3 Ways Paid Social Ads Can Explode Your Content

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

Content marketing –- creating and distributing relevant content to attract, acquire, and engage your target audience –- has become a popular marketing tactic over the past few years. But although most companies understand how to promote their content via their “owned” channels, such as their Facebook Page, their Twitter account or LinkedIn Company Page, many are missing out on the opportunity to get their content in front of a larger audience through paid social promotions.

For example, let’s say you’ve spent time and money developing a great new how-to video or article –- how do you make sure people see it? Promoting it via Facebook Promoted Posts will put it front and center for your fans. Or, what if you’ve received a positive write-up in your local paper? You can make sure your target customers see it by making a small Twitter ad buy targeted at local followers of that paper.

Positive product reviews, media coverage, blog posts and educational content like white papers and presentations can all have tremendous value for your business. Here are three paid social ad tools that can dramatically expand visibility for this content.

1. Facebook Promoted Posts

With Facebook Promoted Posts, businesses pay to have their regular posts appear higher (and more often) in the news feed, so there's a better chance their audience will see them.

“Most small business owners don't realize the impact of just spending a little bit of money to promote posts,” said Anthony Kirlew, Chief Strategist at AKA Internet Marketing. “With all of the noise in the Facebook newsfeeds as well as the EdgeRank factors, the message of most small business Facebook pages is unseen. For a very small amount of money, companies can get the lift that leads to the exposure they are seeking on Facebook.”

To promote a post on your Page, simply create the post and click “Promote” at the bottom of the post. You’ll be prompted to select your audience – either people who like your page, or people who like your page and their friends –- and to set a budget based on how many people you want to reach. Compelling graphics and headlines are important for driving maximum engagement with Promoted Posts, so even if you’re promoting someone else’s content (such as a story about your company in the local paper), consider including your own graphic and headline to make it pop.

Galen Ward, co-founder and CEO of real estate search engine Estately, used Facebook Promoted Posts to seed viral sharing of its fun blog post, "37 Things You Should Know Before Moving to Seattle.” Ward’s strategy was to go narrow with the post promotion, crafting a post that would appeal to Seattle sports fans, and then promoting it to people who have the Seahawks as one of the interests on Facebook.

According to Ward, the company spent just under $100 and got 8,500 Likes and tens of thousands of visitors to the web site.

“We paid under $3 CPM and got around a five percent click-through rate — so for under $100 we got our post in front of over 30,000 people,” said Ward. “Without Facebook, it would have travelled through our limited networks, but with Facebook ads we got it in front of virtually every person who might be interested in it. And because the content was engaging and in front of the right people, it sparked a ton of viral sharing.”

Ward says they are now experimenting with spending $10-20 to promote each of their blog posts and will up the spend for posts that perform well.

2. Twitter Promoted Tweets

Twitter recently launched a self-service capability for Promoted Tweets, which are regular tweets that you pay to promote to more people. Twitter allows you to target people by geography, interest or gender, and you only pay only when people click, retweet, favorite or reply to your tweet.

Twitter’s pricing system is based on bidding: you set the maximum amount you’re willing to spend per follow or click, and Twitter will give you suggestions for what you should bid to optimize your campaign. Twitter tools allow you to see how each of your tweets is performing; after a few days of running promoted tweets, check back in to gauge how the campaign is working and whether you need to adjust your bid.

Online music publication Prefix Magazine used Promoted Tweets to increase brand awareness and drive more high-quality readers to their site, prefixmag.com. The site saw an immediate 49% jump in visitor traffic from Twitter compared to the week before the Twitter ad campaign. “When a tweet is resonating, I want to keep it resonating — to have that tweet snowball — and Twitter advertising makes that happen,” said Prefix Magazine’s Publisher Dave Park.

Daniel Rothamel, founder of artist management company Two Plus Media offered free downloads of “The Wretched”, a mixtape by his client NomiS, via Promoted Tweets. The $50 campaign, which targeted users in the U.S. interested in Christian and Gospel music, resulted in 7,900 impressions and 105 engagements on the tweet.

"One of my biggest challenges with promoting new artists is cutting through the clutter to find the people who are already interested in the music my artists create,” said Rothamel. “Promoted Tweets helps me target these people more effectively, giving me a greater chance at successfully turning them into fans."

3. LinkedIn Ads

To get your content in front of a business audience, consider LinkedIn Ads, which run on prominent pages on the LinkedIn.com website. Ads consist of a headline, a description (up to 75 characters of text), your name or company name, a small image and a URL. You can specify which LinkedIn members view your ads by selecting targeting criteria such as job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender, company name, company size or even by a particular LinkedIn Group (such as “Corporate Real Estate”). Like with Twitter, you set a maximum budget and only pay for the clicks or impressions that you receive.

According to LinkedIn, the best-performing ads are relevant to the target audience and written with clear, compelling words. LinkedIn suggests that you highlight special offers, unique benefits, white papers, free trials or demos to get people’s attention, and include strong call-to-action phrases like Try, Download, Sign up or Request a Quote.

Internet marketing agency Cardinal Web Solutions used a LinkedIn ad featuring a company culture presentation to help generate interest in their job openings. According to founder and CEO Alex Membrillo, “The content included in the presentation has been very effective for attracting qualified candidates, and overall interest in our company has increased significantly.”

Marketing software company HubSpot is offering white papers and free educational resources via LinkedIn Ads to attract marketing professionals. The company says it first experimented with ad campaigns on social networks other than LinkedIn, but the campaigns did not yield satisfactory results.

"There's a lot of distraction on other social networks," said Dan Slagen, the company's head of paid marketing. "People are there for reasons besides improving their businesses, or networking with other professionals. We need to connect with B2B companies that are focused on lead generation, which means LinkedIn is the place for us.

According to Slagen, HubSpot’s LinkedIn Ads generate a click-through rate that is 60 percent higher than its average across other social networks, with much higher quality leads.

"There's no clutter on LinkedIn - members are there to do business," he added.

Getting Started

Ready to get started but still not sure which channel makes the most sense for you?

HipLogiq CTO and cofounder Adam Root recommends that small businesses consider all three networks, but use them for different purposes.

“My strategy is to use Twitter to gain new users, Facebook to build a community and LinkedIn to generate leads for the sales team,” says Root. “My logic in choosing this strategy is that Twitter is a good medium for targeting moments and encouraging action, Facebook is a great medium for building long-term relationships and LinkedIn is a business network with high-profile agencies in its user base that I’d want as customers.”

Source :mashable

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Twitter and Traditional Media: Rivals or Lovers?

Not long ago, the media looked at the web as if it was an awkward, unwanted stepchild. Today, the reverse is arguably true, with debate growing over whether social networks such as Twitter will overtake beacons of journalism like The New York Times.

At last month's Milken Institute Global Conference, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel said he thinks Twitter will outlast The Times. His reasoning: Its business strategy is more solid than that of the storied newspaper.

The debate got journalists talking on forums such as Muck Rack, with many people disagreeing. Some said it isn't a mutually exclusive relationship, or that one's success is predicated on the other's failure.

Comments from Twitter's CEO seem to support this. At All Things D's conference last week, Dick Costolo took the opposite approach to Thiel, and essentially called Twitter a friend to media companies — whether they're print, television or strictly online.

"We think of ourselves as very complementary to news orgs," he told All Things D's Kara Swisher. "We’re the platform for global information distribution for the people, by the people. The news orgs are the curators, the editors, the analysts. They do that important work."

When Swisher asked if Twitter is looking to expand and morph into a news organization, Costolo said that's not in the microblogging network's future: "No, I see us partnering more with news orgs to distribute this real-time feed of info, probably working with companies that can help organize that information and dole it out to news org readers."

Detractors aside, many media pundits see the two as far more intertwined than anyone envisioned when Twitter debuted seven years ago.

"I think they're in love," press critic and New York University professor Jay Rosen told Mashable. "Nothing more to say."

