is following Netflix’s successful strategy of integrating with a wide variety of devices. Since launching in July, Hulu Plus has been available on the iPhone and iPad, desktop and select Samsung TVs and DVD players. PlayStation 3 users who subscribe to PlayStation Plus have also been able to access the service.

Later this fall, Roku will issue an update that will bring Hulu Plus to all of its boxes. Roku recently revamped its lineup, with prices starting at $59.99. Hulu Plus support gives the box an edge over competitors like the new Apple TV and the upcoming Boxee Box.

TiVo Premiere users will also gain Hulu Plus support later this fall. TiVo continues to struggle against competition from cable company DVRs and lower-cost set-top box competition.

In addition to Roku and TiVo, Hulu Plus will also be appearing on the Xbox 360 early next year and support is expected to be added to the next Xbox Live beta. Additionally, TVs and Blu-ray players from Sony and Vizio are also getting in on the Hulu fun.

Hulu Plus does require a $9.99 a month subscription, which is priced comparatively with Netflix’s Watch Instantly option. While there is overlap in the content the two services provide, the biggest advantage Hulu has is for newer content. Shows are usually available the next day.

Does Hulu Plus support make you more interested in buying a Roku or TiVo? Let us know.

Reviews: Blu, Hulu

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AOL Acquires Technology Blog Network TechCrunch

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 10:59 AM PDT

AOL has made a major move in its bid to reinvent itself as a new media juggernaut, acquiring popular technology news publication TechCrunch and its associated properties.

Rumors of the deal emerged on Monday evening, with both GigaOm and The Wall Street Journal reporting that that the two companies were in negotiations.

The acquisition was formally announced in rather dramatic fashion earlier this afternoon at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, where AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and TechCrunch Founder and Co-editor Michael Arrington took the stage to announce and sign the agreement, as well as answer a few questions from members of the audience (Armstrong actually published the news to TechCrunch from the stage too).

Armstrong and Arrington did not disclose terms, though CNBC's Julia Boorstin reports that the price is “about $40 million.”

At AOL, TechCrunch becomes the centerpiece of a technology news publishing outfit that already includes Engadget, Switched, TUAW and Download Squad. In a statement Armstrong said, "TechCrunch and its team will be an outstanding addition to the high-quality content on the AOL Technology Network, which is now a must-buy for advertisers seeking to associate their brands with leading technology content and its audience."

Asked on-stage about what the deal might mean editorially given the scope of the publications (TechCrunch also runs CrunchGear, MobileCrunch, and TechCrunchIT, among other sites) now under the AOL roof, Armstrong said, "We talked to Mike and [TechCrunch CEO] Heather and we agreed that there’s an opportunity to have a much larger tech presence as a whole. I would expect these brands to operate independently but leverage each other when needed and build a much more significant content audience for tech."

Arrington, who founded the site in 2005 and still breaks many of its biggest stories, will remain a part of TechCrunch for at least three years as part of the deal, thanks in part to what he described on-stage as "incentives."

The TechCrunch deal builds on an already busy day for AOL on the acquisition front; earlier this morning, the company announced that it had acquired 5min, a video syndication platform.

More About: acquisitions, aol, media, TechCrunch

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Office for Mac 2011 Coming October 26

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 10:41 AM PDT

Microsoft announced today that Office for Mac 2011 will officially be released on October 26. Mashable previously reported that the productivity suite would arrive at the end of October.

The update marks a complete overhaul of Office for Mac and finally sees the franchise ditching Entourage in favor of Outlook. Since Entourage has been much-maligned since its introduction, a native OS X version of Outlook is a welcome addition to the Office for Mac suite.

Additional features seem to be mainly aesthetic, but Microsoft has said that speed is a priority across the suite. Here’s a video that was released along with this morning’s announcement on The Office for Mac Blog:

As with all things Microsoft, not just one package will suffice. Versions include: Office for Mac Home and Student 2011, Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 and Office for Mac Academic 2011. Home and Student 2011, which includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Messenger, will retail for $119 for a single install or $149 for a three-install Family Pack. Meanwhile, Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 will retail for $199 for one install and $279 for two installs.

It will be available in English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, Polish, Swedish and Russian.

