Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “After Seeing the iPad 2, Samsung Reconsiders Galaxy Tab Pricing”

“Apple made it very thin (…) We will have to improve the parts that are inadequate,” Lee Don-Joo told Yonhap News Agency. We feel that a bit of information might have gotten lost in translation from Korean to English, as we definitely don’t expect Samsung to pull the 10.1 Galaxy Tab from the market and release a thinner version. It’s more likely that Samsung simply sees the iPad 2′s thinness a big challenge for its future tablet models.

The other part of Lee Don-Joo’s statement is clearer and far more telling. “The 10-inch (tablet) was to be priced higher than the seven-inch but we will have to think that over,” he said.

Samsung, unlike some of its competitors – for example, the Motorola Xoom – won’t try to compete with the iPad at a higher price point just because some of the hardware of its tablet looks better on paper and that, in our opinion, is the right approach. Apple has set the price for its tablet in the $499 – $829 price range (with the cheapest 3G-sporting option being priced at $629), and any Android tablet will have a hard time competing with the iPad 2 at a price too near the upper end of that spectrum.

[via Yonhap News Agency]

More About: apple, galaxy tab, iPad 2, samsung

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

It’s only logical: if you buy an iPhone app in the iTunes App Store, and accidentally erase it, or buy a new iPhone, you can download it again. But currently you cannot do that with the music you buy on iTunes, and Apple is pushing to change that.

Apple is currently negotiating with Vivendi’s Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music and EMI. If successful, the deal would allow iTunes users to download music they’ve purchased to several devices: iPhone, iPod and iPad, for example.

Apple has been trying hard to make iTunes more competitive to various music streaming services, such as Pandora and Grooveshark, where users don’t download music at all, streaming the music instead for a monthly fee or the inconvenience of seeing a couple of ads.

After getting rid of DRM back in 2007, Apple has recently increased iTunes song previews to 90 seconds and tried (without much success) to add a social networking element to the service with Ping.

The ability to download music you’ve purchased to more than one device and to have a permanent backup of it online, however, would be a big improvement for iTunes for many users frustrated with iTunes’ current limitations.

Are unlimited downloads in iTunes an interesting feature to you? Would it entice you to purchase more music there? Please, share your opinions in the comments.

[via Bloomberg]

More About: apple, itunes, music, music downloads

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Your credit score carries significant weight in your financial life. Want to rent an apartment or buy a car? Good luck doing so with a bad credit score. The same logic applies to landing a job if you have a negative online reputation.

So says MyWebCareer, an early stage startup that has developed algorithms to run your “Career Score,” a credit check for your professional web persona. The service analyzes your Facebook profile, LinkedIn network, Twitter account and Google juice — evaluating more than 200 different variables in the process — and spits out a score between 350 to 850.

Where you fall could be an indicator of how employable you are and indicate your overall professional attractiveness.

Credit Check

Once you grant MyWebCareer access to Facebook and/or LinkedIn, the service works to retrieve employment history and searches Google for references to you in any of the positions you’ve claimed to have held. The startup is also running semantic analysis on your Facebook updates, checking out your Stack Overflow profile, if you have one, and factoring in your Klout score, among other things.

The resulting score — which remains private until you opt to share it publicly — is evaluated against your peers in three areas: your connectedness, professional online brand and internet search footprint. The service will highlight potentially offending status updates and make specific recommendations for how you can improve your score.

If a search query doesn’t bring up results, for instance, relating to past jobs, MyWebCareer will call your attention to these eyebrow-raising issues.

The public beta service, only having launched in February, is far from complete. Co-founders Greg Coyle and Nip Zalavadia say they want to make the Career Score as reflective of your online reputation as possible. This means they’ll continue to add data sources — like Quora once there’s a publicly accessible API — in the future.

The Credit Bureau of the Web?

If MyWebCareer’s calculation is meant to be a credit score for your digital life, then the startup aims to be like an Experian or Equifax.

This presents it with the challenge of convincing consumers, and eventually business users, that its score means something significant, beyond the novelty of the site itself. Because other startups also traffic in reputation management (Brand-Yourself) and online influence scoring (Klout), this will not be an easy sell.

In a month’s time, the startup has acquired more than 4,000 users, according to Coyle and Zavaladia. Not overly impressive numbers, and more interesting, perhaps, is that a significant subset of users are openly sharing their scores via Facebook or Twitter and helping to bring in new members — 20% of new users sign-up through this network effect.

In the product pipeline are new features that could better drive home the utility of the service. A premium version is slated for early April release and should offer the full breadth of everything that MyWebCareer evaluates for a small monthly or yearly fee.

Also in the works is an enterprise version that will allow employers to evaluate content without giving them direct access to a candidate’s Facebook or LinkedIn profile, says Coyle and Zalavadia. This will eventually be positioned as a recruitment tool that employers can use to discover potential talent with high Career Scores in certain industries.

So long as MyWebCareer can figure out what their score really means, it could have bright future. Employers are socially screening candidates and employees are more likely than ever to have blemished online records, so there is an audience for the product.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sdominick

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.

More About: career score, facebook, influence, mywebcareer, online reputation, reputation, spark-of-genius, twitter

For more Startups coverage:

• Follow Mashable Startups on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Startups channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Here’s a video that will surprise you. You know how Old Spice Guy goes on that elaborate “scent vacation,” intoning his trademark “hello, ladies” and then undergoing a complicated metamorphosis from Polynesian skirt to lying on his side on a red grand piano? It was all done in one take, with physical props and suspension wires.

Don’t believe me? Watch this behind-the-scenes video and you’ll see. Not only could vid-wizards easily cover up the wires that suspended former football player and irresistible Old Spice Guy Isaiah Mustafa, but audio engineers artfully concealed the creaking noises of the stagecraft, liberally sprinkling sound effects and audio trickery for the seamless final effect.

More About: behind the scenes, Isaiah Mustafa, old spice guy, viral video

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

As a Mashable reader, you're probably well-aware that Facebook's News Feed and Google's search results adjust based on your behavior and demonstrated preferences. But are these and the web's other algorithms making us collectively uninformed as a society? That's the argument that Eli Pariser, the former executive director of MoveOn.org, made in a TED talk on Thursday in Long Beach, California.

Pariser started his talk by noting a trend he saw on Facebook. Over time, he said, the conservative friends he had started following to ensure a diverse set of viewpoints (Pariser describes himself as "progressive" politically) gradually started disappearing. As he would soon discover, that was a result of him clicking far more frequently on the links posted by his more liberal friends.

This "invisible algorithmic editing of the web," as Pariser describes it, "moves us to a world where the Internet shows us what it thinks we need to see, but not what we should see." Beyond Facebook, Pariser notes the huge diversity of search results his friends find on Google about topics like Egypt, where one friend sees news about recent protests and Lara Logan, while another sees results about travel and vacations.

In turn, Pariser believes we're collectively creating what he calls a personal "filter bubble," which is also the title of a book on the subject due out in May. And while he falls short of arguing that the trend towards personalization must end, he says the likes of Facebook and Google need to "have a sense of civic responsibility, and let us know what's getting filtered … [and offer] controls to let us decide what gets through and what doesn't."

What he'd like to see is an information world that "gives us a bit of Justin Bieber and a bit of Afghanistan," marked by controls that let us filter content by its relevance, importance, comfort (topics that can be difficult to discuss or read), challenge level, and points of view (with an option to see "alternative").

Of course, much of that goes against the history of the Internet, which has been marked by its ability to connect like-minded people, both for good and for bad. In other words, Google and Facebook could build such controls and even bake more human editing into their algorithms, but do people even want them?

What do you think? Is the personalization of the Web making us less informed? Do the companies driving innovation on the web have a civic responsibility to give us a fuller world view? Sound off in the comments.

Photo credit: James Duncan Davidson / TED

More About: algorithms, eli pariser, facebook, Google, TED, ted2011, trending

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Trade-in programs from Gazelle, eBay and NextWorth are all reporting sustained levels of user interest. Meanwhile, Apple is giving some recent iPad 1 buyers a $100 discount.

Trade-in Offers Draw Customers By the Thousands

We spoke to Kristina Kennedy, who’s in charge of branding and communications for Gazelle, about the first day trade-in figures and projections for the future. Kennedy told us that Gazelle saw more than 2,500 iPad trades on Wednesday paying out in excess of $1 million.

