It’s official: Apple’s App Store has hit 10 billion app downloads.

Apple recently started a countdown for the 10 billionth app and launched a contest to give a $10,000 iTunes gift card to the person who downloaded it.

At the end of September 2009, the App Store hit 2 billion apps downloaded and by January 2010, there were 3 billion downloads from the App Store.

However, it took just over a week for the app store to generate 250 million downloads, a testament to the incredible growth of Apple’s iPhone and iPad App Stores and, most recently, its Mac App Store. At this pace it will be able to hit 20 billion app downloads before the end of the year. It will probably grow even faster than that though, thanks to the Verizon iPhone.

No word yet who the lucky winner of the $10,000 iTunes gift card is.

More About: apple, iOS, iphone, iphone apps

London’s Orange Dot Gallery, in a nod to the growing mobile photography trend, is showing an exhibition for Hipstamatics, a blog dedicated to iPhone Hipstamatic photography.

The Orange Dot Gallery will showcase 157 prints of Hipstamatics’ hundreds of posted images. According to the gallery, the number of prints is symbolic; it’s the same as the number of original analog Hipstamatic cameras produced.

The Hipstamatic analog camera was created by the Dorbowski borthers, Bruce and Winston, in 1982. Exactly 157 cameras were made and sold over the two years that followed. The popular Hipstamatic iPhone app attempts to emulate the effects and ambience of those original camera shots.

According to the Orange Dot blog, “A homage to both the history and future of Hipstamatics, the exhibition will showcase some of the best works featured on the site to date, from both submitted snaps from around the globe and their own specially sourced and exclusive work.”

Select six-by-six-inch prints from the exhibition (pictured below) are selling for £10 each on the Orange Dot website.

Hipstamatics

Hipstamatics

Hipstamatics

Hipstamatics

Hipstamatics

Hipstamatics

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More About: art, gallery, hipstamatic, hipstamatics, Mobile 2.0, photography

According to information leaked from an anonymous Verizon employee, Motorola’s Xoom, a tablet running the long-anticipated Android Honeycomb, will sell for $800.

We got a good look at Xoom during CES this year. It is unique for several reasons.

First, it, along with the Droid Bionic and a lineup of other smartphones, is one of the first Verizon 4G LTE devices.

Second, the tablet is one of the first that will be running Honeycomb (Android 3.0), the tablet-specific fork of the Android mobile operating system. While we’ve seen Android tablets running version 1.6 and even 2.2 (Froyo), this will be the first instance of an intentional and elegant Android approach to the tablet form factor.

In addition to the new OS, Xoom features a 1080p screen resolution, front- and rear-facing cameras (2MP and 5MP, respectively), an HDMI output, and an accelerometer.

Motorola also says the device “delivers console-like gaming performance on its 1280×800 display, and features a built-in gyroscope, barometer, e-compass, accelerometer and adaptive lighting for new types of applications. It also features Google Maps 5.0 with 3D interaction and delivers access to over 3 million Google eBooks and thousands of apps from Android Market.”

The first 3G and Wi-Fi-enabled Xoom units should be available around the end of Q1 2011, and according to new reports from Android Central, the minimum advertised price for the units will start at $800 — a hefty price tag compared to other gadget options currently on the market.

What’s your take on the matter: Will Motorola’s first Android tablet be worth $800 out of the gate? In the comments, let us know your opinions.

More About: android, honeycomb, Motorola, Tablet, xoom

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Agent Anything

Quick Pitch: Agent Anything provides an affordable errand service by employing college students during their free time.

Genius Idea: Concierge, generally speaking, is a luxury service. Chicago-based Endeavor Concierge, for instance, charges $30 for an hour of services that include gift shopping, running errands or making reservations. For most people, it’s worth making time to pick up the dry cleaning themselves.

Agent Anything, however, has devised a way to make concierge affordable. Using its website, clients (as in, anyone who takes five minutes to set up an account) can sign up to have a college student complete any task at any price. Students select and accomplish these “missions” whenever they have free time. Today’s available tasks include posting items on eBay and finding an unemployed person for a firm that represents clients at unemployment hearings. One woman who had broken her arm once hired a college student to change a light bulb in her kitchen for $10.

Having college students sign up for these tasks is a brilliant move. They have random pockets of free time, don’t need full-time jobs with health benefits, and (thanks to the college admissions process) are generally not criminals. Employing them task-by-task brings the cost of the service down and makes it easier to trust.

Agent Anything’s service makes a lot of sense on both sides. It’s drastically cheaper than concierge and more organized and reliable than Craigslist, which doesn’t use the college admissions as a screening process. Harry Schiff, the company’s founder and president, says that since the New York City site launched in September, more than 1,000 clients have signed up to post missions and more than 1,300 college students have signed up to complete them.

The question is whether it will be able to survive long enough for the idea to catch on. The company’s sole source of revenue is a fee for posting tasks. For a $10 task, Agent Anything charges a client about $2.50. That’s a whole lot of missions that need to be accomplished before the startup, which is currently operating using seed funding, will be profitable.

The potential market — senior citizens, busy moms, workaholics, people who want to save a couple of bucks on something like help moving — is huge. Almost everyone could use some help with various errands once in a while. But few realize that they can get it affordably.

“The need is there, but the demand is not…yet,” Schiff says.

Whether demand does catch up is in the hands of the startup’s marketing efforts.

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DavidBukach

More About: Agent Anything, Errands, startup

Here's a bit of a surprise to end the week: Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's Countdown, ended tonight's show by announcing he's leaving, effective immediately.

In a statement e-mailed to Mashable by MSNBC, the network says, "MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract. The last broadcast of Countdown with Keith Olbermann will be this evening. MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC’s success, and we wish him well in his future endeavors."

Olbermann's eight-year tenure with the network produced some memorable moments that went viral in the social media realm, most recently his "special comment" entitled "There Is No Ground Zero Mosque," which accumulated more than 1.1 million views on YouTube.

His reign was not without controversy, however; last year, he was suspended for making political donations without the approval of the network.

Olbermann's departure adds the second big twist in the cable news wars in a week; on Monday, Piers Morgan Tonight debuted on CNN. Early results showed an improvement in ratings, fueled in part by a social media campaign that appears to be helping attract younger viewers.

There's been no additional comment from Olbermann on his popular Twitter account as of this writing, but video from his sign-off is already available and embedded below:

More About: cable news, Keith Olbermann, msnbc

Antoine Dodson, whose claim to fame lies in the viral video “Bed Intruder,” has been given the opportunity to shoot a reality television show pilot.

The show will center around Dodson and his family as they move across the country from their housing project in Alabama to Hollywood and around Dodson’s desire to “leveraging every aspect he can to make a better life for his family,” according to producer Entertainment One. The producers may also consider issuing a musical offering from Dodson in the future.

For anyone who’d not yet seen the video, Bed Intruder is essentially an auto-tuned and amusingly edited clip featuring Dodson as he expresses outrage over the attempted rape of his sister in their home in the Lincoln Park Projects. In spite of the macabre topic and setting, millions of YouTube viewers have found Dodson’s take on the situation refreshing, hilarious and even empowering.

In fact, “Bed Intruder” was the most-watched independent video of 2010. The clip currently has 67.5 million views.

Dodson recently made an appearance at the Mashable Awards in Las Vegas, where he accepted the award for Best Internet Meme and previewed a follow-up.

Of his newfound fame, Dodson told Mashable’s Adam Ostrow, “This will never get old!”

Check out the full interview below, and in the comments, let us know if you think Dodson has the makings of an entertaining, watchable TV entertainer.