Reviews: Office for Mac 2008, Versions

More About: entourage, microsoft, office, office for mac, Office for Mac 2011, os x, Outlook, pc

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“The Social Network”: Mashable’s Complete Movie Review

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 09:19 AM PDT

On the surface, The Social Network is the story of Facebook — a website created in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 that has redefined how we connect and communicate in the 21st century. At its core, the film is much, much more than just the story of one website. It is both a micro and macro look at success, failure and the trappings of ego and greed.

The film is ostensibly based on real people and real events. That said, many of the proceedings and characters were invented for the screen. In the coming weeks, there will be a flurry of discussion regarding just how accurate or inaccurate the film is with regard to Facebook’s first year. Ultimately, these differences and inaccuracies are irrelevant.

For better or for worse, the cinematic version of “the Facebook story” will be what becomes the lore surrounding the company, much as The Pirates of Silicon Valley has become the unofficial history of Microsoft and Apple for a generation of users. From a cinematic perspective, The Social Network is no more or less effective based on its factual accuracy. This is a fictional narrative, not a documentary.

The Beginning

Warning: The following review contains spoilers

The film opens with one of its strongest scenes, a five-minute interchange between a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend. Zuckerberg, brilliantly portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, speaks a mile a minute, quickly moving from one topic to the next, leaving his companion to exclaim, “Dating you is like dating a StairMaster.”

Throughout the course of the conversation, an acutely unaware Zuckerberg proceeds to insult his girlfriend, belittling her background, intellect and future life prospects. Having had enough, she ends the relationship and tells him off. The dialogue in this scene is a joy for Aaron Sorkin fans, reminiscent of the best interactions and moments on The West Wing or Sports Night.

This scene, one of the most significant additions that Sorkin made to the script — which is loosely based on Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires — introduces the audience to Mark, a man who is clearly brilliant, but who is also deeply insecure, awkward and more than a bit antisocial.

It also sets up the motive behind the project that would become the precursor to Facebook, Facemash. With Facemash, a Hot or Not for female students at Harvard (and a post-breakup lashing-out against womankind), Mark brings down the university network, gets in some trouble with the administration and makes himself an outcast on campus. It also brings him to attention of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, two good-looking, athletic and privileged twins.

The Winklevosses (both played by Armie Hammer) and their friend, Divya Narendra, are looking to build a social dating site for Harvard men. They want Mark to work on the code. He readily agrees.

The dating site spawns a much bigger idea in Mark’s head — and that idea is Facebook. Partnering with his best friend and financier Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield, Mark builds The Facebook. What follows is an almost viral spread of user adoption and rapid growth and expansion.

To those of us who joined Facebook in those early days (I believe I joined in January 2005), the sequences demonstrating the takeoff of the service will resonate. One of the most interesting things about Facebook, a site that first built its allure and prestige based on its exclusivity (the need to have a *.edu e-mail address from a supported school and an invite from another user), was just how quickly it spread. Much like YouTube, which launched about a year later, Facebook went from not existing to being everywhere, seemingly overnight.

As Zuckerberg, Jesse Eisenberg is brilliant. I fully expect to see his name on the shortlist for Best Actor nominees when award season ramps up. He manages to make Zuckerberg sympathetic but not pathetic — there’s actually a nuanced difference. The character could have easily been portrayed as a pathetic, socially inept genius. Eisenberg doesn’t do that. He manages to play a three-dimensional character, even though the last five minutes of the film are the only times we ever see a mournful side. His speech patterns, his eye movements, the way that he walks and moves his body — it’s truly one of the best performances of 2010.

The Second Act

As the story progresses, the film’s focus and point of view shift. Many of these shifts take place in a more present-day setting, where Zuckerberg, Saverin and the Winklevoss twins give depositions and testimony in some of the various lawsuits filed over the ownership and business dealings of Facebook.

Much like Fincher’s 2007 film, Zodiac, The Social Network makes use of these court proceedings and depositions to build out the narrative. Structurally, this is an interesting device and one that is well-suited for this particular story. Fincher cuts quickly from scene to scene, various depositions overlapping, and testimony leads to flashbacks told from the perspective of the deposed.

As a director, Fincher is known for using subtle colors and hues in his work — from Fight Club to Benjamin Button, color is one of the most visually defining characteristics of Fincher’s work. In The Social Network, he uses slight color variations for each character’s perspective. It’s subtle but it has an influence on the energy that takes place on the screen.