As of this afternoon, more than 1,000 trades have already cleared the site. Kennedy expected to see more than 2,000 trades for Thursday alone.

Historically, Kennedy says, trade-in volume has been an accurate projector of sales for an upcoming product. But the iPad has exceeded the company’s expectations. When the iPhone 4 was announced in June, Gazelle saw around 1,200 trade-ins the first day. That included all iPhone models, from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3GS.

First day iPad trade-ins were nearly double that.

Robert Wesley, head of business development at NextWorth — another company that offers electronics upgrades and trade-ins — also reports record iPad activity.

In the last three days, NextWorth has seen almost three times the number of iPad units it received the entire month of February.

NextWorth has a retail partnership with Target stores in the U.S., where customers can receive credit towards a purchase or a pre-paid Target gift card when they trade-in used electronics in-store. iPad units will be accepted for trade-in at Target locations by the end of March.

Not to be outdone, eBay’s Instant Sale program is also drawing significant interest from iPad owners. Since the Instant Sale program launched in October, eBay rep Annie Lescroart says, 22,000 iPads have been offered on the site. Some 7,100 were posted after the iPad 2 announcement.

So in less than 24 hours, eBay’s Instant Sale program generated 1/3 of its total iPad offers.

For comparison, eBay provided us with metrics for other tablets. Since October, 1,500 offers have been made for non-iPad tablets. Only 58 of those came after Wednesday’s announcement.

Trading in for an Upgrade?

Gazelle’s Kennedy believes the 16GB iPad (which originally retailed for $499) makes a particularly good upgrade target. Consumers have had a year with the unit and can now upgrade — not just to an iPad 2, but to one with a larger storage capacity.

As for the 64GB iPad 3G, the high buyback price on that unit is helping to shift sales. Trades for that unit are in the $500 range.

NextWorth is seeing similar data. The 16GB Wi-Fi iPad accounts for 29% of the company’s trade-ins in the last three days. The 64GB 3G iPad represents 23%. (eBay does not yet break down resales by model.)

Apple has also never broken out iPad sales by unit, which makes it impossible to judge if trade-ins are in proportion to general iPad distribution.

Market Prices Stabilized

After the 11th, she expects another dip in iPad market prices. Still, her advice — which is also the advice from NextWorth and eBay — is that consumers lock in their prices now before the 11th. That will give them time to get the new iPad while still holding on to the old one.

Apple Offers $100 Refunds to Recent Buyers

According to CNET, Apple will also be offering customers who purchased an iPad in the two weeks leading up to the iPad 2 announcement a $100 refund. Apple’s standard return policy in the U.S. is 14-days for non-engraved units. Recent iPad buyers might just want to return the old unit outright and wait another week.

Customers who ordered an iPad online prior to the iPad 2 announcement need to call Apple to process the $100 refund. Retail customers just need to bring their receipt back to the Apple Store.

More About: ebay, gazelle, instant sale, iPad 2, nextworth, trade-ins, trending

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

O’Reilly Media’s first “animal book” on the increasingly popular framework Node.js should be hitting store shelves sometime this summer. What you can see now is author Tom Hughes-Croucher’s text, images and code samples, all of which are currently open for comments.

As Hughes-Croucher writes in the Author’s Note for the preview, “What you’ll find within this first release is not necessarily the final work that we will publish. We hope by making this book available as it’s written we’ll get your feedback, ideas and thoughts on what I’ve already written and what else we should be covering.”

Node.js is rapidly evolving — almost too rapidly for the printed page to keep pace — so Hughes-Croucher, who is also a Node core contributor, is doing all he can to ensure the book is, at press time, current with the available versions of Node.

As O’Reilly describes it, “This book introduces you to Node, the new web development framework written in JavaScript. You’ll learn hands-on how Node makes life easier for experienced JavaScript developers: not only can you work on the front end and back end in the same language, you’ll also have more flexibility in choosing how to divide application logic between client and server.

“Node is already winning the hearts and minds of many companies, including Google and Yahoo. This book shows you why.”

Among other things, the book attempts to teach devs about Node’s approach to event-driven programming and its support for databases and data storage tools. Readers will also find best practices for the still-nascent framework and get examples of how to use the APIs.

Node has also captured the imaginations of many of the developers we talk to on a regular basis; we’re excited to see what Hughes-Croucher is bringing to the table.

The author told us via e-mail that he’ll be updating the preview every two weeks. Anyone can read and comment on the book until it’s published.

And if you already know you’re going to want a hard copy, it’s available for pre-order for $34.99.

More About: developers, development, node, node.js, o'reilly, tom hughes-croucher

For more Dev & Design coverage:

• Follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Dev & Design channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Last Sunday morning, about 0.08% of all Gmail users were in for a rude awakening. Their e-mail accounts seem to have vanished overnight.

The next day, Google dutifully apologized, promising a quick fix for the problem, saying it might need to restore the missing accounts by retrieving them from off-line backup tapes. “Sorry again for the scare,” said Google’s Ben Traynor.

Making steady progress with the cleanup (hopefully not using any of that Gmail soap in the graphic above), four days later Google says the problem “should be resolved.” The word “should” is slightly unsettling, isn’t it? Here’s a blockquote from the Gmail area of Google’s Apps Status Dashboard:

12:51 AM [3/3/2011]: The problem with Google Mail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.

Gmail should be back to normal for the vast majority of people affected by this issue. If you are still experiencing an issue, please contact us at gmail-maintenance@google.com. Thanks again for bearing with us.

Let us know in the comments about your experience with this outage. Is everything back to normal yet? Did this incident change your thinking about cloud computing?

More About: bugs, cloud computing, Disable accounts, fix, gmail outage, Google

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

I got the opportunity to ride along as the car whipped around a test track set up outside the conference. Riding at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, the vehicle maneuvered its way between dozens of test cones that had been set up, making a combination of hard stops, tight turns and quick accelerations.

Not a single cone was hit, and I can verify that the driver did not touch the wheel until the very end to drop myself and two other passengers off (this was planned).

The car itself traveled from San Francisco to Long Beach, California, for the conference as part of Google's ongoing tests. While Thrun tells me he thinks we'll see self-driving cars in the hands of consumers within our lifetimes, he notes that at this time, "It's really just a science project … pushing the boundaries of what's possible. It's clearly not something that's going to make us money any time soon."

Limitations of the vehicle currently include dealing with weather, as well as capturing the imagery and data necessary to allow the car to do things such as stop at red lights and observe speed limits (most of this work has been limited to the Bay Area for now).

Nonetheless, one can't help be impressed by what Google has accomplished thus far, with its test drive clearly set up to show off just how far along the technology is (if not to make this blogger slightly nauseous after lunch).

Check our videos from inside and outside the car below:

Inside Google’s Self-Driving Car

Google’s Self-Driving Car on the Test Track

More About: autos, cars, Google, google car, sebastian thrun, TED, ted2011, trending

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

A report on CNBC states that General Atlantic is buying 0.1% of the company. Facebook’s new valuation is based on the value of that stake, according to the article, which cites “people with knowledge of the transaction.”

The deal has not been closed and required buying roughly 2.5 million shares from former Facebook employees.

In early January, reports made the rounds that Facebook was worth $50 billion after Goldman Sachs and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies invested $50 million in the company.

General Atlantic’s other investments include Gilt Groupe and Alibaba.

More About: facebook, General Atlantic, goldman sachs

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

The feature, announced Thursday on the company’s blog, comes as Google Latitude also added new functionality that lets you ping friends you see at nearby places instead of calling them.

Google added a feature to Maps for Android in October that let users read “reviews from around the web” and “reviews from Google users,” just like on the desktop version. Before the announcement today, Maps for Android users’ reviews had previously wound up in Google search results and on Google Hotpot, Google’s Yelp-like rating system, and on Places.

The addition of Twitter is Google’s latest attempt to make further inroads into social media. Hotpot today is a Promoted Trend on Twitter. “We wanted you to be able to share your recommendations even more broadly,” Adam Connors of Google Maps for mobile’s team wrote.