This mutual affection has helped Twitter and other social networks become tools for journalists, according to Dan Pacheco, chair of journalism innovation at Syracuse University's Newhouse School. Rather than pitting news organizations against Twitter, Pacheco said there should be a focus on "the emergence of journalists as social-media brands."

Twitter has enabled journalists to amplify their voices and brands, he said, thereby helping them get more attention than they previously would have without the social network.

"The brands with most impact will be connected to individual journalists," Pacheco told Mashable. "For example, The New York Times' David Carr (@carr2n) has 420,000 Twitter followers that he built through authentic usage of the social media ... Is that all David Carr on Twitter, or all New York Times? It's a little of both."

Mark Glaser, executive editor of PBS MediaShift, agrees that it's all about making Twitter work for news organizations as a partner, rather seeing it as an enemy.

"The idea for publishers and news orgs is that they need to work Twitter to their advantage," Glaser said, citing driving site traffic, and selling sponsored tweets, as examples. "All these deals between Twitter and ESPN, Fox, etc., seem to be additive to the publishers and helpful, as long as these deals are not exclusive."

Therein lies the irony: As news organizations vie for eyeballs and page views, they are getting those numbers largely from posts on social sites — the new pathways to news. Last year, a report by the Pew Research Center showed exactly where Internet users are spending their time, and from where they're getting their news. The answer is increasingly social networks.

Pew found that the average Facebook user spent about 423 minutes a month on the site compared to under 12 minutes per month on a top 25 news site. While Facebook users consume news differently than Twitter users (with Facebookers getting more news from friends and family, as opposed to friends, family and news outlets for Twitter users), and most people are still going straight to news websites for their information, the tide is turning more towards social becoming a go-to source.

Such an intimate relationship between news consumption and social platforms such as Twitter therefore cannot be ignored.

"The key for publishers is to make sure they can own the relationships between themselves and fans/followers," Glaser said. "And not let Twitter get that."

Source : mashable

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Is Marissa Mayer About to Buy Tumblr for $1 Billion?

In a deal that would vault Yahoo into the premiere league of social media, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is said to be closing in on a $1 billion acquisition deal with David Karp, the CEO of New York-based Tumblr.

Details of the talks leaked out earlier Thursday via AllThingsD, a site which prides itself on its Yahoo sources in particular. A later report in AdWeek, via its own sources, cited $1 billion as the figure currently under discussion. Coincidentally, that is said to be the valuation Tumblr was going to get at its next funding round.

Both sites were cautious to emphasize that the talks could come to naught. Mayer is clearly interested; she's known and admired Karp's New York-based site for years. Tumblr and its 107 million microblogs would add another 15 billion pageviews a month to Mayer's hoard. Most important of all, it could make Yahoo look cool again.

Given its aging audience, Yahoo's biggest problem with advertisers right now, the hunt for cool companies is high on Mayer's agenda. That would be why she offered $30 million to a startup run by a charismatic 17-year-old.

The question remains whether Karp is ready to sell, and whether he believes Tumblr has a better path ahead of it as a media company without Yahoo's help. (Naturally, we've reached out to both companies.)

Tumblr hasn't put a step wrong in the last few months, as far as investors and marketers are concerned, and it's growing like a weed. It's also hitting all the hot button tech and social media targets. Mobile audience overtaking web audience? Check. Ads on mobile? Check. Great shareable memes such as White Men Wearing Google Glass? Check. A platform so cool the White House is forced to join it? Check.

A $1 billion price tag would make Tumblr the biggest purchase since Facebook bought Instagram last year — although that deal ended up costing closer to $715 million, thanks to slumping Facebook share prices.

While we update this story, let us know in the comments: would these companies make a good match? Or should Karp stay independent? 

Source : mashable

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Social Sharing Buttons That Respect Your Visitors’ Privacy

Social sharing buttons — Facebook “Like” buttons and their ilk — are ubiquitous, but that doesn’t mean they’re a good idea.

Designers tend to hate them, calling them “Nascar” buttons since the can make your site look at little bit like a Nascar racing car — every available inch of car covered in advertising. Others think the buttons make you look desperate — please, please like/pin/tweet me — but there’s a much more serious problem with putting Facebook “Like” buttons or Pinterest “Pin It” buttons on your site: your visitors’ privacy.

When you load up your site with a host of sharing buttons you’re — unwittingly perhaps — enabling those companies to track your visitors, whether they use the buttons and their accompanying social networks or not.

There is, however, a slick solution available for those who’d like to offer visitors sharing buttons without allowing their site to be a vector for Facebook tracking. Security expert (and Wired contributor) Bruce Schneier recently switched his blog over to use Social Share Privacy, a jQuery plugin that allows you to add social buttons to your site, but keeps them disabled until visitors actively choose to share something.

With Social Share Privacy buttons are disabled by default. A user needs to first click to enable them, then click to use them. So there is a second (very small) step compared to what the typical buttons offer. In exchange for the minor inconvenience of a second click, your users won’t be tracked without their knowledge and consent. There’s even an option in the preferences to permanently enable the buttons for repeat visitors so they only need to jump through the click-twice hoop once.

The original Social Share Privacy plugin was created by the German website Heise Online, though what Schneier installed is Mathias Panzenböck’s fork, available on GitHub. The fork adds support for quite a few more services and is extensible if there’s something else you’d like to add. 

Source : webmonkey

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How Social Media Could Land You Your Next Job

We've all heard plenty about how your social-media footprint could cost you that dream job or become a massive distraction at work — but did you know social media also might just be the key to getting hired?

More and more, job hirers and recruiters scour social sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter to find new talent and learn about prospective employees. Here's the great thing about that: By and large, you control what your online presence looks like and includes.

But that doesn't only mean thinking twice about photos you post and links you share. The term "social resume" is beginning to gain traction, and refers to digital enhancements to the traditional paper or PDF curriculum vitae.

LinkedIn is likely the first social-resume tool that comes to mind, but other sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr can be just as helpful. There are also services such as ResumeSocial, VisualCV and Razume that offer more options for job seekers.

What can a social resume offer that the old variety can't? Links to past work, enhanced networking opportunities and instant feedback from recruiters and other job seekers, for starters.

The following infographic from OnlineColleges.com takes a deeper dive into the many benefits of properly leveraging social media in your job search. Check it out below; then offer your own tips in the comments.

Source : mashable

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There Are 181,000 Social Media 'Gurus,' 'Ninjas,' 'Masters,' and 'Mavens' on Twitter (Video)

As a public service, I like to periodically check in on the number of self-proclaimed social media "gurus," "ninjas," "masters" and "mavens" on Twitter. Why? Well, it seems like an important metric, an indicator of something.

Whatever it means, this is one indicator that is most definitely on the rise. In January 2013, the number of Twitter users with "social media" as part of their bio has grown to epic proportions. The list now tops 181,000 – up from a mere 16,000 when we first started tracking them in 2009, according to FollowerWonk.

Today, there are even 174 people who describe themselves as "social media whores" in their Twitter bios. (We couldn't make that sort of thing up.)

Twitter bios allow a mere 140 characters, plus a URL. Therefore, one most boil one's bio down to what one thinks represents one's most essential facts.

While a great many of these self-appointed gurus are no doubt taking the title with tongue firmly planted in cheek, the fact remains: a guru is something someone else calls you, not something you call yourself. Scratch that: let's save "guru" (Sanskrit for "teacher") for religious figures or at least people with real unique knowledge.

I'd argue, in fact, that "social media" and "guru" should never appear in the same sentence. That said, here are some ways to know if your "social media guru" is adding some value:

• they bring actual experience – not just observations and theories – to the table;

• they sell solutions, not formulas;

• they don't promise that social media will provide a quick fix for your bottom line.

One thing seems certain: at this rate, everyone on Twitter will soon be a social media guru.

Special bonus video link showing we really did know this was going to happen back in 2009: 

 

 

Source : adage

 

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LinkedIn Tops 200 Million Users

LinkedIn on Wednesday announced it had passed an important milestone: 200 million members.

The business-oriented social network had reported in its last earnings call on Nov. 1 that it topped 187 million members and had been growing at a rate of 10 million to 15 million users per quarter last year. Launched in 2003, LinkedIn passed 100 million members in 2011.