The second and third act of the film primarily involve the massive ascent of Facebook and the parallel breakdown between best friends Mark and Eduardo. As Eduardo Saverin, Andrew Garfield is particularly good at gaining our sympathies. He’s the most relatable character in the film, but that isn’t to say he’s the hero. On the contrary, while the film makes it easy to empathize with his position — being cut out of one of the biggest companies founded this decade — it equally makes it clear that if Eduardo Saverin had run the business end of Facebook, Facebook wouldn’t be anything close to what it is today.

Not all the credit should go to Zuckerberg, however. Napster founder Sean Parker, portrayed by Justin Timberlake, was instrumental in making Facebook the money-maker that it is today. Timberlake, a truly gifted performer, has a more middling track record as an actor. But in the role of Parker, a well-connected playboy who quickly assesses that Facebook is the next Napster (in a viral and culture changing sense), Timberlake is charming, boisterous and believable.

Timberlake is very good in the film, but still, his character seems like little more than a plot device. His primary function is to act as the catalyst to get Zuckerberg to go out to Palo Alto in the summer of 2004. This was the summer that Facebook really turned the page, and was on the brink of becoming huge. After that summer, Facebook was clearly on the path to runaway success.

The film ends almost abruptly, which is jarring, yet fitting for its subject matter. This is the story of the first year of Facebook. The momentum was building, but at the stage that the film ends, the site was still college-only, it didn’t have apps and it hadn’t toppled MySpace. In fact, this film ends where many others would start.

Summation

The undisputed facts regarding Facebook are that by May 2005, just over 15 months after thefacebook.com launched, the company already had 2.8 million registered users and had received its second round of funding for $13 million. In six years, the site has gone from being something meant to bring the college experience online to something that is quickly altering multiple forms of media and gaining more and more users from every corner of the globe.

Whether Facebook is the next Google or not, I’m not sure, but it has utterly encapsulated the zeitgeist of this era of computing and communications. Facebook’s legacy and influence over the future is something that cannot be in disputed.

Watching the film, I was often struck by two things: First, how quickly it all moved. It’s almost jarring to think that the majority of the major events in the film took place over the course of 18 months. Second, I was once again reminded of just how young everyone involved in the early days of Facebook really was.

I kept reflecting on these two points because I think they underscore the narrative. On its surface, this is a story about greed and ego and how money and fame change people. And that’s all true. On the larger level, however, I think this is also a film about what happens when success literally happens overnight to individuals who haven’t even completed the college experience. How does that not affect who you are? How does that not affect relationships and loyalties?

There is a cost for great success and a cost for changing the world. Oftentimes, those costs are paid in relationships. That’s true for widget salesmen, and it’s true for founders of social networks.

This underscores how adroit the tagline for the film really is: “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”

Images courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment

Reviews: Facebook, Google, MySpace, YouTube

More About: Aaron Sorkin, david fincher, facebook, Film, jesse eisenberg, justin timberlake, mark zuckerberg, Movies, sean parker, the social network, trending

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11 Trends in Web Logo Design: The Good, the Bad and the Overused

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 08:59 AM PDT

This series is brought to you by the Intel AppUp℠ Developer Program, which provides developers with everything they need to create and then sell their applications to millions of Intel Atom™ processor-based devices. Learn more here.

Designing and critiquing logos for web-based companies and startups is a pursuit of endless fascination for many of us. Over the years, we’ve seen enough startups come and go (and rebrand and merge) to fill a volume with how and how not to develop and execute a logo for a web company.

We’ve also picked up some knowledge about trends in this field. Some of the trends are good; others, regrettable. Others still are simply overused, which is the saddest scenario of them all. We hate to see a good design trick or typeface grow hackneyed over the course of a few months, but it happens all the time, unfortunately.

In this article, we’ve identified 11 trends in web company logo design. Hopefully, you’ll see a few here that apply to the startups and web apps we write about every day. And of course, we’ve included some handy illustrations as a sort of field guide to the logos of the web.

Take a look, and let us know what you think of these trends — and what trends we should have included — in the comments.

1. Badges and Buttons

We’ve moved away from the once-ubiquitious BETA! button, but location-esque badges, app-like icons, and “play” buttons are still showing up all over the web. These logos tend to be quite “shiny,” thanks to a few carefully-blended white gradient layers. The square logos have rounded corners. Some appear to glow as if lit from within, which is a compelling and trendy effect in itself. All in all, the badge-and-button set look quite touchable.

Still, this trend’s days may be numbered, if only due to overuse and association-bordering-on-marriage with the Apple/iPhone brand. See also: Wet floor effect. Unless you’re designing for a pure-play iPhone app shop, sail these seas with caution.