Meanwhile, users who check in using Google Latitude will now be able to ping their friends if they show up nearby. (See picture below.) Such users will “receive an Android notification from you asking them to check in at a place. And when they check in using your request, you'll get a notification right back so you know which place to go to meet up with them,” Connors writes.

Disclosure: Hotpot is a Mashable sponsor.

More About: android, Google Maps, hotpot, twitter

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Twitter for iPhone also gained a new feature called the Quick Bar. The Quick Bar is a way to quickly browse through trending topics at the top of the timeline.

New Photo Options

Our favorite new feature in Twitter for iOS is the ability to quickly and easily attach photos to tweets.

There is now a camera button in the new tweet toolbar, which makes it easy to add photos from the library or to take a new photo using the built-in iPhone camera. Users can switch between the front and rear-facing camera (for iPhone 4 owners) and preview photos before choosing what to attach.

Twitter will then upload the photo to the image host you have set in your preferences and send the tweet along with links to those photos. Media will appear in-line on Twitter.com and in other official Twitter mobile apps.

Quick Bar

The Quick Bar is an interesting approach to viewing trending topics. On the main timeline, users see a notification bar that shows current trending topics. Swiping left to right will cycle through the list.

It’s not a bad implementation, but we know some users are not going to be pleased. Already our Twitter streams are full of complaints. If Twitter would make this an optional feature, that would probably make it better.

To us, the decision to make trending topics more visible in the iPhone app is all about the push to promoted trending topics. For advertisers, buying a promoted topic is a lot more valuable if trending topics are more visible to mobile users too.

Other Niceties

The official Twitter blog outlines the other improvements to the app, which include:

• Local trends based on location,
• A new autocomplete implementation that works for @usernames and hashtags,
• A new direct message conversation view,
• Refined tweet box design.

We think the new photo options in Twitter are fantastic, but we’re not totally sold on the Quick Bar. What do you think about Twitter for iOS? Let us know.

More About: ipad apps, iphone apps, twitter, twitter clients, twitter for iphone

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Neer, the private location-sharing app for iPhone and Android, is infinitely more useful now that you can set to-dos, attach them to places and then get a buzz next time you’re in the area.

Here’s how to unlock the hidden feature: navigate to the “Feedback” tab, press and hold the card title “Feedback,” and type “todo” (case sensitive) into the pop-up. Voila, you now have access to magic location reminders, as Neer calls them.

Come next week, new versions of Neer for iPhone and Android will put to-dos front and center for all users. With this update, an individual could download and use Neer just for location-triggered to-dos without ever having to create an account. The no-registration-needed, single-purpose option is a clever ploy to attract potential new users at this year’s SXSW interactive event.

Soon, to-dos can be shared and assigned to friends and family in the application. Mom could then add a to-do for Dad to pick up those paper towels, and Dad would get the reminder on his Costco run. This sharing functionality won’t be ready in time for SXSW, but it’s in the works and coming soon.

In other Neer news, founder Ian Heidt reports that the startup’s background location technology is getting more sophisticated by the day. “The app now has the ability to ‘learn’ and adjust to each person's individual schedule,” he says. “We think this has the possibility to dramatically improve battery because most of the time you are not moving, and therefore Neer doesn't need to check location.”

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, SparkleArt

More About: android, iphone, location, neer, sxsw

For more Startups coverage:

• Follow Mashable Startups on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Startups channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Because you haven’t had enough Sheen this week — the YouTube Video of the Day is a clip from last night’s Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, in which Fallon appears as Sheen in a fake commercial for a cologne called “Winning.”

The only thing that could make this clip better would be if Fallon played Neil Young playing Charlie Sheen. That would certainly be “winning.”

More About: charlie sheen, humor, jimmy fallon, pop culture, viral-video-of-day

For more Video coverage:

• Follow Mashable Video on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Video channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Digital media, as many a Mashable reader is aware, is evolving at a rapid pace. It’s three months in to 2011, and already we’re witnessing the realization of many of our predictions for news media, digital advertising and startups this year.

Social tools, such as Facebook and Tumblr, are coming to play a new role in news reporting and distribution, while brands are taking on the role of the media by creating and publishing content themselves. Meanwhile, consumers are beginning to access digital content across more devices, often simultaneously, and content creators are responding by creating content for multiple platforms and selling access to them in new subscription offerings.

Those are just a few of the trends we’re observing across digital media, which we explore in greater depth below.

1. New Tools for Reporting and Distribution

Twitter, YouTube and RSS, among other platforms, have long been lauded for their roles in news reporting and distribution in the age of real-time and social media. Now, a new crop of tools is emerging to help journalists tell stories, engage audiences and expand their reach.

Although hardly a new player, Facebook is playing an increasingly important role for working journalists, as Mashable‘s Vadim Lavrusik pointed out in an article last week. During what has become known as the January 25th Revolution, Facebook helped journalists in North Africa and the Middle East identify planned protests, gather information and find relevant sources, among other things, notes Riyaad Minty, Al-Jazeera English‘s head of social media.

Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, on the other hand, uses the platform as another distribution outlet, posting regular updates to the 200,000 fans of his page, and NPR regularly posts messages to find sources.

In some cases, Facebook itself is part of the story. In a recent article for The Washington Post, Ian Shapira used screenshots of Facebook status updates to illustrate the heartbreaking story of a woman who died from post-pregnancy complications, showing — rather than telling — exactly how much her friends and associates valued her.

"Facebook has dramatically transformed the way journalists do their jobs," Shapira observes. "It's become an essential tool, making our jobs far more efficient."

Beyond Facebook, news organizations such as The Atlantic and Newsweek are using Tumblr to tell the stories behind the ones they publish, start conversations with readers, and curate and share third-party content.

Photo-sharing iPhone app Instagram is also proving a popular tool for distributing topical imagery, soliciting feedback and attracting new followers, while Storify, which recently received a $2 million round of funding, is helping news organizations tell stories by pulling together a variety of different sources in a single, embeddable format.

2. Brands Become Media

Platforms such as YouTube, WordPress and Twitter have made it easier and more affordable than ever for brands to create and distribute their own content, thereby becoming media companies in their own right. Brands are investing accordingly — whether they’re hiring editors, producers and social media managers, or expanding the roles of their existing teams — to create editorial, visual, audio and other kinds of content.

Fashion label Tory Burch, for instance, hired away InStyle editor Honor Brodie to run its blog, awarding her the title of editor in chief — a first for the brand. Brodie has used the blog to transform the label, which was previously known almost solely for an iconic line of medallion-stamped ballet flats, into a full-fledged lifestyle brand. Brodie and her team post profiles of interesting people (authors, philanthropists, artists, bloggers, etc.), places and things on a daily basis.

“Several years ago, I noticed that a lot of style-conscious women were searching the web for both content and a retail fix,” Brodie says. “The laptop was competing for attention with TV and fashion magazines as a way to entertain and inspire. In this new world, it seemed to me that brands could become a trusted destination for content,” she recalls.

Toryburch.com is now a site, Brodie says (and we agree), “where content and commerce work together in a very twenty-first century way.”

In similar fashion, online retailer Net-a-porter has created a magazine that blends entertainment with e-commerce, while WEBS, the largest independent retailer of knitting, crocheting and weaving supplies, has used an informative podcast series to drive sales on its website.

In addition to lifestyle content, brands are often electing to announce new products or hiring decisions via their Twitter accounts and blogs, rather than through (or in addition to) formal press releases distributed to individual editors and presswires. Google and Twitter announce many of their new products that way, sometimes even setting press embargoes in time with the publication of their own social media posts. And Lady Gaga premiered her latest music video not through VH1 or MTV, but on Vevo.

3. New Aggregation and Curation Models

Consumers, publishers and developers are looking at new models for aggregating, curating and delivering content on the web and on mobile devices, blending editorial (human) curation with algorithmic and social recommendations.

On the web, we’ve seen the rise of RSS, Twitter and Tumblr for aggregating content in an individual way (i.e., users seek out and select their sources), while more formal aggregators such as Techmeme and Mediagazer let third-party editors do it for them.

Still other models are emerging. Following the release of the iPad in 2010, a number of news-reading apps — in particular, Flipboard, Pulse and NewsMix [iTunes link] — surfaced, aggregating news from RSS, social networks and internal, algorithm-based recommendation models, and presenting them in a magazine-style format.