LinkedIn's network compares with 1 billion-plus for Facebook, more than 500 million for Twitter and more than 500 million for Google Plus.

According to the company, 74 million users are based in the U.S., 11 million are in the U.K., 7 million are in Canada, 18 million are in India and 11 million are based in Brazil. LinkedIn's fastest-growing country is Turkey, followed by Colombia and Indonesia. Mobile growth is strongest in China, Brazil, Portugal, India and Italy, in that order. Finally, about two people join LinkedIn every second.

Source : mashable

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China reduces casualties with quake warnings via social media

Last Friday’s quake jolted Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, where over 14 million people live, and also Deyang and its surrounding areas--all of which were severely damaged during the 2008 quake. The Chengdu Institute of Care-life, a local earthquake research and warning organization, managed to send two warning messages to its Weibo site, the Chinese version of Twitter.

According to the institute’s director Wang Tun, the warning system automatically goes online and sends messages as soon as five seconds after any of its 200 detectors--covering an area of over 20,000 square kilometres--pick up a shockwave.

At present, with less than 1,000 online followers and a little over 100 tweets, the warning system only covers the metropolitan area of Chengdu. But Wang still believes even a few seconds of "heads up" will make a huge difference in case of a devastating quake.

"The warning is a race against the shockwave, the more seconds we win, the fewer lives would be lost," said Wang. "Our system not only tells you the magnitude of the earthquake, but also how soon it will affect where you live, so people can react accordingly as soon as possible."

Casualties could go down by 14 percent if there were a 3-second warning before the quake hit, and this reduction in casualties will rise to 39 percent for 10 seconds and 63 percent for 20, according to an earlier reported statistic.

"There are over one billion registered users on two major Chinese social websites, the Sina Weibo and the Tencent Weibo," said Wang. "It is now technologically practical to warn people of imminent quakes via social media."

Source : zdnet

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Facebook Starts Sending Out Notices for Sponsored Stories Settlement

If you receive a message purporting to be from Facebook with the subject "LEGAL NOTICE OF SETTLEMENT OF CLASS ACTION" -- don't worry, it's legitimate.

Facebook is sending proposed settlement notices to members of a class-action lawsuit against the company's use of Sponsored Stories. Facebook's offer of $20 million to settle the case was granted preliminary approval by the courts in December.

An email detailing the reason behind the lawsuit as well as the terms of the settlement was sent to users it believes are class members of the lawsuit, "according to available records."

The lawsuit was initially filed on behalf of Facebook users objecting to the use of their names and pictures in Sponsored Stories, ads which turn a user's Likes into ads appearing in friends' news feeds. The lawsuit argues the ads are a violation of privacy, as they turn users into spokespeople and endorsers without their direct approval.

The terms of the settlement state that users who file a claim can receive up to $10 from Facebook.

According to the document:

The amount, if any, paid to each claimant depends upon the number of claims made and other factors detailed in the Settlement. No one knows in advance how much each claimant will receive, or whether any money will be paid directly to claimants. If the number of claims made renders it economically infeasible to pay money to persons who make a timely and valid claim, payment will be made to the not-for-profit organizations identified on the Settlement website at www.fraleyfacebooksettlement.com.

Class members have until May 2, 2013, to submit a claim, exclude themselves from the settlement (in order to file an individual lawsuit over the legal claims), or tell the court why they object to the settlement. A Fairness Hearing over the matter will be held on June 28, 2013.

For users that do not submit a claim, they will not receive payment at all, but may be eligible for the non-monetary benefits of the settlement.

What do you think about the Sponsored Stories settlement? Is Facebook doing enough? Let us know in the comments.

Source : mashable

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New Web App Recommends Books Based on Your Tweets

Reading a book is a significant investment of time. That's why it's common to ask friends for recommendations when looking for interesting literature. If you haven't said it yourself, you've probably heard someone say the common refrain: "Read any good books lately?"

That method has worked fairly well thus far, but an innovative new web app sources recommendations from the person who knows you best — you.

Simply insert your Twitter handle into BookRx, and seconds later the app produces a list of categories and specific books you might enjoy. The app, which was launched yesterday, is a product of Northwestern University's Knight Lab. Shawn O'Banion, a third-year PhD student, worked with his professor, Larry Birnbaum, to create BookRx.

“Twitter is really unique because it’s a stream of consciousness for the user," O'Banion tells Mashable. "Typically you’re projecting an image of yourself on Twitter with the things that you say; while that might not be your true self, it’s actually who you want to represent on social media.”

It works by comparing the words, hashtags and mentions in your tweets to those of a sample user with pre-determined reading preferences. The app's creators used a secret data gathering technique to assess the sample and a machine learning algorithm to link tweeted words to specific book recommendations.

O'Banion recently used a similar method to create an app called TweetCast, which aimed to use tweets to predict votes in the U.S. presidential election.

For some, there is something innately unsettling about AI predictions. It is even more disturbing when the computer is accurate. Unlike sites like Amazon and Google, however, BookRx shows you the exact words you tweeted that led to its various recommendations.

“Typically when you see recommendations online, you’re not given any explanation or reason for the recommendation," O'Banion says. "It’s sort of like a black box, and I think that’s why people get kind of creeped out by it, actually — because it’s not transparent.”

BookRx is a fun tool to try, whether or not you're in the market for a new book to read. It's interesting to see how accurately your tweets correlate to your reading preferences. Give it a try here, and be sure to let us know what you think in the comment section.

Source : mashable

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Twitter Appoints New COO and CFO

Twitter has shaken up its executive ranks, appointing a new chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

The microblogging site named Ali Rowghani its COO, a new role he quietly announced by changing his Twitter profile. Rowghani's LinkedIn profile, however, still lists him as the company's CFO. Before joining Twitter in 2010, he worked at Pixar (including a stint as CFO) for eight years.

Twitter also brought in Mike Gupta to fill Rowghani's former role as CFO. Previously the treasurer and senior vice-president of finance at Zynga, Gupta left after spending one-and-a-half years with the embattled game maker. He also spent eight years as chief treasury officer and senior vice-president of corporate development and finance at Yahoo, according to his LinkedIn profile.

CEO Dick Costolo confirmed Rowghani and Gupta's new roles in a congratulatory tweet on Wednesday.

While Rowghani has a solid Twitter presence, with more than 11,000 followers and nearly 1,800 tweets, Gupta seems to have just joined the site. Twitter's new CFO, who currently clocks in at 62 followers, has only tweeted three times, so far. He published his first tweet on Tuesday.

What do you think of Twitter's executive-leadership changes? Tell us in the comments below.

Source : mashable

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You Can Now Get an Undergrad Degree in Social Media

Newberry COolege in South Carolina is introducing the major via its Arts and Communications department.

Are you a self-confessed Facebook or Twitter addict? It's okay, you're not alone. Plenty of people admit to spending far too much time on Facebook or posting way too many tweets to the popular microblogging site. But did you know you can turn your habit into a degree? Because Newberry College in Newberry, South Carolina now allows students to major in social media. The school announced the new major earlier this month, detailing that it will be offered through its Department of Arts and Communications.

"Newberry has something that very few colleges have to offer, an exciting major that will prepare graduates to be pioneers in a cutting edge industry that will create critical thinkers and innovators," said Tania Sosiak, Associate Professor of Graphic Design and Social Media and founder of the new program. "I feel that a graduate from our program will be more competitive in the marketplace, said Sosiak. "Students will be able to do many things both analytically and creatively. Collect and study data, market, create, design, broadcast and develop are just some of the skills a graduate will have as a part of their social media toolbox."

Newberry College says the social media major will be an 'original interdisciplinary program' that capitalizes on the strengths of existing courts in graphic design, business admin, psychology, and statistics. In addition, the curriculum includes four courses created specifically for the social media major.

The course will see students work to develop marketing and branding strategies for projects including corporate, non-profit, entertainment, sports, news and politics.