More About: antoine dodson, bed intruder, Meme, memes, television, tv

Accessories designer Rebecca Minkoff is staging her first show at New York Fashion Week next month, and she’s turning to online styling community Polyvore to find a stylist for the show.

From now until the morning of January 24, users can create fashion collages with pieces from Minkoff’s spring collection and submit them to the contest. Minkoff will select her favorite look and fly the winner to New York City for three days to help her style the show. He or she will also have a seat in the audience during the event.

The lucky winner will perhaps be seated next to the winner of another recent Minkoff-sponsored contest on Polyvore, in which more than 4,000 users competed to design the brand’s next “morning after clutch” using photographs of materials selected by Minkoff herself. The winning clutch will go on sale this spring under the Rebecca Minkoff label.

Polyvore is just one of the many platforms the brand has recently begun leveraging to engage users online. Minkoff recently named former independent fashion blogger Daniel Saynt the new Chief Marketing Officer for the company. Previously, Saynt consulted with Minkoff and a number of more established brands, including Burberry and Louis Vuitton, on social media initiatives, and is now pushing the company onto new platforms.

Saynt is working aggressively to align Minkoff with the creators of what he sees as the next generation of media, mainly by developing partnerships with blog networks such as Bloglovin, as well as individual fashion bloggers. In addition to branded promotions, chosen bloggers are now invited to borrow Rebecca Minkoff accessories for everyday use, a privilege previously limited to celebrities and the editors of major magazines.

Saynt is also looking at younger platforms, such as SCVNGR and GoldRun to create new kinds of experiences.

“I think it’s important for brands to take calculated risks,” he says. “You want to be ahead, doing what’s next and ahead of the curve. It’s not about Facebook and Twitter anymore, it’s about so much more online.”

In addition, Saynt is planning to fill the front row of the company’s first fashion show not just with celebrities, buyers, editors from traditional media and fashion bloggers, but also with influential CEOs in the tech industry.

“We want to work with companies that are pushing where media is going, we want to be associated with them,” he says, citing Tumblr as an example. “We’re a brand growing phenomenally, and we want to make sure we can associate our brand with [those companies] in every way possible. They are determining the future of retail.”

More About: fashion, new york fashion week, nyfw, polyvore, rebecca minkoff

Because not everyone on YouTube films their cat staring at the wall for 15 minutes and then uploads the whole thing without a single cut, this week’s YouTube roundup theme is: Awesome Editing.

This week, we let YouTuber Elle — of What’s Up Elle — curate the roundup, mostly because of her impressive editing skills. Observe the video above.

Fun, huh? Well, there’s more where that came from. Check out the below vids before you successfully edit yourself out of the work week.

Bag Thief

Elle: Unlike major movies, I love that effects on YouTube necessitate creativity over cash. In this paradox video, Joe Penna takes a very simple, yet elegant concept and runs with it... literally. A surprise twist toward the end made me pause and smile. This video isn't too hard for me, or a viewer to execute on our own with Final Cut Pro or After Effects. What it does require, though, is some clever, creative thinking and major props to Joe for showcasing his.

Radiolab and NPR Present Words

Meghan Peters: One of my favorite videos of all time.

Breaking Bad

Amy-Mae Elliott: Clever editing can change the meaning of video. Dark drama Breaking Bad gets a sitcom re-edit here, complete with cheery title sequence. Genius.

Mean Disney Girls

Radhika Marya: The Mean Girls trailer, Disney princess style = hilarious editing.

U2, "Window In the Skies"

Brian Dresher: As a big U2 fan, I've always loved the music and editing of their, "Windows in the Skies" video. The video is comprised of a series of video clips from other performers making it look like everyone else is singing their song!

Do You Want To Know More About Belgium?

Ada Ospina: I get a little more excited to check out Belgium whenever I watch this video. (Yes, I have watched it multiple times.)

Tiger Woods Golf Swing

Adam Ostrow: Perhaps a less fashionable choice these days, but still impressive!

Rodney Mullen Globe DVD Rip

Josh Catone: There is no one else like Rodney Mullen. I spent far too many hours in high school studying his videos and trying to replicate what he can do with a skateboard.

RvD2: Ryan vs. Dorkman 2

Ben Parr: This was really good editing...for 2007. Just goes to show that great editing and some lightsabers can make any nerd look like a badass.

Photo a Day

Sarah Kessler: Noah really has that expression down.

Very Cool Stop Motion Video Created By Students in Europe

Erica Swallow: You wouldn't expect that students from the oldest business school in the world are this creative.

Creating A Hit: 8-Hour Challenge

Brenna Ehrlich: This is more "Lonely Island" than Kanye, but it's still better than Ke$ha.

More About: favorite-youtube-videos, video, viral video, youtube

The private alpha “information experience” startup Qwiki has closed an $8 million Series A round of funding that founder and CEO Doug Imbruce believes will enable the team to build a “generationally significant” company on par with the likes of Google and Facebook.

In fact, the pedigree of investors speaks to the grandiose vision of the still very early stage startup. Eduardo Saverin, Facebook’s reclusive co-founder, joins YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim and Juniper Networks co-founder Pradeep Sindhu as individual investors leading the round.

Saverin anticipated the evolution of the social graph and recognizes that the information experience engineered by Qwiki could be just as significant, says Imbruce.

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Control of the Board

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Instituational investors Lerer Media Ventures, Tugboat Ventures and Contour Venture Partners also participated in the round, but Imbruce was quick to note that the majority of funds were raised through individuals instead of institutions, which was by design. Qwiki hopes to usher in a new era of search, and it’s a long-term vision that the startup wants to make happen.

Imbruce reports that Qwiki has already fielded a number of acquisition offers. The concern was that should an institutional investor assume control of the board, the startup might be coaxed, or cornered into, taking an early exit. With this round, Saverin and Pejman Nozad join the board as observers, allowing the Qwiki team to retain control of the board, and its future by association.

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A Whole New World

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“The reaction from the public at large is beyond our largest expectations,” says Imbruce. Imbruce speaks of receiving overwhelmingly positive feedback from technologists and users alike. School teachers and handicap individuals have reached out in droves, he says.

This morning Imbruce also awoke to an inspiring email from his cofounder and CTO Dr. Louis Monier, who previously founded AltaVista and is often credited as the father of search.

Imbruce shared the following snippet from Monier’s private correspondence:

“I use my bag of superlatives quite rarely, but this is one of these moments when I need them. I have seen this kind of tidal wave of positive interest, and it was 15 years ago. I haven’t felt it since… We don’t have a me too product we want to trade in for free lunches at Google. We have a proposition that grabs most people by the throat and doesn’t let go. We have a new brush and new colors to paint anything we want. We have complex technology (and you ain’t see nothing yet) that delivers magic and will be hard to imitate. We are the first to explore a whole new world.”

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What’s Next

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Qwiki’s immediate road map includes a public alpha release in seven to 10 days. The new version aims to make Qwikis more relevant by allowing users to submit content. Soon after that release, the startup will roll out its iPad and iPhone apps. Also in the works is an API and publishing environment which, according to Imbruce, should be made available in six months time.

In the meantime, Qwiki will use its newly acquired funds to hire engineers and designers capable of transforming information experience into a platform. Imbruce recognizes the challenge ahead, but feels confident that the capital will make his goal of building a generationally significant company a reality.

More About: Eduardo Saverin, funding, qwiki, series a

Facebook has confirmed that it has raised $1.5 billion in fresh funding, and with it, signaled that an IPO sometime in 2012 is increasingly likely.

In its funding announcement this afternoon, the company says that, "Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012."