Even traditional news aggregators — i.e., the mainstream media — are changing the way they gather and deliver stories to readers. For time immemorial, the editors of The New York Times have determined what appears on the front page of the paper and, beginning in 1996, what appears on the front page of the nytimes.com.

Now, the front page of nytimes.com shows recommendations from one’s Facebook network alongside stories chosen by Times editors. Visitors can easily navigate to the “Most Popular” tab to find stories that have proven most popular among bloggers and readers. And recently, the Times rolled out a new, algorithm-driven recommendations system that serves up a list of content based on recently read items.

In the future, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the front page content of the nytimes.com divided into three sections: one for stories recommended by human editors, another with stories recommended by one’s social network and a third that delivers stories chosen by the site’s internal recommendations engine.

4. Rise of the Second Screen

Many consumers are no longer consuming digital content on a single device. Instead, they tweet on their laptops while viewing a TV program, watch another show on their tablet during a commercial or look up lyrics on their smartphones while listening to a song on the radio.

Content producers are playing up to this new behavior, incentivizing viewers to log in and discuss content on social networks and applications, and creating companions on secondary devices.

ABC released an app in September that pushes exclusive content around the show My Generation to viewers’ iPads in real time. USA Network launched a similar app for the show Psych in December. More recently, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and ABC released a companion app for the Academy Awards that enabled viewers to go behind the scenes before, during and after the ceremony.

It’s a trend we expect to flourish further as publishers create additional, more feature-rich experiences on secondary and tertiary devices.

5. Multi-Platform Subscriptions

As consumers begin to access digital content from a wider variety of devices — including, most recently, smartphones and tablets — publishers are beginning to offer subscription packages that allow them to access content on all of those devices for one flat fee.

The Economist, for instance, currently offers access to its iPhone and iPad apps for free with a print or digital subscription. And Sports Illustrated recently introduced two different subscription packages to readers:

1. a print and digital bundle that offers print delivery plus full access to web content, as well as access to the magazine’s apps for Android-powered tablets and smartphones, and
2. a digital-only option that grants access to content on the web, and tablets and smartphones that run Android.

Notably, Apple’s popular iPhone and iPad devices are missing from that list, largely because a) Apple insists on a 30% share of subscription revenue initiated in the App Store, and b) Apple won’t share subscriber data with publishers. For now, those who prefer to read Sports Illustrated on their iPhones or iPads can continue to purchase and download single issues of the magazine through the apps [iTunes link] designated for each device.

We expect to see more of these kinds of subscription packages in the future, as well as the rise of more services like Netflix, Hulu, Rhapsody and Ongo, all of which allow users to access a variety of content on multiple devices for a flat monthly fee.

Additional Trends

We’ve outlined five major digital media trends capturing our attention at the moment, but we’re well aware that other developments are simultaneously occurring in the digital media space. We’d like to know: What trends have you taken notice of late?

The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. The line is fading between social media and traditional media. Earned media, or sharing of information within social networks, is becoming mainstream whether on a PC or mobile device. IDG Global Solutions President Matt Yorke talks about the rise of social and how IDG helps marketers create social campaigns. Read more.

More Media Resources from Mashable:

- Apple vs. Publishers: Why Apple Already Won
- Facebook's Growing Role in Social Journalism
- Let Your Friends DJ a Party Via SMS, Twitter or E-mail
- Music Discovery App Mocks Your Musical Tastes
- The Influence of Social Gaming on Consoles

Image courtesy of Flickr, ari

More About: digital media, facebook, Flipboard, Google, honor brodie, instagram, Lady Gaga, media, Modern Media Agency Series, new york times, newsmix, NPR, pulse, rss, social media, Storify, tory burch, tumblr, twitter, vevo, youtube

For more Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

With more than 600 million active users on Facebook, the world's largest social network is no longer just about “liking” brands when it comes to marketing. Today, Facebook users span various demographics and demand immediate value in return for demonstrating loyalty and joining new Facebook communities.

In addition to incentivizing new fans with automatic submissions to contests, businesses should also be utilizing Facebook e-commerce tools to develop a true social shopping experience. By integrating purchasing into their branded pages, businesses can effectively take advantage of Facebook as a viable sales vehicle with proven ROI.

Here are four tips to help businesses of any size begin generating revenue on Facebook.

1. Use Facebook Share, Like and Reviews APIs

Facebook offers businesses a range of APIs to enhance their e-commerce offerings and ensure the user experience remains fully integrated within Facebook. Of most importance, Facebook's Share, Like and Reviews features allow users to comment on items and pass them along to friends, creating a shopping domino effect that leverages peer-to-peer influence to provoke additional product views and purchases.

Whereas traditional website reviews are visible only to consumers already investigating a certain product, Facebook reviews present more impactful opportunities for businesses as they are posted to other users' news feeds. Unlike shopping in-store or on a company website, Facebook's APIs encourage a more personalized shopping experience, shaped by users' social behavior and friends' suggestions.

2. Support Easy, Secure E-Commerce

Given that Facebook shopping is still in its nascent stages, it is essential for businesses to guarantee both an easy and secure user experience.

The most obvious way to reassure new Facebook shoppers is by building an environment that mirrors the traditional e-commerce experience. Supporting all the same functionality, businesses create a new shopping medium that is arguably even more useful than the dot-com website, given the additional social features.

To uphold an easy user experience, businesses should contain the shopping experience within Facebook, without redirects to their traditional website. A brand's complete inventory can be extended to Facebook, incorporating individual PDP pages to support comprehensive "online window shopping." Lastly, upon logging in to Facebook, users should have the flexibility to complete purchases either from Facebook or from the original site at a later time.

In addition to extending the same shopping functionality, businesses should also translate the same security features to Facebook. By integrating the website's preferred payment system on Facebook (PayPal or otherwise), brands can process transactions the same way as they would on a website. All security offered by the traditional website is therefore maintained via Facebook.

3. Track Your Success

Facebook offers businesses two solutions to track performance of e-commerce integrations. On one hand, brands can continue to leverage their chosen web tracking system such as Google Analytics, Omniture or Webtrends, to monitor pages within the Facebook store. By optimizing these analytics tools on Facebook, businesses can simply extend page tags to track user traffic and revenue, allowing them to make more informed decisions on future investment and development.

Businesses can also take advantage of Facebook's internal tracking system, Facebook Insight. In addition to standard metrics, this application also tracks Facebook-specific features such as likes, shares and any other social data users generate within the network. This extra level of knowledge allows brands to customize their Facebook stores to key demographics and user behavior.

4. Leverage Facebook E-Commerce for Social Campaigns

As Facebook social campaigns become more mainstream, marketers can increase ROI by integrating e-commerce functionality. Campaigns leveraging the Facebook store could include:

• Facebook contests that request Likes can automatically send users to the Facebook store to encourage product browsing.
• Businesses can post ads, promotions, flash sales, or product-focused press to their Wall and link to the Facebook store’s PDP pages, enabling quick purchasing ability within the social network.
• By leveraging the Facebook Fans API, brands are empowered to combine "deals of the day" or product announcements with deep links to product detail and purchase pages within the Facebook store. This approach gives the user fast transaction capabilities, while also helping the brand collect the user's data and demographic details.
• Facebook is currently testing a “Buy With Friends” program, which allows brands to offer discount incentives to users who encourage their friends to buy the same item by publishing purchases on friends' news feeds.

Facebook users spend more than 700 billion minutes per month browsing the network. As many consumers are increasingly spending the majority of their online time on Facebook, it's crucial for brands to maximize their social presence with a Facebook commerce strategy that encourages social shopping and drives additional revenue.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 3 Facebook Commerce Success Stories
- Why Credit Cards Are Not the Future of Online Payment
- Why Data Mining Is the Next Frontier for Social Media Marketing
- 10 Ways to Turn Your Local Business Into a Global Success
- 6 Top Tips For Managing a Coworking Space

Image courtesy of Flickr, sushi♥ina

More About: business, e-commerce, facebook, MARKETING, social media

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

The Music Meter launched in December as an online app for music discovery — but only for bands on the indie up and up, as opposed to the all-encompassing Lady Gaga.