Though it sounds silly at first, a degree in social media could soon be pretty common. Social media is a powerful tool, and most businesses' strategies include social media in some form (whether it's for marketing or customer support). The likes of Twitter and Facebook are valuable tools for businesses and folks that know how to leverage those services for marketing and communications purposes are worth their weight in gold.

Source: tomsguide.com

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Annoying Facebook notifications: how to get rid of them

The more people I talk to, the more it sounds like just about everyone is sick of Facebook. The social aspect of Facebook is great, but then again, so is just, you know... being social, in general. We've all put time and effort into connecting with all the people we have, so we stick around on Facebook and deal with the things we don't like about it -- namely, things like game and app notifications that you couldn't care less about, and receiving them over and over and over and over to boot.

If you're done with the whole rigmarole of trying to figure out how to nix those annoying notifications, you'll be delighted to know there are a couple of ways you can go about it. The first method is something you can exercise as soon as you see a notification from an app/game you want to block. The second method is a way for you to quickly scan through a whole bunch of past notifications and go on an app/game-blocking frenzy. Sound like joyful, delicious fun? Indeed.

So, without further ado, here's what you need to do to start slaying those life-draining notifications:

Method 1: Individual notification extermination

1: Click your "notifications" globe in the upper-left-hand corner of Facebook. When you see the app/game notification you'd like to block, hover over it and an 'X' will appear. Click that 'X'.

2: After clicking the 'X', you'll be given a choice to either turn off notifications from that app/game, or keep them on. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to click the "Turn Off" button.

3: You should now see a message stating that you'll no longer receive notifications from that particular app/game. BOOM: that app/game is done-zo with ever sending notifications your way.

 

Method 2: Mass notification extermination

1: Click your "notifications" globe in the upper-left-hand corner of Facebook. Next, click "See All" to be taken to a page showing a whole slew of your recent notifications.

2: You can quickly identify game/app requests by looking at the icons on the left-hand side (I've outlined the "Words with Friends" icon as an example). Once you identify an app/game notification you'd like to block, simply hover over it and an 'X' will appear. Click that 'X', then click "Turn Off." Achievement unlocked!

Conclusion

As you can see, it takes a bit of maintenance to keep up with blocking app/game notifications, but at least you won't have to see FarmVille or CityVille 2 notifications for the 80 bajillionth time now. Relish this moment, my friends, for you have been annoyed by notifications for far too long! If you've yet to nix any of those app/game notifications you've so hated, then I recommend starting with method 2. It will allow you to quickly go down through a ton of notifications and wreak pure app/game-blocking carnage! Afterward, every time you get a notification for a new app/game you're not interested in, use method 1. That should set you up for the long haul.

So, with that said, if you'd be so kind, please pass this information along to your fellow Facebook friends, family, fans, and followers alike (I can't believe all of those words started with 'f'! Talk about grammar geek heaven!). I've heard from far too many people who want to disable these notifications, but haven't been able to figure out how; so, chances are, you know a person or 5 who would find you to be the coolest person on the face of the Facebook for showing them how to do this.

Source : zdnet

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How social data is changing the way we do business

It's a familiar litany now, that the openness and transparency of social media will unleash a wide range of compelling outcomes for our organizations, if we'll only embrace it. While there is little doubt that social media is one of the great phenomenons of our age, there are certainly those that think the hype surrounding it is also a bit over-egged.

Yet a growing set of compelling examples is showing us unique and vitally useful outcomes that are only possible in social media.  For those just catching up with the story, part of the uniqueness and power of social media is that it generaly makes the information that's shared -- using social networks, blogs, and other forms -- public by default.

This is in contrast to earlier forms of analog and digital communication, where we were required to have perfect foreknowledge of who should be involved in a conversation, such as their phone number(s), e-mail address(es), or other contact  info. Everyone else was automatically excluded from the process and the contents of the discourse itself was largely invisible and left little behind. 

In sharp contrast to this model, as we've learned through a decade of global online experimentation, is that it's often best when we don't overly call-out the precise identities of those we wish to converse with. Instead, we've discovered that it's better for us to let those who find value in what we're saying to find us by what we say (typically via search or recommendation by friend or technology.) This enables us both embrace and enable serendipity, emergence, and open innovation and this -- as MIT's Andrew McAfee recently pointed out for the business world --- lets us bring enough of the right people together dynamically to create the most interesting and useful results possible. 

The result is a rich tapestry of conversations and information that everyone can join in on if they desire, or benefit from later on.

It's also turned out that the default public mode of social media, though it can also cause no end of headaches for companies in industries where information tends to be very private and controlled, allows us to realize certain very significant new scenarios that older communications technologies simply couldn't (or sometimes, just wouldn't.) What scenarios you ask? The most important and broadest one is letting us perceive virtually all global conversation across social media in real-time and then analyze it. While observing such conversations has been possible for a while, the timeliness hasn't been easy to achieve. The same for effective and meaningful analysis.

Scale is the first part of the problem with such timely analysis of social media, especially when it must be thorough and accurate. As I pointed out in my last post, that there are hundreds of large social networks, millions of blogs, and countless online communities and forums to look at and engage with. Important and business relevant conversations can be found in far-flung corners that must be examined, or we potentially pay the consequences. As Douglas Merrill observed last week in the Harvard Business Review blogs, adding new signals is one of the single most valuable ways to improve data analysis.

Thus, forging an integrated picture that truly conveys the constant and endless stream activities and insights within social media conversation is a relatively new phenomenon, enabled by a growing raft of so-called "big data" technologies like Hadoop and Mahout.

Isolating relevant meaning from the noise is the second part of the problem, because the form and content of social media is relatively unstructured and informal. It's also filled with rich media, particularly pictures, as well as video and audio. Given the vast diversity inherent in the nearly 1.5 billion worldwide participants, including their language, cultures, customs, and idioms and it's clear that even if we can actualy process all of this conversation quickly enough, making sense of it all is as big -- and probably much more substantial -- a challenge.

Yet perhaps it really doesn't have to be all that hard, depending on what we're trying to accomplish. In collecting compelling examples of what we can do by simply by listening to and analyzing social media, it quickly becomes pretty obvious that we don't necessarily have to boil the entire ocean of scale and semantics when it comes to making social media strategically useful. In fact, some of the best examples often take relatively simple data sets and infer the meaning by combining them together with straightforward geographic visualizations, for instance. That said, the more signal and analysis we apply, the more accurate and useful the insights will be.

While it's clear that we're still in the early, formative stages of social media analysis, it's equally clear that there is a great deal of business and civic utility in applying its techniques to our lives and work today. I've collected 10 good instances of what's possible, with thanks to Tom Raftery of Greenmonk for identifying some of the stellar examples in this gallery.

Note: The stream graph in the visual above was generating using Twitter StreamGraphs. A stream graph is a common technique employed to visualize the shape of the conversations over time. This graph shows the most recent 1,000 tweets involving ZDNet on the afternoon of November 7th. It shows that conversations about 'Microsoft', 'Skype', and 'mobile' were the most interesting -- or at least the largest -- public conversations of that time period about ZDNet.

Source : zdnet

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So Did Social Media ‘Predict’ the Election?

Nate Silver’s being hailed as a Big Data hero after correctly predicting an overwhelming majority of states in Tuesday’s presidential election. But how did social media sentiment fair as a barometer of the electorate?

Before the election was called, Mashable reported that Twitter sentiment in the hotly contested battleground states was split: it favored Barack Obama in Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire and Iowa, while Romney had the lead in New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada.

So did the Twitter sentiment “predict” the election? Not really: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Iowa, New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada and likely Florida — where the results haven’t yet been called — went to Obama, while only North Carolina went to Romney.

This does, however, depend on how you look at the data: Twitter’s pre-election chart showed a trend in Obama’s favor across the board just prior to Election Day:

According to social media analysis frim Attention, powered by Tracx, Obama also dominated the online conversation at large, taking up 64% compared to Romney’s 36% across Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, blogs and message boards.

Social media sentiment is far from a scientific poll — after all, only a minority of registered voters in the U.S. are actively posting about politics.