When news of the deal was first reported earlier this month, it appeared to many that Facebook was looking to evade the reporting requirement via a "special purpose vehicle" that Goldman Sachs had setup that would in theory keep the company under 500 shareholders.

Now, Facebook is saying that regardless of the special purpose vehicle — which Goldman eventually limited to only non-U.S. investors in the wake of "intense media coverage" — the company would've been forced to begin disclosing financials in 2012.

That doesn't necessarily guarantee that Facebook will also file to become a publicly traded company at that point, but it makes it all the more likely given the company will already be reporting to the SEC.

More About: DST, facebook, goldman sachs, ipo

Facebook has just announced that it has raised $1.5 billion in venture funding from Digital Sky Technologies, Goldman Sachs and clients of the investment bank. With this round, Facebook is officially worth $50 billion.

“Our business continues to perform well, and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing,” Facebook CFO David Ebersman said in its announcement. “With this investment completed, we now have greater financial flexibility to explore whatever opportunities lie ahead.”

DST invested $50 million while Goldman Sachs invested $450 million. The remaining investment came from overseas shareholders participating in Goldman Sach’s Facebook investment vehicle. The social network says that it could have raised anywhere between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the investment vehicle, but decided in the end to limit the additional funding to $1 billion.

Facebook says that it was approached by DST and Goldman Sachs about the potential investment, and “Facebook decided it was an attractive opportunity to bolster its cash reserves and increase its financial flexibility.” The social network also confirmed in its announcement that this transaction will give it over 500 shareholders, which will require Facebook to publicly disclose its financial results no later than April 30, 2012.

Facebook says that it has no immediate plans for the $1.5 billion it has in its bank, though we believe it will use that money to buy the old Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, expand its staff and accelerate its acquisition strategy.

More About: facebook, goldman sachs, ipo, trending

The Social Media Strategist Series is supported by StrongMail, which helps marketers forge meaningful, profitable and long-lasting connections with customers through e-mail marketing and social media. Learn more here.

Social media marketing is a quickly changing area within the marketing discipline. Social platforms evolve, consumer needs change and businesses adapt.

Within this space, a small set of leaders are paving the way for how businesses are using social tools. Whether they are reimagining platforms or creating new tool for analyzing data, these visionaries are steering the way towards innovation.

Here are five masterminds that are redefining how businesses perceive, create, implement and analyze social media marketing programs.

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1. Randi Zuckerberg, Marketing Director, Facebook

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With more than 500 million active users spending more than 700 billion minutes per month on its platform, Facebook has quickly become the most visited website on the Internet. Furthermore, the social network is driving more and more traffic for major news and entertainment portals, a title once held across most of the web by Google.

As they should, digital marketers go where Internet users flock. Being that 50% of Facebook’s active users are logged in on any given day, it’s a great place to engage with consumers, but marketing on Facebook is something that a lot of businesses still don’t understand. That’s where Randi Zuckerberg’s team comes in.

Zuckerberg is the marketing director at Facebook, and also acts as a spokesperson for the company. She and her team are constantly on the lookout for businesses using Facebook in creative ways so that they can educate others on how to replicate those successes in scalable ways, Zuckerberg told Mashable in an e-mail conversation. Here’s how she describes her day-to-day responsibilities:

“The majority of my work tends to be with businesses/organizations with a consumer-facing brand on Facebook, whether that’s a celebrity, non-profit, major media company, politician, etc — so on a day-to-day basis, the majority of my conversations tend to focus around Facebook Pages. Creating a Facebook Page is an easy, free way to instantly engage with your customers or fans, but you only get out of it what you put in.”

Zuckerberg also threw out a quick tip for businesses with Facebook Pages: “My #1 tip to businesses who want to grow their Facebook Presence requires no additional work — it’s simply to include a photo with every post. A picture truly is worth a thousand words, and if you have a global brand, a photo needs no translation.”

Above and beyond crafting marketing programs for advertisers, Facebook’s marketing team puts a strong focus on education, conducting web seminars on the Facebook Live Channel on best practices, and creating education content, such as the Facebook for Non-Profits Page.

“The great thing about Facebook is that the same concepts/tips/best practices apply to everyone,” said Zuckerberg. “The reason businesses are so successful on Facebook is that the most valuable thing out there is a recommendation from a friend, whether it’s a brand or a movie or a cause. I make the same suggestions about how to most effectively use Facebook to almost everyone I meet with.”

While best practices may stay the same in many cases, it’s all up to brands to innovate. Zuckerberg says she’s “most proud of the projects I’ve worked on that have inspired other businesses/brands to think about marketing themselves on Facebook in a new way.” For example, Facebook’s partnership with CNN to live stream the 2009 Presidential Inauguration inspired many more media companies and businesses to live stream events on Facebook or on their sites using Facebook’s social plug-ins, she noted. Furthermore, Zuckerberg is proud of her team for their ongoing work around causes and social good.

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2. Joe Fernandez, CEO & Co-founder, Klout

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Marketing via social media can be really frustrating, especially for big brands that get tons of mentions across various platforms. Within the past few years, many new startups have tried to solve this problem, endeavoring to create a metric for measuring influence online. Klout, a San Francisco-based startup, is leading the way in standardizing social influence with what it calls a user’s “Klout Score.”

Virgin America, The Huffington Post and Las Vegas’ Palms Hotel have all used Klout scores to divvy out benefits to influential consumers.

CEO and Co-founder Joe Fernandez first thought of the idea for Klout while recovering from jaw surgery in late 2007. With his jaw wired shut for three months, he turned to Twitter as his primary means of communication, finding that his network trusted him and his opinions. Fernandez told Mashable that during that period he “became obsessed with the idea of finding these signals of influence across the social web and measuring them.”

Klout is redefining the way marketers think about their audiences, “making brands recognize the power and impact of individual people,” explained Fernandez. He explained Klout’s process in a language that marketers understand:

“The idea of the funnel is core to most marketers. Rather than targeting as many people as possible and hoping the message makes it down the funnel to the few that convert, Klout is able to target the few key influencers who have authority around a given topic and allow them to tell the story. The message is then amplified up through the network to reach a large engaged audience that trusts the message sender. We’ve basically flipped the funnel upside down.”

Fernandez says that he’s most excited that “influencers are getting the recognition they deserve from brands. Brands are realizing that influencers are key stakeholders and relationships with them need to be tightly managed and respected. These are not normal customers but partners that in the future marketers will devote significant resources to building relationships with.”

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3. Chris Ramsey, EVP Business Development & Co-founder, Radian6

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No marketing program is complete without analytics that prove it’s a success — that’s why social media has been a hard sell for many traditional companies who couldn’t quite put a finger on its ROI. While the puzzle isn’t quite solved yet, companies like Radian6 are creating solutions that allow marketers to “listen, measure and engage” across social platforms.

CTO and Founder Chris Newton and EVP, Business Development and Co-Founder Chris Ramsey created Radian6 in 2006 with a focus on social media monitoring, realizing that customers had a need to listen to what was being said about their brands online.

Ramsey spoke with Mashable about the company’s roots and future, saying that he and his colleagues have always looked at social media more as the “social phone,” which differs from the traditional “one-to-many” view that some marketers initially took. “It is a two-way communication platform, not a broadcast platform, and it's all about engagement and relationships,” explained Ramsey. “As a marketer you can learn a lot, very quickly, by analyzing all of these conversations that are taking place in real time.”

Radian6 is helping marketers humanize their brands and “provide a level of proactive customer service that is unprecedented when compared to the pre-social media era,” said Ramsey.