2. Speech Bubbles and Megaphones

If social web apps are all about communication, then it stands to reason that many social web company logos are all about talking. We see fewer logos that revolve around listening (if you happen to see a giant ear logo in the wild, do let us know), but megaphones and speech bubbles abound.

3. Fun With Opacity!

Remember the first time you discovered Multiply and Overlay blend modes in Photoshop? If that moment changed your life forever, then you probably understand the beauty of a simple, elegant logo that delicately plays with opacity.

While this logo treatment won’t work for every web app, it’s a versatile and timeless way to present classic shapes in a new light. We’re seeing this basic effect used simply in MasterCard-reminiscent designs, and we’re seeing much more complex opacity effects used in logos for HTML5 and Microsoft Silverlight, for example.

Playing with blending modes, opacity and overlapping shapes can also be a fun way to experiment with analogous color schemes.

4. Kawaii Illustration

Calling all woodland creatures: You’re wanted on the Internet. In fact, the only time you’ve been in greater demand than you are now was when Disney was making those saccharine “princess” films.

Why are these wide-eyed, adorable critters making their way into logo design? Apps are for adults, right? Especially apps such as Seesmic, a powerful web app dashboard for power users and the enterprise, and GitHub, an industry standard for source code hosting.

We don’t know exactly how, when or why kawaii made a comeback into serious-business logo design, but with logos this cute, who are we to complain?

5. Scripts, Slabs and Other Cool Fonts

Say it with me: “I will not use Archer for a web company’s logo design.”

Archer and its ilk were used to great effect over the past couple years on a number of memorable web company logos. That being said, the Year of the Slab is definitely not over. In fact, it’s more of an epoch than a traditional Gregorian year at this point. Slab serif fonts — if they’re unique fonts — are still a viable alternative to been-there-done-that sans serifs in logos, and the web community still enjoys them.

That being said, a good, juicy script can be one of the liveliest, most unexpected logo choices yet, particularly if your logo is solely typographic. Rephoria uses my personal favorite, Candy Script, a swash-heavy number that’s almost too voluptuous for work but which still makes the cut for a single-word logo.

Just remember: When using more unusual fonts for logo design, restraint and legibility are key.

6. Verdant and Plant-Inspired

Plants and leaves aren’t just for green tech companies, folks. When you’re trying to project growth, one of the most obvious logo choices is flora. A shy set of leaves, a furling bud, a sprouting seed — what could better convey your company’s fresh problem solving and rapid expansion?

7. Quadrangles

It’s not a rectangle, it’s not a square, but whatever it is, it’s popping up everywhere. Quadrangles are, if the web is to be believed, the new dots. From rhombuses to parallelograms to indescribable yet angular blobs, these shapes strive for post-modern and consumer-friendly.

8. Retro Game References

Perhaps it’s because the newer crop of web designers are also children of the late eighties, but we’ve been seeing a lot of pseudo-retro, video game-inspired logo work lately. While these designs are definitely quirky, geeky and cool, beware using them for a general audience; not everyone feels the same nostalgia we do for an 8-bit, pixelated graphic of a mushroom.

9. Color-Coordinated Compound Words

Web startup names and logos are inextricably linked. We’re a couple years past the compound word phase (which was most virulent right before the tragic “missing vowel” phase that gave birth to web companies with names like “Packg” and “Clevrr”), but we haven’t left behind our love for merged-word logos in two snappy, coordinating colors.

This trick is one of the oldest in the book. It was notably used for Vignelli Associates’ 1967 rebranding of American Airlines, whose two-word name became a one-word logo in red and blue.

10. Logotypes

The big boys of the web, sites such as Google and Facebook, have inspired the logo design of a generation with their utter simplicity. In many cases, those initial logotypes were less legitimate logo design and more “put our startup’s name in a simple font and stick it up on the web, we’ll deal with branding later.”

The name-in-a-sans-serif look says your company has nothing to prove and that you focus on product over promotion. If it’s well-executed, it’s a powerful statement to make. However, if poorly executed, it looks hasty, sloppy, juvenile and amateurish.

Logotypes can also be a great excuse to play with exciting typefaces and trendy treatments, such as the embossed or letterpress look that’s getting so much play these days, thanks to CSS3.