However, Twitter is fond of the fact that its Political Index tends to track Gallup polls, a sign that it could potentially be taken seriously sometime down the road as more voters use the platform to talk politics. And as sentiment analysis gets smarter and better every day, we could be looking at a new and valuable data point for campaigns sometime not too long down the road.

Do you think social media can ever be taken seriously as an elections predictor?

Source : mashable

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Social networking on iPhone and iPad: the definitive guide

Humans are social creatures. From scribbling pictures on cave walls to making funny comments on people's Facebook posts, we love to share with other people.

Thanks to devices such as iPhones, the gap between spotting something interesting and showing it to your friends can be as small as a few seconds, and social networks' global reach means it's as easy to connect with someone in California as in Carlisle.

In this feature we'll follow famous people on Twitter, hide our party photos from the boss on Facebook and discover how to share images, ideas and interesting things with people on the other side of the planet.

We'll also discover some more specialist social networks for particular kinds of content, and the apps that enable you to share special things with just your closest friends and family. Whether you're a networking novice or an experienced operator, we'll discover the best ways to share with the people who matter most to you. Go on, get social with your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

The Tap! guide to Twitter

Funny, occasionally foolish, but fun and full of famous faces: of all the social networks, Twitter may well be the coolest.

You might also like...Top 60 best free iPhone apps 2012

Imagine you've been invited to the world's best party. Your friends are here, of course, but so are some of the people you idolise: the people who make your favourite things, who created your favourite music or who cracked your favourite jokes. Depending on your mood you can be amused by comedians, get involved in a huge serious discussion or just laugh at talent shows.

That's Twitter

There are two things that make Twitter wonderful: every tweet, is limited to 140 characters. That encourages people to get to the point, fast, whether they're cracking jokes or explaining something complicated, and it encourages people to be witty.

The second thing is that you don't need somebody's permission to follow their updates. If somebody looks interesting, clicking on the Follow button subscribes to their Twitter feed: while some people do protect their Twitter feeds to make their updates private, most people don't.

Tweets are mainly - but not exclusively - text. You can also include images and video, either by hosting them somewhere on the internet and tweeting their address, or by uploading them to a dedicated service such as Twitpic. Many apps support such services automatically.

Twitter has some other handy features, too. One of the most useful ones is Lists, which you can use to manage your Twitter feed when you're following so many people's updates that the volume of tweets becomes a torrent. Instead of viewing everything at once, you can organise the people you follow into different categories, so you might have a list of friends, a list of your favourite musicians, a list of amusing accounts, and so on. You can make your lists private or public.

Twitter also enables you to browse trending topics, which are the most discussed conversations. Tapping on a topic shows you the tweets about that topic whether you follow those people or not, and once again, it can be a good way to find new and interesting people.

You can also store tweets as favourites, which enables you to file interesting things so you can find them again later.

Get started

'How do I tweet, and whom can I tweet to?'

Using Twitter is very very easy. All you really need to know is somebody's username! So for example, ours is @tapmaguk. If you want to send us a tweet - please do! - then create a new tweet beginning with @tapmaguk.

In Twitter, 'following' somebody actually means you subscribe to their tweets: once you tap Follow, everything that person posts on Twitter will appear in your Twitter news feed until or unless you decide to unfollow them.

You can use people's usernames in several ways: to tweet them directly ('Good morning @tapmaguk!'); to mention them in a tweet to somebody else ('I just downloaded the latest issue of @tapmaguk!'); or to retweet one of their tweets.

A retweet is when you repost somebody else's message so that the people who follow you can also see it. This can be done automatically by your Twitter app of choice - such as the official Twitter app or Tweetbot (Universal, £1.99) - or manually by typing 'RT @username [whatever they posted]'. Manually retweeting enables you to add your own comment, such as 'Haha, that's amazing! RT @username [whatever they posted]'.

Tweets, mentions and retweets are all public, but you can also send somebody a private message. In Twitter this is known as a Direct Message, or DM for short. Once again, you can do this automatically in your Twitter app by choosing Direct Message, or you can do it manually by starting your message with DM and then the username, eg. "DM @ tapmaguk [your message]".

To reduce the risk of spam, abuse and other unpleasantness, you can only send a DM to somebody if they follow your Twitter feed. You might also see tweets with the hash symbol and a word or words, such as #mondaymorning or #bbcqt. These are called 'hashtags', and people type them to tag their tweets with a subject, so for example #bbcqt is BBC Question Time.

Those tags make it easy to find conversations, enabling you to see what other people are tweeting, and vice-versa.

Experienced

'I know retweets and hashtags. What else can I do?'

Once you've mastered the cut and thrust of Twitter chat, the next stage is to take advantage of some of its more advanced features. Lists are a particular boon: you can use other people's lists to find new people to follow, or you can use your own to make your feed more manageable.

Creating a list couldn't be simpler: give it a name, decide whether it should be private or public, and add usernames to it. Once you've done that, tapping on the list shows you all of the tweets from the people on that list without any other distractions. The more people you follow, the more useful lists become.

One of the most interesting Twitter features is geotagging. If you give your Twitter app permission to use your location, it can tag your tweets with where you are, as well as customising the trending topics you see (so for example your trending list might show the topics trending in the UK, rather than globally). If your app supports it, you can also browse for tweets posted near you. That's handy at shows, conferences and sporting events.

The Twitter app's Discover icon also helps you find new and interesting things. Its Activity section lets you see what the people you follow have been up to - not just what they've been posting, but who they've been following, what lists they've added people to etc.

To save your own favourites, bring up the toolbar on a tweet and tap the star icon. You can also see Stories, which are the links generating the most Twitter traffic.

By now you've probably encountered Twitter spam, most likely in the form of a sudden new follower sending you a link to something suspicious. Twitter apps can deal with such spammers in two ways: blocking means you won't see any more messages from them, while reporting them as spam tells Twitter they're being naughty. You can also use Block to intercept messages from people you don't follow, and whose messages you don't want.

Advanced

'Help! Twitter doesn't do everything I want…'

Twitter tries to keep things simple, but that isn't always ideal: for example, searches only go back ten days, which is a problem if you need to find an older tweet. That's where SnapBird (snapbird.org) comes in handy: it's a time machine for Twitter, enabling to search people's feeds for results the main Twitter site won't find.

Another example of Twitter simplicity is the way it deals with retweets. If you want to see who's retweeted your tweets, just tap on Connect > Interactions and hunt for the little retweeted icon (the two arrows in a square).

If you're hunting for retweets of old, once again a third party service comes to the rescue: Favstar.fm, which enables you to see what was retweeted and by whom over several months. It also enables you to see which of your tweets have been marked as favourites by others. The service works as a stand-alone website, but some Twitter clients such as Tweetbot include Favstar integration.

Another useful one is bit.ly, a link shortener that enables you to see how many people have clicked each link. Some Twitter users try to game the system by following you, waiting until you follow them back, and unfollowing you again.

You can prune your Twitter feed of such chancers with ManageFlitter, which connects to your Twitter account and analyses the people you follow. The service then enables you to unfollow anybody you who doesn't follow you back, who tweets too much or who doesn't tweet at all - a sure sign of a spammer.

If you use third party services, it's a good idea to visit the Applications tab of your Twitter profile from time to time: here you'll find the various programs that have access to your Twitter account, and it's a good idea to prune it from time to time so you're only giving access to the apps and/or services you actually use.

There's no getting away from the fact that Twitter requires constant management but it needn't spoil your enjoyment of it.

The Tap! guide to Facebook

The world's favourite social network; so popular, Hollywood made a film about it. But there's more to the Facebook app than you might think

With nearly a billion users, Facebook is the most popular social network on the planet. That's good if you're looking for somebody, because the chances are that they're already a member, but it can be bad, because Facebook's desire to encompass the entire internet means that it can be occasionally confusing.

Facebook started off as a way for university students to talk to one another, but it's since expanded to include the entire world - and that expansion means it's changed quite a lot along the way.