Make no mistake, social media monitoring, analytics and engagement tools have a way to go. Ramsey sees three key trends for these tools: integration into existing enterprise-wide applications (such as CRM and contact center systems, including Salesforce.com, Siebel and Convergys), automated insights (with integrations with advanced text analytics tools, such as Clarabridge, OpenCalais, and NetBase) and globalization (as many tools currently only focus on North America).

Ramsey reflected back to Radian6′s early days, saying that he’s most proud of the team of about 240 strong they’ve built over the past few years. “There was a time when I was the sales guy, the marketing guy, the customer support guy, and the training guy,” he said. “And now we have teams of such talented people that are doing things I truly never imagined we would get to in this company.”

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4. Suzie Reider, Director of Display Advertising, YouTube

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There are two paths for having a brand presence on YouTube: promoting your company’s content on YouTube or advertising alongside YouTube’s content. With both ways, there are lots of options, but some of the most innovative and customized options are taking place on the advertising side, headed by Suzie Reider.

Reider joined YouTube as its chief marketing officer in September 2006, and is now serving as director of display advertising. Reider’s role is to “figure out how advertisers and marketers can leverage the content and the opportunities on YouTube to connect with their consumers,” she told Mashable. To do that, Reider said that her team “works with marketers to deeply understand what their core marketing objectives are, and then crafts programs and campaigns to meet those objectives.” Tactically, this could come in the form of offerings like Promoted Videos, a homepage takeover, brand channels, or TrueView Video Ads. The goal is to produce campaigns that work for the YouTube audience, work for the advertiser and leverage partner content.

Beyond the ‘nuts and bolts’ advertising offerings on the site, YouTube also works with marketers to provide branded entertainment, contests, and sponsorship of live streaming events. Reider says she’s most proud to see marketing programs evolve which "celebrate our content creators and drive the marketer's story forward at the same time." Some of the recent marketing programs include Life in a Day (a documentary of one day, July 24, as seen through the camera lens of people around the world, sponsored by LG), YouTube Play (a biennial of creative video sourced from YouTube and exhibited at the Guggenheim, sponsored by HP and Intel), and Unstaged (a live streaming concert series, sponsored by Amex in partnership with VEVO).

Reider is at the helm of the company’s innovation in advertising, redefining what “display advertising” is all about for marketers.

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5. Chloe Sladden, Director of Media Partnerships, Twitter

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Chloe Sladden heads up Twitter’s three-person media team, which also includes Robin Sloan and Ross Hoffman. Working with media partners including MTV, CNN, ESPN, NYTimes.com, CBS Interactive, NBCOlympics.com, and The Huffington Post, Sladden’s role is “to harness Twitter to create new approaches to content creation, news reporting, interactivity and audience engagement, both online and on-air,” as described on her LinkedIn profile.

As the information network, Twitter has taken on a reputation as the place to find breaking news and see real-time commentary on live events. “What we’re seeing now is that Twitter is, in fact, about flocking audiences back to a shared experience, and that usually means a live one,” Sladden recently told Fast Company.

Sladden believes that it’s important to make the media team’s efforts scalable. Instead of leading a team of hundreds, she keeps her team small and focuses on creating programs that reach many. For example, Sladden’s team launched — via a tweet, of course — its Twitter Media blog last year, which includes best practices, case studies and tools on how to “use Twitter to transform TV, entertainment, sports and journalism.”

The blog is a one-stop-shop for learning about how to filter, curate, visualize and analyze tweets, among other areas of interest. While the team focuses on media, many of the best practices extend to businesses of all kinds.

Sladden and her team represent some of the most creative thinkers in social media and are changing the way marketers think about and use Twitter with each new partnership they form.

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Your Picks

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These five people are but a subset of masterminds redefining social media marketing. Who would you add to the list?

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Series Supported by StrongMail

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The Social Media Strategist Series is supported by StrongMail, which helps marketers forge meaningful, profitable and long-lasting connections with customers through e-mail marketing and social media. Its unique combination of technology and services offer distinct advantages, including easy access to customer data, low cost of ownership and groundbreaking strategic and creative services.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, wragg

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More Business Resources from Mashable:

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- 24 Professional Events & Organizations for Social Media Strategists
- The Future of the Social Media Strategist
- 7 Tips for Succeeding as a Social Media Strategist
- HOW TO: Define the Role of Your Social Media Team
- Social Media Marketing: 5 Lessons From Business Leaders Who Get It

More About: business, chloe sladden, chris ramsey, facebook, Google, joe fernandez, klout, radian6, randi zuckerberg, social media, social media marketing, Social Media Strategist Series, suzie reider, twitter, youtube

Dana Zemack is a public relations pro at tech PR firm LaunchSquad and works with wonderful and innovative tech startups and emerging companies. To find Dana, tweet at @danamarcelle or check out the LaunchSquad blog.

We’ve come a long way since our favorite 6’2″ culinary icon first broadcast her kitchen prowess to aspiring cooks all over the country in 1963. Since then, we’ve been blessed with 24-hour food TV, celebrity chefs who swear at everyone and brag about being naked, food that comes to us instead of the other way around, real-time access to our favorite restaurants, and generally a superabundance of reasons for us to obsess over what we’re going to eat for dinner. But what happens behind the scenes?

The world of food is certainly not a simple one. Restaurateurs, cafe owners, food personalities and others who make it their business to be foodies have a mammoth operational task to manage each and every day.

Julia Child kept it all together by way of a typewriter, her own masterful organizational skills and a very supportive husband who doubled as a dedicated business manager. To be sure, all of these are excellent and worthy means to manage a business, but these days there are many other helpful tools to consider. So how do people in the food industry use technology to better organize their businesses?

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Play Well Together: Communicating with Your Staff

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Every chef knows that managing a busy kitchen goes way beyond cooking. The kitchen staff needs to be up to date on menus, ingredients have to be in stock, the specials need to be relayed to the waitstaff and myriad other tasks need to be completed from early in the morning to late at night. Michael Scelfo, executive chef at Russell House Tavern in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, uses Dropbox as a key tool for communication with his employees. Every day, his staff keeps a log in a simple Word document. They summarize the day’s events, record new dishes, report on staff performance, document what the specials were and how they sold and incorporate a range of other pertinent information.

And then everything goes into Dropbox. Clickable desktop pop ups at home or in the office alert Scelfo when any of the documents have been updated. Scelfo scans new information in real time and, if needed, responds immediately. Recently, a staff member couldn’t locate a certain cut of meat, assumed they had run out and logged plans to put in a large order to replenish supplies. Michael caught the log update, quickly communicated the location of the missing steak and managed to avoid a pretty expensive misunderstanding.

On the topic of keeping tabs on restaurant supplies, Scelfo also said that the iPad has transformed the way he keeps inventory. He keeps everything organized using the Numbers app for iPad; the lightweight tablet makes for an incredibly useful inventory tool that beats walking all around the restaurant with a laptop (impractical) or a clipboard (inefficient).

Scelfo explains that his goal is make it into the kitchen more and not be stuck handling operational details. These tools eliminate redundant steps, freeing him to do what he loves the most.

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Delight Your Guests: Making Your Menus Interactive

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The steakhouse Chicago Cut found an interesting solution for making their menu of more than 750 bottles of wine accessible to their customers. The company worked with Chicago-based Shared Marketing to develop their own iPad wine menu platform. After spending about eight months developing the app, the restaurant opened this past September ready with 40 iPads to serve as an interactive wine list. Diners can choose to view wines based on characteristics such as vintage, region, type and price range. For example, in the world map view, tapping on a region or country will show you wines that come from that area of the world.