11. Nodes, Spokes and Hubs

Between concepts such as linked data and the synaptic web, you had to see these designs coming. They remind us of molecular structure and K’nex, an updated take on the crop of mid-century modern Sputnik-inspired designs of the 1950s. These logos are usually intended to represent the interconnectedness of people and content on the web, or, in a more literal interpretation, computer hardware circuitry.

An excellent study of this concept is Bernard Barry’s designs for the 2010 f8 conference.

What Trends Are You Spotting?

What trends are you seeing in web company logos these days? What are you already sick of, and what do you want to see more? Please share your observations in the comments.

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More Dev & Design Resources from Mashable:

- Top 5 Web Font Design Trends to Follow
- HOW TO: Be a Hybrid Designer/Developer
- Flash vs. HTML5: Adobe Weighs In
- 10 Free Web UI Kits and Resources for Designers
- Top 10 Accessories for Typography Nuts [PICS]

Reviews: Apps, Facebook, Google, Internet, Multiply, Seesmic

More About: branding, corporate, design, internet logo, logo design, logos, logotypes, startup logo, web design, Web Design Trends Series, web logo

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Last Minute Tickets Available for Mashlanta 2.0

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 08:45 AM PDT

This week, we’re coming to Atlanta to host Mashlanta 2.0 in partnership with Regator and you’re invited! After an amazing event last year, we’ve gone bigger. With tickets going so quickly, we have added 120 more!

This year, Adam Hirsch, Adam Ostrow, Vadim Lavrusik, Brett Petersel and our very own Atlanta-based Christina Warren, along with the Regator team, would like to welcome everyone to come and connect with your local social and tech community. Tickets are going quickly and sponsorship opportunities are available.

Date: Thursday, September 30, 2010
Location: Le Fais do-do, 1611 Ellsworth Industrial Boulevard – Suite D, Atlanta, Georgia 30318
Time: 7:00 – 11:00 p.m. ET
Tickets on Sale Through Eventbrite: $40
The Event: Four hours of networking and an open bar
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Twitter COO: New Ad Format for Gaining Followers Launching “Very Shortly”

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 08:20 AM PDT

At today’s IAB Mixx conference in Manhattan, Twitter COO Dick Costolo discussed Twitter’s latest advertising product, dubbed Promoted Accounts.

Promoted Accounts, which will be launched “very shortly,” will allow companies to be be featured more prominently in Twitter’s recently launched Who to Follow feature. Like the two other products in the Promoted suite, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends, participating brands will be clearly designated as advertisers.

The feature should help businesses attract more followers likely to be interested in their products and services, and thus gain greater visibility. Of course, there’s no controlling whether or not a new follower is a frequent user of the service, or has many followers; in many cases participating advertisers could just be boosting their follower counts without gaining any substantial increase in influence.

Costolo was enthusiastic about Twitter’s success with its Promoted products so far, noting that engagement rates — determined through a combination of clicks, replies and retweets — are around 5% on average. The startup is currently working with a little more than forty advertisers on Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends, and expects that that number will increase to the “low hundreds” by the end of the year.

Image courtesy of Flickr, D. Hilgart.

Reviews: Flickr, Twitter

More About: advertising, iab mixx 2010, MARKETING, Promoted Accounts, twitter

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Start a Digital Book Club on Your BlackBerry [APPS]

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 08:15 AM PDT

Who says that reading is for antisocial people? Yesterday, Borders’s global e-reading service Kobo took the stage at BlackBerry DEVCON to demo its new social reading application for the BlackBerry Messenger SDK, which will allow users to do everything from chat with friends while shopping for books to discuss passages in real time.

The announcement came during a presentation detailing how application developers will be able to use the new BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform — from utilizing social aspects to making use of push architecture. It was also announced during the conference that Kobo will come pre-loaded on the BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM’s new entrant into the tablet market (which expands Kobo’s already inclusive presence on a variety of devices).

Yesterday, prior to the conference, Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis dropped by Mash headquarters for a chat, during which he told us, “Social is a big category for us…. One of the key things we believe in is the whole culture of reading.” And, according to Serbinis, the social reading application — which will be available early next year — is just the tip of social iceberg. Check out the video below for more info on how it works.

With this app you’ll be able to talk with friends while shopping for e-books, see which books your friends have read, choose who can see your library and which books you read with others, as well as share passages with others and discuss books in real time. According to the folks at Kobo, this new technology will foster a kind of real-time book club culture.