Its News Feed is, ahem, inspired by Twitter, while its Places owes a debt to the location service foursquare. These days it's a gaming platform, a news outlet, a social calendar, a place to find out about your favourite artists, a photo sharing service, an email alternative… if Facebook doesn't already do it then it's probably planning to.

Unlike Twitter, where you can see almost anybody's updates, Facebook is designed around friendships: in order to see your updates, photos and posts, you need to accept somebody as a Facebook friend. That means the first step for most Facebook users is searching for people they know, sending them a friend request, and waiting for the requests to be accepted.

Face up to it

In the real world, we share different things with different people, so for example what you tell or show to your friends might differ dramatically from what you tell or show the boss. With Facebook, it's possible to have both your friends and your work colleagues as Facebook friends, so it's important to spend some time looking at the privacy options.

It's possible to create different groups, such as a group for your real-life friends and a different group for your work friends. Then you can post something and tell Facebook which group(s) should be able to see it.

At the time of writing, Facebook was planning to update its official iOS app from the desperately slow and hopelessly buggy one it was. Here's hoping the new version is the vast improvement Facebook promises us it will be, as more and more mobile is the way that Facebook will be accessed by its billions of users.

Get started

"What's a News Feed? What is the Timeline for?"

Everything you do in Facebook is posted to your Timeline, a personal home page that shows what you've posted - including links to websites, photos you've uploaded and games you've played. When your Timeline is updated, your friends see the update.

Adding content to the Timeline is easy. You can change the cover photo, the big image that appears at the top of the Timeline; you can upload a photo by tapping on the Photo button in your News Feed; you can add details of where you work; or you might post details of your political or religious affiliations.

Beware of oversharing, though: unless you specify otherwise, your friends can see everything you publish.

You can find friends in three ways: by typing somebody's name in the search field at the top of the menu bar; by importing your contacts list from your email account; or by inviting them to join Facebook by sending a message from the Invite Friends page.

Once you've found someone, you need to tap Add Friend. This sends a request to the person, and if they accept it you'll be able to see each other's updates, tap on Like to say you like something they've posted, or tap on Comment to add a comment underneath it.

You can send each other private messages by using the Messages feature in the Facebook app, or by starting a chat session, provided the Facebook client you're using supports it. You can also tag your friends when you upload photos: when you upload the images, you'll see the Tag Photo button. Tap on that, then type the name of the person you want to tag into the search bar. Your friend will now get a link to the photo you've tagged them in.

Experienced

"I know uploading and tagging. What else can I do?"

Uploading and tagging individual photos is fun, but Facebook can do much more with your pics. When you upload photos or videos to your Timeline, you can organise them into albums and set the appropriate privacy level, so for example you might want to share your shots with the entire world, or just with your friends but not their friends.

If you choose the Custom option, you can tell Facebook to hide your photos from specific individuals. Some of this can only be done from the main Facebook web interface, and not from the app, which is a shame.

When you're browsing an image in one of your albums, tapping the Share button (the arrow coming out of the box) lets you tag people in the photo, hide tags, make an image your profile picture, or delete an image you have in Facebook.

Facebook Events lets you arrange anything from birthday parties to business meetings. If you tap Events in the menu bar in the app, you'll see any events you've been invited to, as well as your friends' birthdays.

If you're in the web interface on the desktop, you can click the Create Event button to add your own. Simply give the event a name, place and time, set the privacy level and then invite the friends you hope will attend. Once you've done that, Facebook automatically creates a page for the event where people can RSVP, comment, upload photos or anything else they fancy.

Places aren't just used for events: you can attach them to your status updates by tapping on the Location icon underneath the "What's on your mind?" box when you tap Status in New Feed so that everybody can see where you are. You can also just use the Check In button to say where you are without the message.

This is about to get more interesting, because in June Facebook accidentally switched on a new feature called Find Friends Nearby, which, as the name suggests, lets you see which of your Facebook friends are in the area. The feature was quickly switched off again, but we reckon it'll be back shortly, unless something even bigger is planned!

We mentioned oversharing earlier. If you find that some people post far too much stuff, you can use the desktop web interface to click on the little arrow at the top right of their posts. This brings up a menu that enables you to mute all their updates, or mute everything but the important stuff. The more people you connect with, the more useful that little arrow becomes. We hope this option will come to the iOS apps soon as it's just the sort of thing we could all do with!

Advanced

"I want more control over what my friends can see."

The real secret of successful Facebooking lies in its Privacy Settings screen. At its simplest, options such as How You Connect enable you to control the big stuff, such as who can send you messages and friend requests, but you can also use lists. You can only create lists in the desktop web interface, not the app.

To create a list, go to your Timeline, look for the Friends section in the sidebar, hover over it and click More. You should now see the Close Friends list and a big Create List button.

Lists can be very handy: for example, you might create a list of work colleagues and then go into Privacy Settings > Timeline and Tagging to prevent them from seeing photos you've been tagged in, just in case they see anything you'd rather they didn't. To change those settings, click on the appropriate dropdown (it's set to Friends by default) and choose Custom. Now choose a list in the 'Hide this from these people or lists' box.

People aren't the only privacy concerns: some apps are rather keen on sharing things too, plastering your Timeline (and therefore your friends' Facebook feeds) with everything you read, listen to or watch online.

To control what apps can and can't do, go to Privacy Settings > Ads, Apps and Websites. Here, you can block unwanted or unused apps and prevent your friends' apps from accessing information you don't really want to share.

Sometimes, of course, you do want to share, and one of the best ways to do that is in groups. To create a new one, click on Create Group (not available in the app). You can now use the edit button to add a description, invite members, set poll questions and manage memberships.

Find new social networks

From networking to sharing fashion favourites, mobile apps can help you find, connect and share things with all kinds of interesting people.

If you like video, you'll love Viddy

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch

The Wall Street Journal described the video sharing service Viddy as "like Twitter for videos", and we that's a great comparison: like Twitter, you can follow people's updates without having to get their permission, and like Twitter, brevity is strictly enforced.

In much the same way tweets can't exceed 140 characters, Viddy videos can't be longer than 15 seconds. That restriction encourages filmmakers to get to the point, making Viddy perfect for a quick hit of culture, comedy or quirkiness.

The Viddy app resembles a mash-up of multiple social apps: there are Instagram-style special effects, YouTube-style tagging, likes and commenting, and integrated uploading. The app enables you to shoot, edit and share short clips in several useful ways.

If you like food, you'll love Forkly

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch

Forkly is a wonderful app for foodies, but it's only as good as the people using it - so at the moment it's absolutely fantastic if you're in America, but a bit less useful in the UK. Let's change that by getting everybody we know to sign up and use it, because it's a great idea that we really want to succeed.

The idea behind Forkly is very simple: when you're out for a meal, you can snap and share photos of what you're having and tell the world what you thought of it. There are even Instagram-style filters to show your pudding in the best possible light.

Forkly is a kind of Hitchhiker's Guide to Dinner, enabling you to discover where to go, what to have and what isn't worth paying over the odds for, and you can follow individual users' updates if you discover they have similar tastes to you.

If you like reading, you'll love Opuss

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad

"Twitter isn't about words," Opuss's developers say. "It's a communication utility." And you should see what they say about Facebook.

Opuss, though, is all about words: big words and little ones, big ideas and little observations. You might have an angry rant or a little poem, a shaggy dog story or a silly joke: they're all grist to Opuss's mill.

Opuss is a social network for sharing words. Rather than publish to a blog, Tumblr or similar service where it might only be seen by a handful of people, when you share something using the Opuss app you're sharing it with other Opuss users - and they can give you feedback or just make you happy by following your updates.

It's a fast and fun way to find interesting snippets, and the search feature is particularly good, enabling you to search by kind and category, such as stories about animals.

If you like weather, you'll love Weathermob

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch

Here in Tap!'s native UK, we get more weather in a day than many Californians see in a lifetime - and that means Weathermob could well be the perfect app for these rain-lashed isles. It's like Facebook or Twitter where the only topic of conversation is the weather: what the weather forecast says, what's happening right now, and whether you were caught in it when you were going to the shops.