At first I cringed at the potential consequences of combining too much red wine with thousands upon thousands of dollars of Apple products. Custom-made hard leather cases seem to keep the restaurant’s vast iPad inventory safe from harm, and Chicago Cut managing partner Matt Moore assured me that there have been no accidents so far. Also of note, none have disappeared. With 180 seats, the demand for the iPad menus is high and the restaurant plans on investing in around 15 more in the near future.

The team at Chicago Cut also has several new features coming up. In the future, customers will be able to interact with a 360 degree image of each wine bottle that they can ‘spin’ to check out the back label. A platform for tasting notes as well as POS integration are already in the works.

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Be a Local Hero: Getting Your Ingredients Nearby

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Awareness of organic, sustainable and local food has permeated American food culture, making seasonal and sustainable ingredients an integral element of the food philosophy of many restaurants. Scelfo aims to source as many ingredients as possible within 20 miles of his restaurant. One of the first apps he ever used to support his mission was Locavore, a local food sourcing iPhone app. Locavore can be searched based on specific produce or location and also shows nearby markets and seasonal recipes. Tap on “avocados” in the fruits and vegetables list and you’ll be taken to a U.S. map showing that they are currently locally available in Florida, Hawaii and California. Swipe upward on the screen and you’ll also learn how many months are left in the season.

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Take Credit: Managing Your Payments

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Payments service Square, which is now signing up close to 50,000 new users per month, first approached San Francisco-based coffee shop Sightglass just under two years ago when they were in the midst of signing the lease for their storefront space. Sightglass became the first beta tester of the Square product, using an early prototype (which plugged into an iPod) that enabled them to easily accept credit card payments. Before Square had approached them, the company wasn’t planning on accepting credit at all.

Since then, Square has expanded the service considerably and has come out with an app for both the iPhone and iPad. According to Sightglass co-owner Jerad Morrison, the shop uses Square’s POS system for both cash and credit, and it handles not only all store transactions, but they also use the iPhone app for taking payments while out delivering wholesale orders. The system can serve tiny vendors that take one transaction per week all the way up to those that manage many hundreds per day.

The process is simple. For credit, vendors simply swipe the card, prompt customers to sign the screen with their finger and then process the payment. If a customer pays cash, information is entered like any cash register, calculating change as needed. In both cases, customers can choose to receive receipts by text or e-mail.

For each card swipe, users pay 2.75% of the transaction plus 15 cents, and that covers all fees including those charged by the credit card institutions. The hardware and software are free, and cash transactions don’t have any cost.

Square spokesperson Kay Luo explains that many people think of credit cards as being more expensive. However, when so many of us pay with credit, there is also a cost associated with cash-only business, as many find that they simply lose sales. Kay also says that when smaller businesses take cards, particularly mobile operations such as farmers market stands and food trucks, they see more sales. In the near-term, Square has plans to build out analytics dashboard features for users to gather additional intelligence around what sells well and other data points. Currently, the app offers the capability to export cash and credit records right into Quickbooks.

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Keep Your Menus Under Control: Managing Your Recipes

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With breakfast, brunch, dinner, appetizers, desserts, the occasional amuse bouche and various other eats to think about, how can chefs keep it all together? Scelfo used to keep his recipes in a three-ring binder. He’s since become a fan of Paprika, a recipe management app that is available on both iPhone and iPad. The app offers a simple format to enter and search your own recipes, browse the web and clip recipes you like, create and share grocery lists and plan meals. For about $20 per year, you can sync the two platforms, which is definitely a key component if you’re planning on using both at the same time.

This app is particularly useful for the home cooks among us. I tried it out and entered a recipe for Champagne persimmon popsicles that I recently made. The interface is simple and clear and I was able to put it all easily into an e-mail for a quick share. (Using Locavore I learned that, thankfully, persimmons are around for another month or so.)

New recipe ideas and food concepts abound, and amidst a bounty of food blogs, recipe apps and other food resources, chefs and home cooks alike have plenty of ways to both find and record new inspirations. The ways in which professional foodies consume food-related content is changing, too. According to Faith Durand, managing editor at Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn blog, many cookbook publishers hoping to get the blog to post a book review are starting to offer review copies using the iPad’s iBooks instead of sending hard copies through the mail. It saves quite a bit of postage for the publishers and quite a bit of shelf space for the bloggers. It seems like everyone wins.

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What It’s Really About

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We’ve been hearing about chefs and restaurants using social media to engage with their customers for a while now. But more recently, we’re starting to see technology play a bigger and bigger role on the operations side of the equation. Food industry professionals have an immense opportunity to tap new technologies to boost efficiency and streamline operations. Tablets, in particular, will continue to be a major catalyst in the food industry’s move toward making web and mobile services into everyday management tools.

All that said, the real allure of the wonderful world of food has nothing to do with technology at all. Renowned Boston chef and restaurant owner Michael Schlow offers an apt explanation: “Food is about tastes, smells, emotions and imagination, and the food business is about real people, one-on-one experiences and face time.”

As many innovative and helpful apps as there are, if food pros suddenly find themselves compulsively tapping every food-related thought into their iPads while their gourmet pot pies are burning to a crisp in the oven, it isn’t going to help anyone.

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More Foodie Resources from Mashable:

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- Why Chocolate Companies Are So Sweet on Social Media
- 7 Great Mobile Apps for Environmentally Friendly Eating
- For Restaurants, Social Media Is About More Than Just Marketing
- 10 iPhone Apps for Wine Enthusiasts
- 10 iPhone Apps for the Global Foodie

Image courtesy of Shermeee

More About: apps, business, Food, restaurants, small business, social media

They say that you shouldn’t feed the trolls — thankfully a couple of denizens of content creation site Newgrounds did not heed that advice after a kid named Axman13 posted a scathing (albeit grammatically incorrect) comment to a game called Super PSTW Action RPG.

The above video has been buzzing around the web this week, garnering nearly 300,000 views on YouTube, and more than 660,000 on Newgrounds, where it appeared initially.

So where does it come from and (double rainbow!) what does it mean? Well, designer Mick Lauer, the designer who did the animation for the video, tells me that it all started in February 2010, when Axman13 posted a long, rambling comment detailing his qualms about Super PSTW Action RPG.

D-Mac-Double, an actor who voiced the game, quickly posted a reaction video, in which he dramatized the offending words.

That vid didn’t really go viral — until Lauer decided to add text to the track — an experiment in kinetic typography.

While you may not be familiar with the game in question, this little vid should prove amusing to anyone who has tussled with trolls, and perhaps even trolls themselves — apparently Axman13 “Favorited” the video.

Happy Friday!

More About: gaming, humor, pop culture, viral video

Two brands not well-known for social media — Downy and Macy’s — are teaming up for a stunt in which comedian Mike Birbiglia will be living and sleeping in a window display at Macy’s for a week and recording his feelings on Facebook.

The program is promoting a “Clean Sheet Week” challenge for Ultra Downy April Fresh and Macy’s sheets, which are being marketed together. Birbiglia, who wrote a book called Sleepwalk with Me, which chronicles his rare sleep disorder, was chosen as the first person to take the Clean Sheet Week challenge. Starting Monday, Birbiglia will be living in the window at Macy’s flagship store on 34th Street in New York City.

Years ago, such a stunt would have been local in nature, but social media has greatly broadened its scope. Birbiglia will offer a “Daily Video Confessional” on Facebook where he’ll share his feelings about living in the Macy’s window and he’ll crowdsource questions.

