Social Media Week in Review - What you may have missed

Another week has flown by in social-media land, which means, you--and I--have missed a lot of developments, new products, etc. Most of them, of course, don't matter, but these Week in Review posts (February 26, 2012; February 19, 2012) are meant to help you catch-up with the ones that do. Each weekend, you can help by posting links in the comments section or emailing me at sreetips@sree.net or tweeting with @sree or #sreetips.

First stop: Mashable's 48 Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed by Matt Petronzio (@MattPetronzio) is where I go to catch up with the best of what that site posted during the week. Several among them are worth saving for later, including: 6 Tips for Better Facebook Parenting; How a Team of Doctors Uses Social Media to Drive Awareness and Save Lives; 6 New Gadgets Helping People With Disabilities.

Facebook changes, again: Thanks to this CNET News blog, I'm doing a series of segments every Wednesday on WCBS-TV in the New York City (6:50 am!) and my first appearance, which you can see here (and embedded below), was all about the iPad 3 rumors and the launch of Facebook's Timeline feature over the last couple of months. Two hours later, I learned that Facebook had changed again, this time launching the Timeline feature on business pages, just like it's being rolled out over personal profiles. Business pages are also getting other changes, including better branding, better management tools and the ability to "pin" a particular item as a featured post (something blogs have been able to do for years). There's a good explanation and a collection of examples here and also check out Facebook +Journalists for examples of how media outlets and individual journalists are using the new features. Among two worth checking out: the "Today Show" (its Timeline goes back to the 1952 launch) and the New York Times (its Timeline goes all the way back to its 1851 founding). All business pages will get these changes on March 30, 2012, but you can force the change right away. See my Facebook business page and CNET's, too. 

Psst.. Wanna buy two years of the Twitter firehouse? Datasift, a U.K. company, is offering marketers something they've never had a chance to see before. Thanks to a partnership with Twitter, companies can now buy access to an archive of public tweets going back to January 2010 (another Twitter partner, Gnip, offers tweets going back 30 days). In a Reuters story by consumer columnist Mitch Lipka (@MitchLipka), you can find some of the reaction to the announcement, including comments by privacy advocates - and an indication from Datasift that 700 companies are on a waiting list to try the service.  

Social media guidance for diplomats: The American Foreign Service Association issued a memo this week about use of social media by U.S. Foreign Service personnel. You can find a copy of the memo on this blog by a diplomat, but here are some points worth highlighting; they might just apply to you, too:

• Avoid Divulging Private and Confidential Information. Here is where many people run afoul of the regulations. Be sure not to divulge any information that includes confidential or personally identifiable information. Examples of these include but are not limited to visa cases, information about other individuals, or classified information (for example, linking to WikiLeaks.)
• Review Your Privacy Settings. Make sure you are aware of the privacy settings of the social media platform you are using and how to adjust them. Platforms such as Facebook often change these settings without informing users. Periodic review of these settings is important, and we recommend having them set to the highest levels. For blogs, you may even want to consider restricting access so that only your family, friends and colleagues have access.
• Use Good Judgment. We can't emphasize this enough. As we noted above, all forms of human communication require good judgment, tact, etc. And what happens on the internet, stays on the internet. When in doubt, leave it out.

All tablets, all the time: This week, a new site called TabTimes launched, describing itself as "the first media outlet in the world to focus on the business, work and productivity usage of tablets." From the press release:

Produced by a team of seasoned and passionate journalists recruited for their experience at major tech publications, TabTimes reports on the tablet revolution in real-time with a mix of news, features, reviews, how-to stories and analyses. "In addition to covering the tablet industry," offers George Jones, editor of TabTimes, "we will showcase the many ways tablets are changing how people communicate, work, shop, play, learn and organize their lives." TabTimes' mission is to show managers, professionals and business people how to unleash tablets to do more, work smarter, further their career and better their businesses.

Infographics roundup: Am a big fan of smart infographics and the best of them get a lot of play on social media. Here are three I noticed this week.

• 25 Most Viral News Sources on Facebook and Twitter: NewsWhip, a startup which tracks which stories are getting the most shares and tweets among 60,000 news stories each day across 5,000 English sources, created this graphic. Its top three: BBC, HuffingtonPost and the Guardian.
• 60 Seconds in Social Media: This graphic, by David Fung (@CobraDave; his handle is an homage "Cobra," the 1986 Sylvester Stallone movie) looking at the activity levels on specific social platforms was posted on several sites this week.
• 30 Dr. Seuss Quotes to Live By: This infographic, in honor of the 108th birthday of the legendary Dr. Seuss and the new movie, "The Lorax," was created by Sylvia Martinez (@1sylviamartinez) of Mamiverse, a site for Latina moms.

YouTube Week in Review: I'm going to try to highlight some videos each week, looking through the YouTube Trends Blog. The most watched new video of the last week was the trailer for the new Marvel movie, "The Avengers," with more than 11.5 million views (and counting) since Wednesday.