This is a major move in the e-reader sphere, which hasn’t been all that social until now — at least in terms of applications. Probably the closest we’ve come thus far is the ability to access Amazon’s social network, Shelfari, within the smartphone app — basically the equivalent of Ping for books. (The announcement of Kindle for the Web hints at more social things to come, though.) Nook, for its part, basically just has LendMe, which allows you to share books with friends.

The real-time, hyper-social aspect (as well as the smartphone tie-in) of what Kobo is touting speaks to a new kind of social reading that we’re interested to see made manifest.

Would you be down to set up a book club via BB? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr, striatic

Reviews: Flickr, Ping, Shelfari

More About: amazon, App, blackberry, books, borders, e-reader, Kindle, kobo

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Twitter Shelves @EarlyBird Deals

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 08:01 AM PDT

At today's IAB Mixx conference in Manhattan, Twitter COO Dick Costolo announced that Twitter would be retiring its Early Bird advertising product, at least for now.

Early Bird allowed select advertisers to promote exclusive offers for Twitter users through its @earlybird account, such as limited-time discounts on flights and movie tickets.

“We had tremendous early success with it,” Costolo said, citing deals with Virgin America and Disney. “But it needs to be reworked or rethought.” Most of the deals offered were available only to U.S. users, which adversely affected user experience for its global audience, he explained.

We’re following up with Twitter and will update this post with any additional details.

Update (11:20 a.m. ET): A Twitter spokesperson tells Mashable that, “We’ve always said we’d experiment and move quickly. Twitter's @earlybird account will no longer be tweeting offers. We're taking the learnings from @earlybird, including feedback from users and businesses, and investing that knowledge into our Promoted Products platform to help businesses grow their audience and provide great offers and information to users.”

Reviews: Mashable, Twitter

More About: advertising, earlybird, MARKETING, twitter

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Kindle Comes to the Web

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 07:20 AM PDT

Amazon has announced another expansion of its Kindle platform with the Kindle for the Web beta, which allows book samples and snippets to be read directly from a browser.

The new version is embeddable across the web, and also acts as another revenue stream for members of the Amazon Associates Program. Online publishers who refer people back Amazon through an embed of Kindle for the Web will be entitled to a percentage of any revenue generated off of the referral.

Although it is limited solely to first chapter previews, Kindle for the Web functions largely like other iterations of the Kindle platform, as seen here:

We’re a bit surprised that Kindle for the Web did not come sooner. In addition to its popular Kindle e-reader, the world’s largest online retailer currently has supporting apps for every major mobile platform, as well as desktop applications for PC and OS X.

Although the web service supports only book previews, it is clearly extendable to full titles. The question is how long Amazon will wait before flipping the switch to allow full content access through Kindle for the Web.

One might argue that this sort of availability would cannibalize sales of physical Kindle devices, but the reality is that Amazon makes considerably more money on e-books than it does on Kindle e-readers. Any extension of the Kindle platform is a valuable step for Amazon to take.

More About: amazon, digital content, e-books, e-readers, Kindle, Kindle for the Web

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LinkedIn Upgrades Company Profiles

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 06:31 AM PDT

Back in April 2010, business-oriented social network LinkedIn gave users the ability to follow companies in addition to following users.

Initially, company profiles were just a way to receive an information stream from the company, similar to company pages on Facebook. Now, however, LinkedIn is adding several new options for companies and users that follow them.

Users can now see how the company has grown on LinkedIn over time as well as the representative profiles of employees at the company. You can also see the composition of the company’s employee base, including statistics about the employees’ job functions, educational degree, years of experience and university attended. Finally, users can see their connection with the company and its employees, and how it changed over time.

Companies now also have a Careers Tab, which gives users a way to quickly check out recently posted jobs at that company, as well as learn about the company’s hiring practices, and find out the details for this company’s other employees. You can also use the career tab to connect with the company’s recruiters directly.

These changes are a very welcome addition for serious LinkedIn users, as they emphasize what LinkedIn is all about: making it easier to connect with other professionals and companies as well as find new career opportunities. However, the new statistics provided by LinkedIn will also be invaluable for tracking how a company is evolving over time with regards to its employee base.

Follow Mashable’s company profile on LinkedIn | Join the “Fans of Mashable” Group on LinkedIn

Reviews: Facebook, LinkedIn

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Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Skype and Facebook to Announce Partnership [RUMOR]”

Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Skype and Facebook to Announce Partnership [RUMOR]”

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1. Badges and Buttons

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