The app connects to Facebook and Twitter so you can post to your feed. It's not the sort of app you'll spend all day using, but as a fun, human-powered alternative to the default app.

If you like photography, you'll love Instagram

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch

Instagram has more than 50 million users, guaranteeing your photos a much wider audience than any of its imitators.

Although Instagram has all the basic social network features you don't have to use it if you don't want to: it's quite possible to use its integration with Flickr, Facebook and Twitter to post to those services instead.

Many people do just that, because the app itself comes with a range of retro-themed filters that produce really great results. In the right hands - yours - Instagram can make good photos even better, accurately mimicking old cameras.

If you like TV, you'll love zeebox

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad

According to Stephen Fry, "zeebox may change everything about the way we watch TV forever." That's a pretty bold claim, but then zeebox is a pretty clever app.

If you've ever been on Twitter when there's been a big TV event, or tuned into hashtags such as #bbcqt when Question Time is on, you'll know that lots of people enjoy watching live TV while ranting about it on social networks. This app takes that idea and runs with it, providing a guide not just to what's on but what people are saying as they watch it.

The app includes group chat, the ability to invite your friends to an online 'viewing party', and the obligatory social network sharing, and you can even use it to control a compatible TV or TiVo (but not Sky, at least for now).

If you like music, you'll love Soundcloud

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad

This music-sharing service has become very popular with artists, partly because it's a great way to promote music in a world of evil internet pirates, and it's often used by big-name acts to show off upcoming releases.

But you don't need to be a pop star to post: Soundcloud will happily host any sound you care to upload, whether it's your own composition or that really odd noise the washing machine's been making recently.

The app enables you to record and share sounds not just with Soundcloud, but on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and foursquare, and as you'd expect, there are the obligatory buttons to like and comment on other people's contributions.

The app offers background playback, too, so you can listen to tunes while doing something else.

If you like meeting people, you'll love Meetup

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch

"Use the internet to get off the internet," Meetup urges, and its app is designed to help you do just that. A meetup is a real-life meeting between people with similar interests, and the service is free to use (although meeting organisers have to pay a small fee).

Meetups can be about absolutely anything and the service is very popular: for example, within five miles of Tap! towers, the most active current meetups are for hillwalking, culture tours, mountain biking, girls' nights outs, film buffs, table-top role-playing games, French speakers, fiction writers and people who believe that they can fire invisible magic energy beams to make people's piles disappear.

There are multiple Meetup apps in the App Store, but the official one is the best one by far.

If you like business networking, you'll love LinkedIn

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad

As the old saying goes, it's not what you know but who you know that matters - and with LinkedIn, you can build an enormous network featuring everybody you've ever worked with or worked for.

Your LinkedIn profile can be a kind of living online CV, with details of your skills, the jobs you've had and the nice things employers have said about you, and you can use the network to stay in touch with former colleagues, to boost your profile or to stay on top of industry developments.

There are some nice touches including synchronisation with iOS's Calendar app and a Flipboard-style news feed based on your connections' updates, and the iPad app's a much nicer way to use the service than LinkedIn's own website. It's just a shame you can't edit your own profile in the app.

If you like following friends, you'll love Flipboard

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad

Where most social networks are all about sharing your things with other people, Flipboard takes the opposite approach: it's all about catching up with the things other people are sharing.

Describing itself as a social magazine, Flipboard enables you to mix the content your friends are sharing online with content from professional publishers such as the New York Times, creating a kind of 'Daily Me' newspaper that's unique to you.

New kinds of content are added all the time, and at the time of writing Flipboard can show content your friends have shared on Facebook, images from Instagram, links and photos from Twitter, YouTube videos, Google Reader feeds, LinkedIn updates, Soundcloud music, 500px photos, Tumblr posts… if your friends use it, Flipboard can probably connect to it.

If you like clever people, you'll love Quora

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch

Yahoo! Answers' good results tend to be ignored in favour of the dimmer bulbs who use it to ask silly things - but Quora is a very different proposition. It's a kind of social network for smart people, where everybody's encouraged to share their expertise and nobody can hide behind a pseudonym.

What makes Quora special is the kind of people who use it. Want to know what it's like working at Apple? Ex-Apple employees will spill the beans. Need to know cool things to do in New York? New Yorkers will tell you. Unsure what LIBOR means and why Barclays were messing with it? Banking experts will enlighten you.

From the important to the utterly inconsequential, if you want to know more about something the Quora app is one of the best ways to find out.

If you like fashion, you'll love WIWT

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch

WIWT (What I Wore Today) is a social network for fashion fans, enabling you to take a photo of your outfit, tag it with details of what you're wearing and who designed it, and share it with the world.

WIWT is about exploring as well as showing off: you can explore the looks your friends and the wider WIWT community have uploaded, see the editors' favourites, and flag up anything you really fancy for yourself.

Many users also provide links so that you can buy the things you see on screen. As you might expect, the community is largely pretty young things who'd look good in bin bags, let alone designer gear, but the only no-nos are: "Under 13s, slaggy porno types and people who just wanna write 'YOU UGLY'".

Location-based social networking

Every iOS device is location aware, and that opens up all kinds of possibilities. Location-based social networks can help you find what matters to you.

Every iOS device knows where it is, and you can use that information in all kinds of ways: for example, you can ask the Siri-style app Evi to find you the nearest cash machine (and Siri too, when it's updated for iOS 6 this Autumn), or you can use a sat-nav app to find out where the nearest petrol station is.

Where location really comes into its own, though, is when it involves other people. The king of location-based social networking is Foursquare, which encourages you to 'check in' to places such as restaurants, cinemas, cafes and anywhere else you might find interesting. When you check in, you can then add content, such as a photo of the building, a tip about finding free Wi-Fi, or your review of the food.

That information then enables other people to benefit from your expert advice, and it also enables your friends to see what you've been up to (and vice versa: you can see what other people have said about the places you're going to). You can even use it as a game, earning badges as you achieve a certain number of check-ins.

Gowalla - one of Foursquare's biggest rivals - was snapped up by Facebook, which now wants you to use their own Places. This enables you to check in and tell your friends where you are. You can also tag your friends, provided they haven't changed their privacy settings to prevent you doing that.

Places hasn't had much attention recently, but when the accidentally leaked Find Friends Nearby feature reappears, it should be great for big nights out or for finding your friends if you get separated at big sporting events or gigs.

Not everybody wants to share their location, of course. In Settings, Location Services enables you to specify which apps can use your location data; you can also turn location services off altogether if you're pretending to be off sick when you're really at the beach.

Location recording

Your iOS device's GPS system can also help other apps, too. When you take a photo using Instagram, it can record where you were when you took the shot, enabling you to organise your photos by location as well as by date; location-aware apps such as NearMe can find anything from the nearest ATM to the nearest ASDA, while Localmind can tell you what's interesting in the immediate area; and apps such as Yelp can tell you not only where the nearest restaurant is, but whether you should stock up on Immodium before you go.

You can even use location awareness to discover stories: if you're in London, the clever Hackney Hear uses locations to trigger audio content such as poems and local residents' memories. In the long term, the combination of iOS 6's Passbook and location awareness could mean that your iPhone pings with useful special offers such as discounts or money-off deals as you get close to a coffee shop, restaurant or retailer.

Location-aware apps are very useful, but keep an eye on your battery indicator: Location Services are a famous battery drain, so if you need battery life more than you need location awareness, it's a good idea to switch them off. It's fun to watch your real-time progress when walking in Maps, but it'll murder the battery.

Join Social communities

People love to share the things that inspire, excite and delight them - and thanks to technology, we can share those things with the whole world. Most social networking is based around a simple idea: connect with the people you know, and then share things with them.

Sometimes, though, that happens in reverse, with the sharing coming first and the getting-to-know-you happening later. A great example of that kind of social sharing is Tumblr, which at the time of writing has 26.2 billion posts across 62.1 million blogs.