Such real-time marketing is more of a draw if a well-known comedian is on hand. Downy’s and Macy’s program comes a week after HP launched a live comedy show on YouTube featuring comedian Rob Riggle and members of the Upright Citizens Brigade. That program was broadcast simultaneously on the brand’s Facebook page. For Procter & Gamble’s Downy, the effort helps address a common problem among packaged goods marketers: How do you get people to have social media conversations about soap? The answer is to attach the product to an issue or promise.

In this case, Downy’s Clean Sheet Week promises that Ultra Downy April Fresh will let you keep bedsheets smelling clean even after a week. The brand is underscoring the point with a new ad that shows a crew dropping a bed onto city streets and then asking people to sniff the sheets, which they’re then told were washed a week before.

More About: advertising, facebook, macys, MARKETING, Procter & Gamble

Apple doesn’t want you messing around inside your own iPhone 4. That’s why all the newest ones are sealed up with oddball “pentalobe” screws. But now there’s a $10 pentalobe screwdriver that solves that problem.

As soon as they heard the news of Apple’s tighter security on its iPhone 4, do-it-yourselfers were fretting that they could only gain entry into the device using an expensive screwdriver that was hard to find.

That’s when specialty toolmaker ifixit sprang into action, offering an iPhone 4 Liberation Kit that can easily conquer the tamper-resistant pentalobe screws in short order. The kit includes a screwdriver that can remove those pesky pentalobes, and then ifixit helpfully adds conventional Philips screws and a screwdriver to install them in your iPhone 4.

According to the quick-reacting toolmakers at ifixit:

“This screw head is new to us. In fact, there isn't a single reputable supplier that sells exactly the same screwdrivers Apple's technicians use—which is Apple's point. They picked an obscure head that no one would have.”

Ifixit said any new iPhone 4 is now shipping with these “evil screws,” adding that if you take your iPhone in for service, Apple will replace the current screws with these new, nearly impenetrable ones.

I wouldn’t have any business rummaging around the interior of my iPhone 4, and don’t really have any desire to. However, something doesn’t quite sit right about not being able to look inside a device that I own. What do you think, readers?

More About: apple, iFixit, iphone 4, Pentalobe Screwdriver, tamper resistant

An expansive ecosystem has developed around Twitter since its 2006 launch. Digital analyst Brian Solis and data visualization powerhouse JESS3 have once again teamed up to release an infographic entitled “The Twitterverse” to depict, and make sense of, the vast galaxy of applications and services orbiting Twitter.

The infographic highlights applications in 19 different rings ranging from branding and geolocation to event management and marketing and advertising. The end result is an exhaustive look at the Twitter ecosystem.

This interactive version of the infographic also provides viewers with more detailed information — courtesy of social software marketplace Oneforty — on each application.

The dynamic resource could help you discover a new dashboard tool for social media management, point you in the direction of a fun, rich media application or it could simply serve as a fun way to marvel at the social media solar system.

More About: brian solis, infographic, JESS3, oneforty, social media, twitter

Nvidia is set to roll out the next-generation Tegra 3 chip aimed at smartphones and tablets, promising to be even faster than its current processor, which was one of the stars of CES 2011, the dual-core Tegra 2.

While Nvidia hasn’t officially announced the processor yet, the Tegra 3′s impending launch is almost certain, according to Softpedia. The new chip is expected to have four cores inside, and will probably roll out at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on February 14.

Without revealing any dates, Nvidia’s general manager of Tegra Mike Rayfield confirmed the Tegra 3′s launch in an interview with Hexus,

“I’m going to come pretty close to my cadence of a launch every year,” said Rayfield. “It will be in production around the same time as my competitors’ first dual-cores will.”

Given that the Tegra 2 was launched at CES last year, Tegra 3′s launch is due any time now.

Just as the Tegra 2 chip boosts the performance of tablets such as the Motorola Xoom and the first dual-core smartphone, the LG Optimus 2x, and many others we saw at CES 2011, the Tegra 3 is said to have four cores, which can further speed up browsing and gaming on tablets and smartphones. In addition, multiple cores can run at half speed to accomplish the same tasks that a single core would need to run at full speed, enhancing battery efficiency and generating less heat.

Clearly, multicore smartphones have arrived, with quad-core chips probably waiting in the wings. Ovum analyst Nick Dillon told Morningstar:

“In the same way that 1GHz was the standard for top of the range smartphones in 2010, every top-end service in 2011 is likely to have a dual-core processor. We may even see the first quad-core chipsets emerging in handsets by the end of the year.”

More About: NVIDIA, smartphones, tablets, tegra 3

Google admitted today that search spam has increased in recent months, and the search giant has outlined its plan to combat spam and the rise of “content farms.”

Google search quality and SEO czar Matt Cutts published a detailed piece on the Google Blog regarding the company’s efforts to improve the quality of its search results. He starts off admitting what we’ve been suspecting for months: there are more spammers trying to scam unsuspecting Googlers.

“Today, English-language spam in Google's results is less than half what it was five years ago, and spam in most other languages is even lower than in English,” Cutts said. “However, we have seen a slight uptick of spam in recent months, and while we've already made progress, we have new efforts underway to continue to improve our search quality.”

Cutts makes it clear that webspam refers to the junk that appears in search results when websites try to cheat their way to a higher position. With the launch of the new version of its search engine, Google Caffeine, Google has been indexing more content than before, including spam.

“As we've increased both our size and freshness in recent months, we've naturally indexed a lot of good content and some spam as well,” Cutts explained. “To respond to that challenge, we recently launched a redesigned document-level classifier that makes it harder for spammy on-page content to rank highly.”

Google’s new classifier is designed to detect spam on individual web pages by identifying spammy words and phrases. Cutts says that the company has also improved its ability to detect hacked sites and is testing new changes, including one that penalizes websites for copying the content of others without having original content of its own.

At the same time, Google is adding a new measure to combat “content farms.” These controversial organizations, Demand Media being the best known, utilize cheap, contracted labor to write articles of questionable quality. Cutts says that Google has implemented two algorithmic changes to stop these low-quality sites from rising to the top.

Today’s news can’t be good for the spammers, but it could be especially painful for Demand Media, whose IPO is just around the corner. Google isn’t going to let anything stand between it and search quality, even if that means taking down thousands of spammers and content farms in the process.

More About: Google, google search, matt cutts, Search Spam, spam, trending

If virtual crops and apartment buildings just aren’t your bag — and you’re itching for some sweet, digital romance — you’re in luck, because video game developer 3G Studios has acquired the rights to the TV series, The Dating Game.

According to a release, 3G, along with Sony Pictures Consumer Products, will be launching the game early this year on Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Twitter and Friendster (yes, it still exists — it was sold to MOL Global in 2009).

There’s not much info yet about what this game will look like, but you can sign up for the beta (in comic sans!) to get in on the action. Apparently, the game is similar to the original show, in which three contestants answer questions to win a “date” with the man or woman in question. One also gets an in-game, customizable avatar.

Given the popularity of social gaming (Facebook game CityVille just reached 100 million monthly active users) and the growing importance of Facebook in the dating realm, this game could have the potential to be a hit. Or incredibly awkward. Either one.

More About: 3g-studios, dating-game, online dating, pop culture, television

Do you remember the world before the advent of the Internet? Me neither, but I’m sure it was filled with horrifying things like libraries, retail stores and radio commercials.

This comic was illustrated by Kiersten Essenpreis, a New York-based artist who draws and blogs at YouFail.com. For more laughs, check out our previous Mashable Comics.

What’s your favorite thing about living in the 21st century (besides bacon-flavored ice cream, of course)?