MTV worked with music intelligence company The Echo Nest — which recently partnered with Island Def Jam — to develop an algorithm that combs through blogs, social media, video and more traditional metrics (like radio plays and sales) to determine which bands are getting the most attention each day.

Now, that same tool is available as a free app [iTunes link] on Apple devices (in addition to Android smartphones, and select Samsung connected TVs), where it seems much more natural than the in-browser iteration. Simply click on any artist on the chart (Toro Y Moi is currently trending at number one) for tracks, photos, tweets referencing that band, news and a bio.

Sadly, one can only listen to 30-second previews of tracks, courtesy of Rhapsody. This seems to be the case even if one is a Rhapsody subscriber, which seems a little silly — especially since MTV and the subscription services are currently offering a 60-day free trial. This seems like a missed opportunity, since we can easily see users of the app being turned on to Rhapsody while discovering new music, and subsequently signing up for the service when the trial ran out.

Still, the app is a clean-looking, slick way to discover music. One can also search for bands via the app, which we can see being useful when one is out and about or chatting with friends about new acts.

More About: apple, ipad, iphone, Mobile 2.0, mtv, music-meter

For more Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

His introduction of the iPad 2 did quadruple duty — it enticed mainstream customers, wowed spec-hunting tech geeks, tweaked his competitors and pleased Wall Street. Future presidential candidates would do well to study it.

Essentially, Jobs was selling a dream that could set your rib cage thumping with desire. “Technology alone is not enough,” he said in one of the day’s more lyrical asides. “Technology married with liberal arts, humanities, yields the result that makes our hearts sing.” Full disclosure: Yeah, I want to buy one, too.

But a dream-made reality comes with limitations and imperfections, especially in the gadget business. Like any good magician, Jobs used sleight of hand to distract from the things we’re not supposed to see. On the morning after, it’s time to take leave of our hearts, return to our heads and name them.

More About: apple, iPad 2, steve jobs, tablets

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Using the website InsideOutProject.net, people are encouraged to submit black and white portraits, which are then turned into posters and sent back to them to be displayed in their communities. The idea is to extend what the prize winner — in this case, JR — has been doing in places ranging from Kenya to Palestine, to other parts of the world.

Beyond submitting portraits, the TED audience was encouraged to participate in other ways, such as by donating wall space or other resources. In one of the more memorable moments of the conference thus far, at the end of JR's talk, nearly a dozen attendees immediately got up to make pledges, including a Googler who indicated an interest in making sure art from the project is integrated in Google Street View and Google Earth.

In addition to the support of TED's influential audience, the TED Prize winner receives $100,000 to use toward his or her wish. JR is not accepting corporate sponsorships for the project, but is raising additional funds through the sale of lithographs on his website.

To learn more about JR's work, check out the video below:

More About: art, street art, TED, ted prize, ted2011

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Since such birthdays often pop up as trending topics on Twitter and Google, the organization has found a way to guarantee lots of hits and discussion. Case in point: To celebrate social media giant Justin Bieber’s 17th birthday on March 1, the Society rolled out a new version of Bieber’s September performance of “Happy Birthday” with Usher, remixed by Mysto & Pizzi vs. Agent Jackson.

The new version has gotten more than 570,00 views on YouTube since its February 28 release. The ACS launched the More Birthdays campaign in April 2009, but it got a reboot in September 2010 when the organization added a gallery of entertainers and artists to the program.

Andy Goldsmith, vice president of creative and brand strategy for the ACS, says that the fact that celeb birthdays are often a topic of social media discussion wasn’t a factor in planning the campaign, but it’s a happy accident. “We didn’t really base it on the fact that there would be a topspin created by a celebrity birthday,” he says. “It was more based on the universal truth that everyone likes birthdays.” Getting the message across in a positive manner was also a consideration.

Nevertheless, Goldsmith says he has taken note of the social media buzz from the Bieber video and is planning sequels based on other celeb birthdays. Says Goldsmith: “We’re taking a look at the biggest celebrity musicians who are part of our campaign and seeing what we can do to replicate our success.”

More About: advertising, justin bieber, MARKETING, The American Cancer Society

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Android OS smartphones account for 29% of the U.S. market; iOS and RIM devices stand at 27% each, according to Nielsen’s research.

Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 devices account for 10% of the U.S. smartphone market; Palm is at 4%; Symbian holds onto a 2% share; and finally, there’s a 1% “other” category, which would include OSes like the Linux-based MeeGo.

Before you start planning your ticker tape parade, these are stats from just one group, and conflicting stats from other research and mobile organizations are likely to appear in the very near future. Nevertheless, estimates from last year stated Android might be the top mobile OS by 2014; to say that this new report trumps all expectations of Android’s market performance is a drastic understatement.

Late last year, we saw Android adoption surpass Windows Mobile; a January 2011 report showed Android nipping at iOS’s heels. And just last month, Nielsen’s stats showed Android, iOS and RIM in a dead heat.

So, what might have been the determining factors in Android’s ever-accelerating success?

First, we’d call your attention to the original Motorola Droid, the OS’s first real blockbuster device, and in some ways, the first device that felt truly consumer-ready. The Droid reportedly sold 100,000 units at its launch, 250,000 units in its first week, and sparked a wave of Android popularity that had Android smartphones flying off shelves literally faster than they could be stocked.

The other big turning point for the Android ecosystem was the launch of Froyo, the OS version that finally brought Android to parity with the iPhone — both in technical reality and in the fickle and emotional mind of the public. For the first time, smartphone buyers began to see Android devices as a viable alternative to the iPhone, not a “less-than” knockoff or poor man’s substitute.

Perhaps the kicker for Android’s popularity was the fact that more and more first-time smartphone buyers were turning to Android. And why wouldn’t they? Android devices, because of their diversity, offered more hardware options on more carriers, making the smartphone upgrade easier and more appealing than ever.

In the comments, let us know why you think Android’s success and adoption rates have been on such a drastic uptick in the past couple years. Is it the constantly improving technology? The combined marketing efforts of a handful of multinational corporations? Or something else?

More About: android, Nielsen, smartphone, trending

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

I’m going to start the conversation with questions about the changing face of game-dynamics and how that fits into Foursquare’s growing role as a location platform, as much as a mobile app in itself.

I want to know what you, Mashable‘s readers, want to hear about. Give me your questions in the comments below and you could get an answer, right from the mayor’s mouth.

To register for the discussion: http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8383

If you’re going to be at SXSWi, join Mashable at the Mashable SXSWi House. Located at Buffalo Billiards, the Mashable SXSWi House is hosting a variety of public and private events such as VIP dinners, the Geek Games, open networking opportunities and parties, including the third annual MashBash SXSWi party on Sunday, March 13, with music by DJ Chicken George.

Register for public events at the SXSWi Mashable House on Eventbrite. The event is open to all SXSWi badge holders who are older than 21.

Thanks to our sponsors

Come check out the Pepsi MAX Lot at 3rd Street and San Jacinto Boulevard! Follow @PepsiMAX on Twitter for the daily schedule for huge concerts, happy hours, BBQs, games, and giveaways! And, well, lots of free soda..

Sony Electronics is a leading provider of audio and video electronics and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets. Sony is noted for a wide range of consumer audio-visual products, such as the BRAVIA® LCD and 3D high-definition televisions, Cyber-shot® and α (alpha) digital cameras, Handycam® camcorder and Walkman® personal stereo. Sony is also an innovator in the IT arena with its VAIO® personal computers; and in high-definition professional broadcast and production equipment, highlighted by the XDCAM® HD and CineAlta™ lines of cameras and camcorders, and the SXRD™ 4K digital projector. Join the Sony Conversation at Sony.com/Blog.

Skifta is an app-based media shifting service that turns your Android phone into a global remote control. Easily access your digital media from virtually any source and stream to connected electronics in the home. With the DLNA Certified® Skifta app on your phone, you can easily access music, photos and videos from your phone, the cloud, or remotely from your home and stream that media to connected DLNA and UPnP consumer electronics including TVs, IP-stereos like Sonos systems, PlayStation® 3 consoles, Windows 7 PCs, and thousands more. No wires, downloading or side loading. Check it out at skifta.com.