People upload whatever they're interested in - photographs of interesting things, links to interesting websites, funny or dramatic videos or just their favourite tunes - and share them with other Tumblr users.

Where things get interesting is when content is reposted, so for example you might post something we really like, so we repost it on our Tumblr page; someone who reads our Tumblr might see it, like it and repost it with a comment, and so on. Tumblr also enables you to add question-and-answer posts, where you ask your visitors things or vice versa.

So what exactly is a Tumblr? It's short for 'tumblog', which is a kind of weblog, or blog for short. Blogs are places where people publish whatever they fancy, and where traditional blogs revolve around long-ish articles, tumblogs are simpler and faster: instead of long written pieces, tumblogs favour bite-sized content such as photos, quick comments, quotes and so on, often posted without any explanation or commentary.

Where traditional blogs say 'here's what I think', tumblelogs say 'look at this!' - and that makes them particularly well suited to mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads.

Another excellent 'look at this!' service is Pinterest, which is designed to help you 'organise and share all of the beautiful things you find on the web'. And which, according to website monitoring firm Pingdom, has now overtaken Tumblr to become the world's third favourite social network (Facebook and Twitter are numbers one and two respectively).

Its growth has been extraordinary - industry analyst comScore says its website traffic grew 4,377% from May 2011 to May 2012 - and it's just beginning to expand globally.

Pinterest is popular because it's very easy to use, and very flexible. It's a virtual pinboard where you can stick or 'pin' anything at all: recipes, patterns you like, things you think are beautiful, photos of your favourite actors, funny quotes or anything else you might like to collect.

Pinterest boards are designed to be shared and commented on, and if people enjoy what you're posting, they can follow your updates either on a global basis, where they see everything you update, or on a per-board basis, so they only see the updates you post to a specific board.

At the time of writing, there's an official Pinterest app for iPhone and iPod touch, but no iPad one; as you might expect, developers have been quick to spot the gap and create their own iPad apps, such as Flow for Pinterest.

Photo-sharing

Instagram offers another way to get social: not only can you follow other interesting users, but you can meet up with them in real life. If you visit meetup.com/instagram, you can find 'InstaMeets' where like-minded users can meet up for a chat and some photo-related fun.

Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram aren't the only places that emphasise the 'what' of sharing rather than the 'who'. There are content-specific sharing sites such as Flickr for photos, Photosynth for 3D panoramas, Viddy for video, ShareMyPlaylists for Spotify playlists or Goodreads for books, and there are also sites such as MetaFilter, Fark and Reddit where people compete to post the most interesting links to news stories and other online content.

The best such sites are moderated, with super-users known as moderators or 'mods' given the power to intervene if conversations go off the rails or if the posted links aren't appropriate or presented in the right way.

That moderation keeps the standard of posts very high, so for example MetaFilter - with moderators that are generally firm but fair - is a reliably excellent way to find and discuss interesting stories and links, while Fark is a good source of quirky news stories and geeky humour.

We've mentioned Tumblogs and community weblogs, but there are plenty of normal blogs, too - and some of the best tools for taking part in blogging are available as iOS apps. Google has released an iPhone app for its popular Blogger.com platform, and there's a dedicated app for the more powerful rival TypePad too, while the superb WordPress for iOS is a firm favourite: if you start a blog on the free WordPress.com service you can use the app to post content to it, and if you'd rather download and install the free WordPress blogging platform on your own web space, the app can be used to control that, too.

You don't have to stick with the default apps for your chosen blogging platform: the excellent Blogsy for iPad works with all the major platforms - Blogger, Posterous, TypePad, Movable Type, Drupal and Joomla - and makes it easy to drag and drop images and videos from Flickr, Google's Picasa and YouTube for photo and video sharing.

If you're active on multiple social platforms, the Posterous Spaces app enables you to post not just to Posterous, but to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogger, Tumblr and more. It's a post once, post everywhere arrangement: once you've given your various credentials to Posterous, it automatically updates each service with your latest post.

The best apps for sharing with communities

Tumblr

A better way to blog on your tumblr account

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch

Tumblr's 'tumblog' approach - quick nuggets of information, images and videos posted with little or no explanation or comment - is perfect for mobile devices such as the iPhone, and the official Tumblr app makes uploading content to your Tumblr as simple as possible.

Features include the ability to save draft versions, queuing posts for uploading later and super-speedy access to the camera, and the app works offline: if you can't get an internet connection, you can still write posts and compose replies for example.

Pinterest

Pin things in seconds with this useful companion app

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch

The fastest-growing social network in the world might not be as big as Facebook, but it's much, much better looking: Pinterest is a primarily visual network where you can 'pin' interesting images on any subject you like, from wedding ideas or decorating inspiration to funny things you've seen on the internet.

That visual focus lends itself really well to the iPhone, enabling you to quickly snap and share anything you see when you're out and about, and it's easy to re-pin other people's uploads to your own Pinterest pinboards.

Blogsy

A clever blogging tool for a variety of platforms

Price: £2.99 / $4.99
Works with: iPad

Blogsy supports all the major blogging platforms and even supports email posting, enabling you to create content in Blogsy for any platform that email posting.

You can drag and drop images and videos from social networks, add hyperlinks by dragging and dropping, style links with ease and even manage multiple blogs. The app supports scheduled posts, drafts and editing online posts.

GoodReads

The online equivalent of a giant book club

Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad

Goodreads is all about the written word: with more than 8.7 million members talking about 300 million books, it's the world's biggest book-based social network.

The app offers a good mix of online and virtual networking, with the ability to follow friends' reading lists and reviews as well as details of real-life literary events and the option to join online book clubs to take your reading further.

Social networking privately

Social networking isn't just about sharing everything you do with everybody you know. Some networks are designed to share the things with smaller groups.

Social networks such as Facebook would really like it if you shared everything with everybody, but that's often overkill: a quick look around anybody's Facebook feed will quickly demonstrate people sharing stuff that's interesting to only a few of their friends.

You can restrict what you share with whom using Facebook's lists or Google+'s Circles, but that takes a bit of effort to set up and a bit of thought to remember to limit your audience. It's much easier to use a social network that only a few of your friends actually use - not least because Facebook's frequent privacy changes often mean that content you thought was private suddenly isn't.

Path is the poster child for more limited sharing, and it's a kind of Facebook for your family and/or closest friends. It's like a cross between a journal and a social network, enabling you to share anything that matters: photos of the sights you're seeing, maps of where you are, the music you're listening to, or whatever you happen to be thinking about.

"We believe most stories are meant to be shared with your closest friends and family, not with 500 random acquaintances," say the developers of Everyme, and their app enables you to create Circles for private, secure text, photo and video sharing. Where services such as Facebook and Google+ are public by default, Everyme has no public setting at all: your stuff isn't shared with anybody until you give the app your say-so.

In a nice touch; your friends or family don't need the app to see what you do decide to share: Everyme can share content with anyone, provided you have an email or mobile number.

Group hug

Some apps are designed for even smaller social circles. Cupple and Pair are two approaches to the same idea: social networking for couples. If you've ever despaired at your friends' online declarations of love in their Facebook or Twitter feeds, you'll see the appeal immediately: these apps enable you to share photos, reminisce about the past or call each other snookums without appalling everybody else you know.

You could achieve something similar with iMessage, of course, but not to the same extent: Cupple pulls together not just messages and pictures, but location-based check-ins and places you'd like to go. It's particularly good for couples that have to travel far from one another, and it uses push notifications so you'll always know when there's a new message from your other half.

23Snaps is another variation on the theme, this time for parents. The app can use your Facebook account to find your friends and family, but sharing takes place purely inside 23Snaps - so your baby photos and updates won't be posted to your Facebook timeline or shared with anybody you haven't approved.

You don't need to be part of a couple to benefit from private social sharing. Glassboard's approach to privacy is simple: everything is private, and nobody can access the content you share, unless you specifically invite them. That makes it a useful tool for group sharing, while apps such as Liveshare make it easy to share photographs - although when iOS 6 ships, its shared photo streams will use iCloud to do much the same thing.  

Source: techradar.com

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