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More Mashable Comics:

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- The 5 Biggest Video Game Flops of All Time
- The Angry Birds Finally Get Some Help
- The Existential Trouble With Social Gaming
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: Mobile Sales Rep [COMIC]
- The First Rule of Social Media: Know Your Audience

More About: comic, comics, funny videos, humor, mashable comics, trending, video, youtube

LinkedIn and CNNMoney have introduced a new widget that lets users see who in their network works in one of Fortune‘s “100 Best Companies to Work For.”

The widget, which went live yesterday, also lists new hires and job changes at a each of the companies on the list and features a “follow” button that gives readers news and information about a company they choose to follow.

The content is accessible to users who search a company that makes the list. When you search one of the companies, a small ad for the list pops up. Click through the ad and you see the full list. Click on a company on the list, and you’ll see people on your network who work at the company, along with other information.

CNNMoney, a unit of Time Inc, is the first company to take advantage of a new Javascript platform that LinkedIn introduced in October designed to integrate LinkedIn content across the web.

LinkedIn followed that move with share and recommendations widgets for websites and apps trying to integrate their content with LinkedIn. The former lets users share links they like while the latter is designed along the lines of Facebook’s “like” button to offer the thumbs up for companies and products that users find favor with.

The new widget was introduced as LinkedIn’s valuation approaches $3 billion on secondary markets, and the company is reportedly pursuing an IPO.

More About: Fortune, linkedin, time

Lisa Wehr is the founder and CEO of Oneupweb, a leading digital marketing agency representing some of the nation's most recognized brands for more than 15 years.

We've all heard the expression "The customer is always right," but what about making the customer experience on your website so thoughtful that they don't ever feel unappreciated, forgotten or neglected?

According to AnnoyingDesign.org, the average time a user spends on a site is only 56 seconds. You have just 56 seconds to turn your site visitors into customers. Is it possible? Certainly, and app design shows us the way.

What's the cornerstone of app-influenced design? Action-oriented design components, which create immediate functionality. It's the purposeful construction of obvious pathways that creates user friendly navigation. Focusing on visuals, placement and interaction can transform your site and your business.

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Visuals: Symbols and Icons and Pictograms, Oh My!

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Take a look at the two major printing sites shown here. The first site's homepage is heavy in text and provides only its logo as imagery. The company's product selection is displayed in a simple column on the left-hand side of the page, providing some sense of organization, but is it user friendly? Unfortunately, it's not. The content-dense site may be highly visible to search engines, but it's time-consuming to navigate, which is likely costing them business.

The second company's site follows the same structure — listing its popular products in the left navigation — however it outdoes the first company by having a much more accommodating design. The site offers visual icons (very similar to apps) for each of their services. The main navigation consists of miniature color-coded pictograms (images used in place of concepts, objects and actions), which also provides app-like usability.

Apps are all about pleasing the user by making navigation easier so people can achieve results faster. It's more engaging and effective for a user to view primary navigation and action paths with supporting pictograms, as opposed to those that only contain text. For instance, the pictogram of a shopping cart on a navigation menu translates to “view order,” which resonates with users instantly. Not only are pictograms instantaneous, they're also usually independent from language, allowing a global audience to confidently carry out tasks.

Below, Domino's Pizza illustrates exactly this notion of making a task more enjoyable and better yet, faster (even speed readers combine symbols with text). Dominos.com requires specific user information from individuals as they complete online orders. The pizza company focused on the pragmatics (relations between the meaning of symbols and their users) as they made the often tedious task of filling out location information more visually appealing and less time consuming for users.

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Placement: Laying Down the Obvious Pathways

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“Location, location, location” is key real estate, and should also be the golden rule of your homepage. As soon as your site appears on a user's screen, they're ready to go… but where?

Make all key actions on your site clearly accessible from the homepage. Unlike an app, your website is larger and has more room to fill. The main navigation of your homepage should be an ultimate go-to zone, so visitors don't have to scroll down to find what they are looking for. The American Red Cross illustrates this tactic below. In the upper right-hand side of AmericanRedCross.org, users are provided with a search field [Figure 1], donation button [Figure 2], location finder [Figure 3], and various primary navigation items directing them to popular motives (in this case: "Give Blood," "Volunteers," "Take Classes" and more) for visiting the site.

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Interaction: Give the User a Bit of Control

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Apps give users a feel of piloting — whether it is customization or creative routes of gathering desired info. Biggby Coffee offers customization by letting users choose the background skin of Biggby.com. Look to Adidas.com as an example of letting users run with their curiosity while still providing fast results.

Adidas's homepage is filled with imagery, which visitors can scroll over to view multiple options [Figures 1 and 2], like voting on favorite sports players, connecting to Adidas's social channels and shopping Adidas sportswear. And for visitors who have a precise agenda and aren't in the mood to gallivant on Adidas.com, the company has wisely created a main navigation with pictograms for users with straightforward missions.

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Looking Ahead

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Good websites in 2011 will be all about task-accommodating design, just like apps. Get ready to see revamped websites that are more visual, easier to utilize and more accessible. Here's to a happy and user-centric year in design.

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More Dev & Design Resources from Mashable:

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- 4 Predictions for Web Design in 2011
- HOW TO: Get the Most From Crowdsourced Design Competitions
- HOW TO: Get More Out of Your Fonts
- 10 Predictions for Web Development in 2011
- 5 Free Annotation and Collaboration Tools for Web Projects

Disclosure: Oneupweb is a Mashable sponsor.

Image courtesy of David Salafia

More About: business, design, web design

LinkedIn shares are being sold for $30 apiece on secondary market SharesPost, which puts the business-oriented social network’s valuation at almost $3 billion, Bloomberg reports, citing three people familiar with the matter.

SharesPost currently values LinkedIn at $2.51 billion, but LinkedIn has 97.1 million shares — and at $30 a share, the valuation jumps to $2.91 billion.

SharesPost has contacted LinkedIn shareholders to express interest for the shares in a private auction, in which a minimum of 95,500 shares would be sold, Bloomberg‘s sources claim. The results will be announced to the participants on January 28.

Services such as SharesPost or SecondMarket let investors trade with illiquid assets, including private company stock, which means the stock prices there don’t hold as much importance as stock prices of public companies such as Google.

They are, however, a good indication of how a company might be valued in case of an IPO. A recent report said LinkedIn is looking to go public soon, although LinkedIn refused to comment. “An IPO is one of many tactics that we could choose to pursue. We are focused on building our business and doing what is in the best long-term interest of LinkedIn members and shareholders," a LinkedIn spokesman said at the time.

More About: ipo, linkedin, seconday market, sharespost, valuation

Thanks to this week's advertisers and partners for enabling us to bring you the latest social media news and resources. Mashable’s sponsors are as social media savvy as our readers!

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Oneupweb supports Mashable’s Behind the Social Media Campaign Series. Check it out here and follow it Oneupweb on Twitter and Facebook.

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Social is the new normal. Businesses are building a myriad of communities in an effort to engage customers and enhance business. But what defines a World Class Community? Read Telligent’s Rob Howard and Cecilia Edward’s whitepaper to find out. Download it now.

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SRDS connects agencies, brands and media through its online database of media planning data. SRDS is committed to making it easier to buy online ad space and build integrated marketing campaigns. Sign up for a free 14-day trial of the SRDS consumer and business database at www.srds.com/trial.

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After learning that Ben Huh’s Cheezburger Network nabbed $30 million in funding this week, I’m sure that the first words on everyone’s lips were: “Wow! I would love to see this news reenacted in cartoon form! Oh! And hope I hope there are several cats in said reenactment!”