If your website has a play button, it belongs on .TV. Stand out from the crowd with a .TV domain name; tell people you create and share great video content on your site even before they visit. Come visit us in the Mashable House at Buffalo Billiards on March 13-14 for a chance to register a FREE .TV domain name. And, mark your calendars: the .TV AUCTION starts March 9. Bid on desirable, sought-after domain names including air.tv, stocks.tv, who.tv, and more at moniker.com/tv or register the .TV of your choice for while you're there.

More About: foursquare, mashable, sxsw, sxswi

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

The application promises to automatically place users in system-generated city groups based on potential compatibility with other app users. The idea is to engineer relationships between people who may already have an interest in one another, but just not know it yet.

“We analyze every pair of messages sent through the system and use that to build up an understanding of who you like talking with,” says co-founder Caleb Elston, “Then when you open Yobongo, we place you with people you have the strongest affinity for. All of these simple signals lead to a very powerful signal,” he says.

When it comes to using the application, Yobongo needs little explanation, and there’s zero friction to getting started. Simply fire up the application and you’ll find yourself in a chatroom with other users. You can post messages to everyone, start one-off private conversations and checkout other group members.

Yobongo is fast, simple and fun — if conversing with strangers is something that sounds appealing to you.

Yobongo is the brainchild of Elston and David Kasper, formerly of Justin.tv. The pair initially launched a private beta release in January, gradually letting in 150 users to test a controlled and watered-down version of the grander vision. With such a small pool, the startup has yet to prove the group placement factors — affinity and location — that make it unique.

But, Elston says early users describe the service as addicting, and claims that the average user participates in 10 sessions per day and sends 25 messages each day. He also asserts that 90% of users return each day. I’m not convinced that these metrics are entirely accurate — a few beta testers I talked to are not using the application on a daily basis — but I can confirm that the application is engaging.

Is it engaging enough to be at hit at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin? Yobongo has been craftily laying the groundwork to force this outcome by buying up Facebook advertisements and timing releases around the conference. Twitter and Foursquare, however, became breakout startups not because they engineered hype, but because they delivered a compelling reason for attendees to use their applications.

Yobongo has all the ingredients to appeal to a SXSW crowd looking to make new connections, and it could be a perfect, more private backchannel than Twitter for show-related chatter. Still, the startup will need to prove that it can scale to support a much larger audience, and turn-on those promised location and affinity aspects in a calculated manner should it wish to standout.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Laughing Squid

More About: group chat, iphone app, Mobile 2.0, social media, sxsw, yobongo

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Breakout Band‘s developers got $15,000 and exposure from Old Navy for including a feature in the game that lets users create their own Old Navy-themed song inspired by Old Navy Records’ debut songs “Super C-U-T-E” and “Welcome to the Ankle Show.” Old Navy, a unit of Gap, announced its “Game On!: The Old Navy Developers Challenge” last month. The effort ties in with a new ad campaign from the retailer, “Old Navy Records: Original hits. Original styles,” that turned the brand into, in effect, a record label.

Breakout Band beat out the other two finalists — Sugar Inc. and Tetris Online/Ace Studios — for the award. The winner was chosen by a panel of judges, including executives from Old Navy, RadiumOne, AKQA and PlaySpan.

Old Navy’s not the first brand to realize the social media potential of becoming a record label. Converse, the Nike sneaker brand, is doing the same, as are Red Bull and Mountain Dew. Likewise, Old Navy’s isn’t the first developer contest for a brand. Coca-Cola held a similar contest for mobile apps and announced its winners in February.

More About: advertising, games, MARKETING, old navy, radiumone

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Not long ago, I wrote about how to calculate the ROI of your social media campaign, which generated a lot of interest from the social media community. The article outlined how businesses can use Customer Lifetime Value to calculate the return on their social media investment.

After writing the article, I started analyzing how businesses go about setting up, launching and running their social media campaigns. My conclusion is that there are three distinct stages to this process, which I'm calling the Social Media ROI Cycle. My rough estimate is that about 50% of the business community is still in the Launch stage, about 40% is in the Management stage and about 10% is in the Optimization stage.

Each one of the three stages has its own nuances, so let's take a look at what happens during each. The percentages referenced in each stage are estimates based on my own experience.

Stage 1: Launch

During the Launch stage, 100% of a company's focus is on setting up the big four: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Some companies focus on the big four plus more such as Flickr, e-newsletters, blogs, SlideShare and other social media platforms. But most companies kick things off by quickly getting into the big four networks simply as a way to have a social media presence.

The approach during this Launch stage is very executional with very little long-term planning. The primary objective is simply to get started. After all, those in charge want to ensure the brand is utilizing cutting-edge techniques, so the marketing department typically responds by jumping in without much plan for the long haul.

Unfortunately, the results of the Stage 1 process are negligible. Sure, you'll be able to claim that you've "got a social media campaign," but you won't really see much traction unless you move on to Stage 2.

Stage 2: Management

During this stage, roughly 60% of a company's efforts are focused on the big four (or the big four plus more). About 10% of the focus is on creative and offer development, 20% on tracking quantitative metrics such as traffic, inbound links, Facebook “Likes,” etc., and about 10% on qualitative metrics such as brand sentiment, survey results and customer polls.

The approach during the Management stage is still very tactical, but the focus is on mid-term instead of short-term results, which is an improvement over Stage 1. The corporate objective at this stage is to engage prospects and customers in some way that gets them to connect with the brand. Ideally, this would mean buying something, but it can also mean downloading a white paper, liking a Facebook Page, responding to a survey, or any other measurable evidence that they're connecting with your brand.

Stage 2 is where many of the more sophisticated companies find themselves right now. They're managing their social presence, testing creative ideas, tracking quantitative metrics and analyzing qualitative data.

Most companies today are still at either Stage 1 or Stage 2. But many of the companies I work with have started to reach the Stage 3.

Stage 3: Optimization

About 25% of the focus at this stage is on the “big four plus more,” and about 30% is evenly split among creative and offer development, quantitative metrics and qualitative metrics.

Another 25% of a company's focus is on improving conversion and optimization of campaigns. What do I mean by that? It’s all about tracking inbound leads and traffic across social media platforms, using tools such as Atlas and DART, and watching those leads turn into customers, either on e-commerce landing pages or through B2B lead generation programs.

It also means testing your way to success with social media campaigns. This can be as simple as trying two different landing pages to see which one drives more clicks. Or, it can be as complex as multivariate testing that analyzes more than one component at a time.

The final 20% of a company's efforts in Stage 3 include measuring the success of the campaign on an ROI basis. And yes, you can measure a social media campaign on an ROI basis, despite what some social media "experts" will tell you.

The process involves understanding your Customer Lifetime Value (the total revenue the average customer generates for your business during the lifetime of their engagement with you) and comparing it to the results generated by your social media campaign.

For example, if you know the typical customer spends $10 per month with your company and stays loyal to your brand for an average of three years, your Customer Lifetime Value is $360.

Many companies are comfortable spending 10% of their CLV to acquire a new customer. So, in other words, they'll spend $36 to acquire a new customer who will spend $360 during his or her engagement with the brand.

If your social media campaign costs, say, $36,000 a year to run, and it generates 1,000 new customers each year, you've got a winner on your hands. (For a more detailed explanation of this process, please see my previous post, HOW TO: Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign.)

The Bottom Line

In the end, all roads should lead to social media ROI. After all, businesses don't do social media to be social, they do social media to grow sales and revenues.

If you carefully navigate your way through Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3, you'll eventually be able to go up to your CFO and say, "Hey, Chief Financial Dude, remember when you told me we wouldn't be able to measure the ROI of our social media campaigns? Well, we're already doing it, and we're making a profit, you knucklehead. So there!"

Of course, you don't have to use those exact words, but you get my point.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign
- Creative Constraint: Why Tighter Boundaries Propel Greater Results
- 10 Ways to Turn Your Local Business Into a Global Success
- 6 Top Tips For Managing a Coworking Space
- 3 Podcast Success Stories from Creative Small Businesses

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ewg3D

More About: business, MARKETING, ROI, small business, social media, social media marketing

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

We teamed up with CNN iReport to consider submissions from Instagram with hashtags #techlife and uploads to iReport’s assignment page. After viewing a number of inventive collages, we chose some of the best to feature in the gallery below. In the captions, you’ll find what makes up each collage, including what editing and collage-creation apps participants used and what some think of the mobile image-sharing boom.

