Social Media and The Big W

Cash in Your Pocket for Location Check-ins: WeReward

While Foursquare is great fun for those looking to socially engage one another and find the occasional ‘Mayor’ special, WeReward is a rocketship of actual cash-based incentives waiting for savvy smartphone users to catch on. Launching at TechCrunch’s Disrupt, this application pays users directly through their PayPal account for doing things like ‘checking-in’ and ‘completing tasks.’

Facebook’s Social Plugins Video

Facebook just released a video explaining Facebook social plugins. It was immediately apparent that the video itself was created in a way that tries not to overwhelm the viewer with too much information, by using playful creative images to help illustrate the explanation.

Twitter Bans Sponsored Tweets

Twitter banned sponsored tweets this week. Literally, killing the business model for several profitable services currently offering tweets by celebrities and more. Twitters move appears strategic, in preparation for the rollout of their own advertising model, although they claim the move is to protect the integrity of the stream.

Updated Social Media Stats in Erik Qualman’s Social Media Revolution Video

With more than 1.8 million views on YouTube, Erik Qualman’s social media statistics video has now been refreshed with the new (and incredible) social media statistics. Qualman guest-authored for Social Media and the Big W in November, regarding ROI in social media. Here is his new video, with the updated numbers – to a great soundtrack, of course.

Social Media and Trust: Coca-Cola could have an advantage of 650 million people

As Facebook rolled out Open Graph (for those of you still behind on this – it basically pulls your public Facebook profile details into websites that you visit if those websites have Open Graph installed), it seemed to be a fittingly monumental initiative for the social media giant. Even with the ensuing backlash concerning privacy issues – the concept seemed to be a very progressive step towards the evolution of social media.

‘Become a Fan’ changing, Facebook Fan Pages will say ‘Like’

Facebook rolled out the change from ‘Become a Fan’ to ‘Like’ today. According to Christopher Heine, of Clickz.com, Facebook had communicated that their research pointed towards a higher level of comfort for Facebook users when ‘liking’ versus ‘becoming a fan.’

LinkedIn: More Relevant Than Ever

After a scary ride, during the meteoric rise of Facebook, LinkedIn seems to have made the right decisions – decisions that will keep it as the power player it deserves to be in social media. It’s faster, more useful, and a critical part of any business professionals activity.

Facebook Races Past Google, Brands Risk Becoming Irrelevant

If you didn’t happen to notice, Facebook just passed Google as the number 1 online destination in the U.S. for web users, according to Hitwise.

What does this mean? It means the rise of SMO (Social Media Optimization) and the continue competition between search engines and social media as a primary destination. It’s obvious that both social media, and search capability are important – who will be the first to find the perfect blend of the two technologies, making it seamless for users to find relevant, trustworthy information online through friends and resources?

How Geo-location in Social Media and Mobile Advertising Will Change Everything

Heard of Foursquare? No? Well, it isn’t going away anytime soon – especially when it can literally walk consumers directly through the front door for businesses. (Hint: it gets people to use their mobile phones to tell friends when and where they are – Starbucks, an Irish Pub – you name it) Heard of AdMob? No? Well, they were this teeny tiny mobile-advertising company one guy named Omar Hamoui started in January of 2006 – and Google announced in November that they agreed to acquire the firm for a breath-taking $750 million in stock.

Facebook Users: Get Ready to Share Your Location With Friends

That’s right. As Big W speculated at the beginning of this year – 2010 will be the year of ‘Where are you?’ and geo-location in social media. In fact, according to Nick Bilton of the New York Times, Facebook is planning to take the wraps off of it’s location-sharing feature at the f8 conference in late April. Are you ready to share your location on a map with your friends?