Police Department Jumps on Social Media Bandwagon

From Ashton Kutcher to Starbucks to the White House, social media tools are being used by everyone who’s anyone these days. Joining the growing crowd is the Dallas Police Department (DPD). The Dallas Morning News reports that the department will soon be disseminating information through the microblogging service Twitter.

In an interview with the paper, DPD spokesman Lt. Andy Harvey said, “We want to keep our citizens informed of what’s going on in our city and how it can be used as a crime fighting tool.”

In addition to using Twitter, the police department will be using another platform called Nixle to send alerts via the web or text messages. Similar to Facebook and Twitter, Nixle is considered to be a more “standardized, secure and certified communication platform.”

DPD plans to send out crime alerts, meeting notices and event information. According to the paper, other major police departments that have started using Twitter include the Baltimore Police Department and the Boston Police Department.

National Guard embraces social media

While some branches of the U.S. military such as the Marine Corps have placed significant restrictions on the use of social media networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter by troops, the National Guard has embraced these new communications tools. A recent article from the National Guard Bureau details exactly how National Guard members from enlisted men through top brass are embracing social media as a valuable new communications tool.

Not only does the National Guard have pages on social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, but many National Guard troops and officers are using the site to communicate with the outside world. For example, Gen. Craig McKinley recently posted the following update on his Twitter page after a recent round of exercises:

“Just shot my first rounds from a M1A1 Main Battle Tank. Killed 3 of 4 targets. Best Tank on the planet!”

National Guard spokespeople say that embracing social media has two main benefits: it increases their visibility with potential new recruits and lets them tell their side of the story instead of having someone else do it for them. And the National Guard is seeing results: views of their Web page have doubled in recent months after they began more aggressively pursuing social media network as part of their overall outreach initiative.

Facebook Updates Search

Facebook has announced that a new version of Search is now available for everyone on the popular social networking site. Facebook members can now search the last 30 days of their News Feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by friends and the Facebook Pages.

The new search feature allows users to search more types of content that are being shared on the site. For example, users can find out friends’ evening plans and recently frequented restaurants by searching for “dinner.” Or, users can query “economy” to find out what people or news sources are saying about the economy. Users can also search for a company or product to learn what other people think about a particular brand or product.

Engineer manager Akhil wrote on the company blog, “To search for a particular term, just enter your query in the search box in the upper-right corner of any page. Once you’re taken to the search results, use the filters on the left-hand side of the page to view only posts by friends or posts by everyone. If you’re searching for a specific person, Page, group or application, you also can filter by those results.”

Facebook members can expect the new changes to be implemented over the course of the next few days.

Is Facebook Acquisition of FriendFeed Really a Talent Grab?

In a move with major ramifications throughout the social media network industry, Facebook announced on Monday that it has acquired FriendFeed, the online activity aggregator that combines news updates from major social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Flickr into one feed.

While FriendFeed has received significant hype in the tech community, it failed to gain a strong foothold with the general public. As Mashable.com notes, their traffic numbers have remained stagnant while the popularity of Twitter and Facebook have exploded, suggesting that the FriendFeed founders decided now is a nice time to sell out.

In fact, CNET.com speculates that this was primarily an acquisition of FriendFeed’s talent, fitting with Facebook’s past modus operandi. Of particular interest would be co-founders Bret Taylor, who was the product manager who launched Google Maps and Paul Buchheit, the engineer who developed Gmail.

In fact, there is significant overlap between FriendFeed and some of the recent additions to the Facebook service, raising questions about the long-term viability of FriendFeed as a standalone product. Taylor’s quote that “FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team” did little to quell speculation that the end of FriendFeed as a product may be near.

Three Time-Saving Social Media Tools

With so many social media services like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and others, it’s surprising that users have the patience to update each of these sites separately. According to PC World, however, there are many new tools called social media aggregators that allow users to keep track of the streams from any and all of the most popular social networking sites—all in one location.

Although there have been a slew of social media aggregators in recent years, writes Adam Pash, many of them don’t always do the job. The following are three that, according to PC World, “fulfill the promise of social media aggregation most completely: Streamy, Flock, and FriendFeed.”

Streamy: A single Web site that brings all of your favorite social media sites to one place as well as features blogs and instant messaging tools.

Flock: A desktop application or Web browser that integrates seamlessly with over 20 social media sites, including Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, and Gmail.

FriendFeed: One of the first social media aggregators, FriendFeed brings together 58 different social services updates.

ESPN and Marines place restrictions on social media

On the surface, ESPN and the U.S. Marine Corps don’t seem to have much in common. But this week they both took stances against or limiting social media usage. ESPN sent out a memo to its employees with guidelines limiting how they can use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to communicate with sports fans. Meanwhile, the Marines renewed a one-year ban on social media networking sites, citing security reasons.

In the order announcing the ban, the Marines pointed out that “these internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries,” and also “exposes unnecessary information to adversaries.”

While ESPN didn’t cite enemies such as Fox Sports in its memo, they did give their staff instructions, albeit extremely vague one, on how to use social networking tools. Beyond reminding staff to “assume at all times you are representing ESPN,” the cable network also told talent that “if you wouldn’t say it on the air or write it in your column, don’t tweet it.” This is a much less restrictive policy than had earlier been speculated on, following ESPN basketball analyst Ric Bucher’s Tweet earlier in the day that the network was “prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN.”

Our CEO, Pierre Zarokian, to Speak on Social Media Marketing

Our CEO, Pierre Zarokian, will be speaking on Social Media Marketing on August 6, 2009 at Tech Super Club in Santa Monica, CA.

Topics he will cover will include: major social media sites and usage stats; in depth look of Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin; Twitter Automation Tools; Social Bookmarking; Blog Strategies and more.

For more info visit:

http://www.techsupperclub.com/Social_Media_August_6.html

Twitter Search FireFox Add-ons

Recently, Ann Smarty of Search Engine Journal wrote about three new Twitter Search FireFox Add-ons. While still in the experimental stage, these tools are sure to enhance the Twitter Search experience for just about everyone.

· Twitter Search with Suggestions: Install this add-on to experience live search suggestions as you type your query. It is used through FireFox search plugins.

· Clean Tweets: This tool eliminates any tweets from accounts that are less than 24 hours old, tweets that have been mentioned three or more times, and tweets by users you manually specify. Basically, this tool is designed to eliminate spam while using Twitter Search, including malware and porn sites.

Twiogle Search Toolbar: This tool allows users to combine Google with Twitter search. Install it as a toolbar and enjoy the option of searching with either Twitter Search or Google, or both at the same time.

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