This is the second project in what will be an ongoing partnership between Mashable and CNN iReport. We’re delighted to be working together and want to know: What thoughts do you have on how to further involve the mobile photography community? We welcome your ideas for future projects in the comments.

A big thank you to our partners at iReport and all those who participated! You can read more about the featured submissions in iReport’s blog post. For more mobile photo projects, follow us on Instagram by searching Mashable under usernames.

#TechLife in London

From upper left corner, going clockwise: Underground station, restaurant, Underground station, window display of Harvey Nichols (a department store in Knightsbridge, London). All photos were taken with an iPhone 4 in London, and edited with Instagram's "Hefe" filter. The collage was created with Photoshake. "It's nice to know when your work really connects to someone else, and the immediacy of getting that information via Instagram is amazing." - Arianna Power, 24, London

#TechLife in Madrid

Top left: iPhone alarm, Nespresso coffee maker; Top middle: Electronic air control in the car; Top right: GPS in the car; Bottom left: iPhone apps; Bottom left-middle: Office computer; Bottom-right middle: TV set, DVD player at home, Instagram logo; Bottom right: iPhone. Photos were taken with an iPhone 4 in Madrid, and edited with the HDR Pro, Camera Plus and Impression apps. The collage was created with Diptic. "It's a walk through my day-to-day life using, every single minute, something related to technology." - Philippe Gonzalez, 40, Madrid

#TechLife in New York

From upper left corner, going clockwise: Office workshop, desk, member bulletin board, Instagram lesson. All photos were taken with an iPhone 4 at Hive at 55 co-working space in New York, NY. The collage was created with Diptic. "Photographs are a great way to tell a story about yourself, life, and your surroundings, your interests, etc." - Brian DiFeo, 33, of Jersey City, N.J.

#TechLife in Connecticut

From upper left corner, going clockwise: Whole Foods recipe app, black beans, potatoes, tortillas, finished dish. Photos were taken with an iPod Touch 4G in the photographer's kitchen in Willimantic, and edited with Instagram's "Hefe" filter. The collage was created with Photomess. "Technology made dinner happen." - Brytne LeVasseur-Mason, 34, Willimantic, Conn.

#TechLife in the U.K.

From upper left corner, going clockwise: Working from home, Wilson the dog while surfing the web, working from home, Power Monkey Explorer solar power device. Photos were taken with an iPhone 3GS in Fareham and Cornwall, U.K., and edited with Photoshop. The collage was created with Diptic. "I might be an environmentalist but I'm also a geek, and I love my tech." - Alan Williams, 38, Fareham, U.K.

#TechLife in the Philippines

Photos of different phases of sunset from different times and places. The top left and top middle were taken with a Sony Cybershot 12.1 and the others with a Canon. The collage was created with Photoshop. "The future of mobile will... give users more options and more ways wherein photography can be done so easily and more beautifully." - Lia Ocampo, 41, Manila, Philippines

#TechLife in Seattle

Three rapid images of an online live broadcast of the most recent space shuttle launch (in the order they were taken). Photos were taken with an iPhone 4 in Seattle. The collage was created with Diptic. "I was able to watch history live on my laptop, then capture that history on my iPhone to create a unique piece of art." - Joe Mirabella, 34, Seattle

#TechLife in Texas

Top, from left: Hard drive with the lid removed, a can of duster; Middle, from left: Dual processor PC, Linksys wireless router with ethernet and power cables showing, box of chocolate donuts; Bottom, from left: Box of used hard drives; Front shot of server rack, back shot of server rack showing the ethernet and KVM cables. Photos were taken with an iPhone 4 in Abilene, Texas. The collage was created with Collage. "Phone/internet video-streaming apps like Ustream and Qik will become the next big tool for citizen newsgathering and reporting!" - Kevin Palivec, 46, Hawley, Texas

#TechLife in Singapore

Computer monitors daisy-chained together to produce a singular larger screen that spans across multiple screens. Photos were taken with an iPhone 4 in Singapore and edited with Instagram. The collage was created with Diptic. "With Cloud technology and the exponential expansion of the social media scene, both mobile photography and conventional photography will receive some sort of a cultural revolution." - Muhammad Zaki, 28, Singapore

More About: citizen journalism, cnn, diptic, instagram, photo, photography, picplz

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Life in the real world is “programmed” by DNA, but its form and behavior are determined by the random mutation of genetic code, not by the intentions of a developer. Computer scientists have always been intrigued by the prospect of creating “artificial life” — that is, digital genetic code that can sustain itself over generations and adapt to meet the demands of a virtual environment without human interference.

Gaming has been an incubator for this pursuit, and in 1996, artificial life jumped from the research lab to the personal computer with the release of Creatures, a simulator developed by Steve Grand. The attributes of his fictional life forms, dubbed “Norns,” are governed by a digital representation of DNA and the interactions between genetic makeup (physical abilities, health, intelligence, etc.) and the game’s environment. By breeding Norns with particular attributes, the player can improve his creatures’ chances of survival in a hostile world and create extremely diverse virtual life forms. The game was a commercial and critical success, inspired a generation of armchair geneticists and spawned a number of sequels.

Fifteen years (and a few books and research fellowships) later, Grand has returned to the prospect of gaming as an outlet for A-life development and launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the new project. “I’m not talking about a computer game designed to simulate lifelike behavior,” Grand writes in the project description. “I mean genuine artificial life. I mean virtual creatures constructed from complex networks of virtual brain cells and biochemical reactions and genes. They’ll learn things for themselves and have their own thoughts.”

In five days, he’s already raised the lion’s share of his funding goal (more than $22,000 of the proposed $27,000) thanks to dedicated fans of Creatures and artificial life enthusiasts eager for a stake in Grand’s new brainchild.

Intrigued by the project, which at present has no ties to a game studio or publisher, we reached out to Grand to find out what he’s working on, and why he turned to the crowd to make it a reality.

Q & A With Steve Grand, Artificial Life Developer

Does your new project build upon any of the logistics from Creatures, or are you starting from scratch? Will the final product be a more “advanced” version of your previous games or something else entirely?

I'm starting from scratch, except in the most general terms. I learned a huge amount from Creatures — what to do and what not to do — and I've spent 15 years thinking hard about the "what not to do" part. I was willing to defend the idea that my first creatures were really alive, but I knew they weren't conscious. Asking myself why I was so sure about this has obsessed me ever since. It was immediately obvious to me that the answer lay with imagination. Norns don't have an imagination, and yet our own imaginations are where we live – the virtual world we actually reside in. It may seem like we're aware of the outside world but in reality we're only aware of our own internal model of the outside world; it's just that this usually keeps pace with reality. The ability to have a thought, or a hope, or an expectation, or even a fear, depends on the ability to see a reality that hasn't actually happened yet. So how the brain might give rise to imagination is what has driven my thoughts, and the answers I've come up with are really fascinating, I think. So most of what I've been thinking about is brand new stuff, not just to computer games but new, period.

What’s the difference between “artificial life” and “artificial intelligence?”

Defining these terms is really slippery, but I reckon my opinion must be right by definition, since I wrote the encyclopedia entry! Artificial life is the study of the nature of life itself, as distinct from life as we find it here on earth, and it tries to understand this through simulation, rather than just by studying nature. Artificial intelligence comes in two flavors, and the kind most people are exposed to has surprisingly little to do with actual intelligence; it's really an advanced kind of automation. The other flavor — Strong AI — maintains that machines can be truly intelligent, but for the most part researchers don't take much notice of biology at all. So I take "an artificial life approach to artificial intelligence." I simulate biological components such as brain cells, enzymes and genes, and try to create whole artificial creatures, rather than code that behaves somewhat like one aspect of a brain but isn't structured like a brain at all. AI is largely top-down, while A-life is decidedly bottom-up, so A-life-based intelligence is emergent.

If a digital life form can learn, adapt, evolve, die and reproduce, at what point is it safe — scientifically speaking — to drop the term “artificial?” Can we ever?