Well, you’re all in luck, because Hong Kong and Taiwan's Next Media Animation has gone ahead and animated the news.

I talked to Ben Huh last week about the influx of funding, and I can tell you with confidence that this is exactly how everything went down. Right down to the cheeseburger hat.

More About: cheezburger network, humor, NMA, pop culture, video

Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. We're keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today.

Google to Launch Groupon Competitor

Google is preparing to launch Google Offers, a competitor to group-buying services like Groupon and LivingSocial, according to a confidential fact sheet obtained from the tech giant.

Larry Page To Replace Eric Schmidt as CEO of Google

Google announced its fourth quarter earnings Thursday, and with it the news that co-founder Larry Page will replace Eric Schmidt as CEO of the company, effective April 4. In addition, Schmidt intends to sell more than half a million of the company's shares in a transaction that would be worth approximately $335 million today.

New Twitter Worm Exploits Google's URL Shortener

A new worm is posting links using Google’s URL shortener goog.gl to send Twitter users to a fake antivirus site, online security firms Sophos and Kaspersky report.

Further News

• HP announced major changes to its board of directors Thursday, including the appointment of Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay.
• Verizon has filed an appeal challenging the net neutrality rules that the FCC adopted last month, which aim to prevent Internet providers from blocking or slowing legal content.
• Full access to the New York Times website will cost less than $20 per month, an anonymous source has told Bloomberg.
• Verizon has released its first commercial spot for the long-awaited Verizon iPhone on YouTube.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

More About: eric schmidt, Google, Google Offers, larry page, twitter

Rearing, I’ve heard, is a tough business. This is probably why Google returns more search results for websites on the topic than there are newborn babies in the United States — and why many of those results are online communities of parents that exchange advice and support.

While I’m not a parent myself, I played one on about 20 such communities this week. During my time as an impostor mom, I found some communities that were too focused on marketing a brand to be useful, and others that were functionally more like parenting ghost towns than networks. These six sites, however, impressed me as useful resources and active communities.

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1. Cafemom

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CafeMom is one of the most active online communities for mothers that I’ve seen. When I posted a question (I used the same question on all sites), I received six reasonably helpful responses in the first ten minutes.

The site gets several features right. First, the focus is on conversation, not necessarily just parenting advice. There are forum sections and groups for a number of interests like politics and techie topics in addition to parenting topics. Moms also have an opportunity to write journal entries and blog posts, the most popular of which are highlighted. Other entertainment options on the site like polls, videos, contests, and games make it a destination even when moms don’t have pressing parenting questions.

CafeMom’s creators have also invoked game mechanics. You get points for asking a question (as long as its not anonymous) and answering questions. When people respond to your inquiries, you can award the authors of the best responses more points — which encourages helpful responses. These points increase your “level” on the site and help earn badges.

Another boon is that it’s easy to find and keep up with mothers who have similar interests. You can search for other mothers to introduce yourself to based on your location, interests, children’s ages, or a combination of the three. When you sign up for groups, there’s an option to get an e-mail digest of daily responses.

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2. MothersClick

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Like most social networks that have sprouted in the last five years, MothersClick borrows a few facets from Facebook. Moms can create profiles that include wall posts, friends, private messages, photos and status settings. Groups form around subjects like “moms who rock” and “moms who blog,” and it’s possible to post questions to either your groups or to everybody.

One thing I like is that you can keep track of the conversations that you are involved in and the questions you’ve asked through a simple news feed instead of constantly checking for a response. A search bar at the top of the site is also a great feature that most often gives you the answer to your question before you’ve even asked it.

This isn’t the most active site, however, and the newest posts under some topics are more than a year old. The network does, however, helpfully take the liberty of suggesting other moms with your interests and in your area who you might add as friends.

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3. Mamapedia

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The most unique feature of mamapedia is that it sorts discussion topics based on a timeline of your child’s development. You can see the issues that other parents have already started conversations around based on the common age of your children.

Beyond this, the platform is intuitive and effective. A large search bar lets you forget about navigating and find the information that you need quickly. You can follow questions that you have answered or asked through separate tabs as well as questions asked by moms in your area. Highlighted blog posts are also often specific to your location.

The community is fairly active, and I received five responses to my inquiry in the first ten minutes. The local aspects are also appreciated, opening up the opportunity for more relevant, and possibly even in-person, discussions.

The site supports itself by offering “sweet deals” and “member perks” from your local sponsors. Most of these are relatively appealing, but if you don’t want to look at them they stay tucked in their own tab.

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4. Minti

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Dads, here it is: a social network for patents that doesn’t have “mom” in its title. Minti has a robust arsenal of archived advice written by parents. The site, which is mostly organized in a forum style, has Q&A format sections but also encourages each member to write advice blog posts.

The amount of information on Minti is truly useful and can accessed by search. Interaction, however, seems less of a focus than on some of the other sites. It’s easy to get lost in the forums and recent questions, which, while given their own tabs, aren’t highlighted. Nobody responded to my question until the next day.

Rewards for participating do exist, however. The site has its own virtual currency that can be exchanged for real currency (at a rate of about 500 to 1) that users earn by doing things like writing blog posts and inviting friends.

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5. Momslikeme.com

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Momslikeme.com has built communities around more than 60 locations. When you register, you’re automatically placed in a group with your zip code and directed to your local site. The zip code groups generally don’t have much activity, but it is helpful to have your homepage organized to highlight what other parents in your area are talking about.

Polls feature prominently on the page and often stray away from parenting advice topics. For instance, today’s featured NYC poll is “Should the health care reform bill be repealed?”

As with other sites, you can add friends, send private messages, and join groups. The site’s bread and butter is a coupon section that mostly offers discounts for grocery items.

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6. BabyCenter Community

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The community section of online parenting publication BabyCenter follows a similar format as many others by giving parents an opportunity to add friends, post journal entries, and share photos.

The most active portion of the site is probably its “birth clubs.” You enter the club that matches the month and year of your child’s birth or anticipated birth. Since all the group member’s children are going through the same stages at the same time, it’s easy to find relevant discussions. It’s also easier to build relationships because there’s no need to jump forums or groups as your child ages.

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More Parenting Resources from Mashable:

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- 4 Effective Tools for Monitoring Your Child's Online Safety
- The Future of Social Media Parenting [COMIC]
- 5 Fun and Safe Social Networks for Children
- HOW TO: Help Your Child Set Up a Blog
- 5 Fun Ways to Help Your Kids Learn Math Online

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, damircudic

More About: Children, Dads, Kids, Moms, parenting, parents, social media, social networking, social networks

A new worm is posting links on Twitter user accounts that lead to a fake antivirus site, online security firms Sophos and Kaspersky report.

The worm is using Google’s URL shortener goo.gl to spread the links; if you follow the link, you will land on a site that advertises a rouge antivirus solution called “Security Shield.” This “antivirus” is in fact malware, which should fortunately be detected (Sophos detects it as Troj/FakeAV-CMG) as such by popular antivirus solutions.

Twitter’s Safety account has reacted to this threat; an update on the account claims Twitter is “working to remove the malware links and reset passwords on compromised accounts.”

As always, we advise everyone against following suspicious goo.gl links on Twitter; under no circumstances should you install the fake antivirus called “Security Shield.”

Furthermore, if you’ve seen goo.gl links that you haven’t posted on your Twitter account, you should change your Twitter password immediately and run an antivirus scan of your computer.

[via Kaspersky, Sophos]

More About: antivirus, Goo.gl, Google, kaspersky, malware, security shield, sophos, twitter, url shortener, worm