That's a very profound philosophical question! I tried to address it in my first book but a single book can't do it justice. When it comes down to it, though, "artificial" just means "made by Man;" it's not the opposite of "real." "Virtual" is not the opposite of "real" either, just the opposite of "physical." This issue is becoming even more blurred now that people are starting to create physical artificial cells. One of the reasons I like to create artificial life is to make people think about these things — I think they're really important.

Will the project ultimately be a game? A research tool? Both?

Both, but that's not as boring as it sounds. After all, people play with their pet dogs and yet psychologists use dogs as research tools. From my perspective, it's research, but I want the outcome to be a lot of fun. When I wrote Creatures I wanted people to feel rapport with their pets; I wanted them to care about them because they believed in them. I decided we're far too good at detecting phony behavior for me to just fool people into thinking these creatures were alive, so I actually set out to make them alive. I didn't want to fool people anyway. The same is true now. If people aren't interested in the underlying biology then they don't have to pay any attention to it. But I learned from Creatures that an awful lot of people are seriously interested in what life is and how it works, so I'm fully expecting them to get into the science, too.

Can you tell us a bit about the “scientific breakthrough” you mention on your Kickstarter page that inspired you to start this new project?

It's really a matter of crystallizing thoughts. We know far more about the human brain than about any other organ of the body, and yet surprisingly we don't understand what its basic principles of operation are. Plenty of people have theories, but sit them down in front of a blank sheet of paper and tell them to design a brain and it suddenly seems a lot harder.

So thinking about these things, for me at least, involves starting with vague metaphors and similes — hmm, you know, the brain is kind of a bit like a thingy — and then gradually trying to tighten those ideas into actual analogies. Then from there, the analogies inspire models and the models become programmable. Or they don't, if you can't get the thoughts to crystallize. I've had a set of basic ideas since 2002, and even wrote a book about them, but pinning it down into something I can actually code has been a pig. I got stuck for months on a problem about how a critical part of my artificial brain could learn a certain kind of mapping; a certain kind of coordinate transform. I tried everything I could think of without success. But then an answer just came to me out of the blue. Poof!

Beyond research value, what kind of practical applications do you see for life simulation software?

These general ideas are already infiltrating practical applications. Even the transmission in my car learns how I drive. In a former life, I used to talk about "putting the life back into technology." Tractors that are more like horses used to be; traffic signals that hate causing gridlock; that sort of thing. But the most important "application," to my mind, is how this stuff makes us think very differently about the world — not just about life, morality and the like, but also politics and social organizations. The world is in the process of shifting from top-down concepts to bottom-up ones, and it's a very profound shift indeed.

Why turn to Kickstarter, and not a game publisher or private capital?

I've been through the normal channels before and frankly I'm scared of them now. Money men and focus groups are just not conducive to the way I work (and I'm not alone in this, but I won't name names). The games industry is not really a great environment in which to do complex, innovative research, and academia is a lousy place to make entertainment products or indeed any products. For most of my life I've worked alone, and if I'm good at anything at all, that's a major part of why. Kickstarter is like a dream come true for people like me. It started at a perfect time, just as funding for the Arts and creative endeavors is drying up. I was very nervous about launching a project. For one thing I don't feel good about asking for money, and for another I was scared nobody would give me any! But so far things are working out fantastically. I'm not counting my chickens, but I'm getting quite hopeful.

Will the Kickstarter money go toward your living expenses while you program full-time or are there other costs associated with the project?

I've already bought most of what I need in terms of licenses, etc. so it's mostly for living expenses. I've largely funded my own work for over a decade but the breakthroughs took longer than I'd hoped and I ran out of resources before I could commit it all to code. Without people's support I can't continue my work.

Are you collaborating with anyone on the project?

No, except in the sense that I'm sure large numbers of people will take what I make and run with it. It was the community that made Creatures, and I expect that to be true with this game too. This stuff is all so complex, and it's active research, so I'm forever changing my mind about things that have knock-on effects throughout the code. I can't even explain half the stuff that's in my head. Not to a human, anyway; I'm better at explaining things to computers. So it's very much a lone wolf kind of thing. It's the way I've always worked and it suits my mindset. It allows me to think differently.

Creatures had an active community where players swapped and showed off their creations on message boards. Do you think social media will play an active role in the development of your new project?

Oh yes, I imagine so. I hadn't really thought about it before, but the Creatures community (which was huge) did all this long before Twitter and Facebook. It'll be interesting to see how they use these new tools. I need to put some thought to that, so I'm glad you brought it up.

What other artificial life/intelligence projects are you keeping tabs on? What should we be excited about?

Oh, I'm the wrong person to ask. I try not to look. For one thing I don't want my own thoughts to be polluted by other people's, and for another there's always a hundred people who claim to be doing exactly what I'm doing and it's kind of depressing to know that. I became disillusioned with AI way back in the 1970s, so I pay more attention to what's going on in neuroscience than AI. A lot of very exciting things are starting to happen there and people's views of the brain are starting to change (in the right direction, [in my humble opinion]).

Is it possible that we are all just simulated life forms inhabiting a virtual world? If so, how much RAM is needed to run the universe without lag?

Heh! Yes, in a very profound way I'd say that is the truth. We are nothing but simulations. The entire universe is nothing but a simulation. But I don't mean that in a Matrix-like way. No RAM — it's massively parallel. No illusion either. Nor do I mean it in a philosophically idealistic way — the sort of way that Samuel Johnson stubbed his toe over. But there is a profound sense in which everything is "form" (information, if you must) and forms that exist inside a computer have as much right to be considered real as forms that exist in space. I developed these ideas while writing Creatures. Who'd have thought a bunch of stupid, furry computer pets would cause me such philosophical conundrums?

More Tech Resources from Mashable:

- Engineering Intelligence: Why IBM's Jeopardy-Playing Computer Is So Important
- 11 Astounding Sci-Fi Predictions That Came True
- The Future of the Connected Car
- 10 Amazing Real Life Robots
- Can Robots Run the News?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alengo

More About: artificial intelligence, artificial life, crowdsourcing, gaming, kickstarter, steve grand, video games

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Many news organizations, including Mashable, use the tool to report on events and host Q&A sessions in real time. Demand Media, which has held a minority stake in the CoveritLive since 2009, will add the company to its “portfolio of social solutions.” This portfolio also includes the company’s 2008 acquisition of social media platform Pluck.

Demand Media is not known for its social media efforts but rather for the controversial search-optimized content that its pool of more than 10,000 freelance contributors produce for sites such as eHow, Livestrong.com and Trails.com. In a recent interview with Mashable, however, Demand Media CMO Dave Panos indicated the company was “listening to the social stream” and saw social media as a “massive opportunity.”

More About: coveritlive, Demand Media, pluck

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Apple Unveils the iPad 2

Apple unveiled the iPad 2 at a press conference in San Francisco Thursday. We’ve got details about the hardware, carriers and accessories, as well as product shots and an infographic that compares it to the competition. In addition, Apple announced that itself nearly 15 million iPads in 2010 and that more than 100 million iPhones have been sold to date.

WikiLeaks Source Bradley Manning Faces 22 New Charges

The U.S. Army has levied 22 additional charges against former private Bradley Manning, whom is accused of leaking sensitive information to WikiLeaks in 2010.

Apple Announces iOS 4.3

Apple detailed many of the new features of the next version of iOS, iOS 4.3, at the iPad 2 event Wednesday.

Charlie Sheen Sets New Guinness World Record for Twitter

After joining Twitter to mass fanfare Tuesday, comedian Charlie Sheen has been awarded a Guinness World Record for reaching 1 million followers in the least amount of time.

Google Improves Personal Profiles

Google has redesigned Google Profiles, the profile pages that all Gmail users can set up with pictures and information about themselves.

Further News

• The iPad 2 announcement has led to massive deflation in the secondary market for the first-generation iPad.
• St. James's Palace has launched an official hub for the impending wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
• Bill Gates curated a TED Session called "Knowledge Revolution” Wednesday with speakers Salman Khan, the founder of Kahn Academy, historian David Christian, development worker Amina Az-Zubair and epidemiologist Bruce Aylward.
• Comedian Charlie Sheen has joined Twitter, amassing nearly 100,000 followers before he delivered his first tweet.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

More About: apple, bradley manning, charlie sheen, first to know series, Google, iPad 2, wikileaks

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad