LinkedIn for BlackBerry Now Available

LinkedIn has announced the launch of LinkedIn for Blackberry v1.0, available for download from both the LinkedIn Web site and the BlackBerry App World.

“Now, you can walk into any interview, any customer engagement or client meeting with the ability to look up the details on over 60 million professionals worldwide, in real-time,” said Product Manager at LinkedIn Chad Whitney.

Along with featuring six modules specifically designed for BlackBerry devices, the new app also offers other features including the ability to integrate your LinkedIn connections with your BlackBerry address book, view LinkedIn invitations and messages directly in your BlackBerry Inbox, and view the LinkedIn profile on your BlackBerry calendar.

The LinkedIn for Blackberry app supports the Tour, Curve, and Bold devices running Blackberry OS v4.3 or later.

Kim Kardashian “Pimpin’” with Friends Draws Twitter Ire of Demi Moore

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that two celebrities are engaged in a Twitter war: all over the use of the word “pimp.” According to the report, Demi Moore and Kim Kardashian have exchanged a war of Tweets that started when Kardashian posted in a picture from a celebrity event that she was “Big pimpin’” with tennis champ Serena Williams, DJ La La Vazquez and singer Kelly Rowland.

It all seems harmless enough, but Moore took offense at the use of the word “pimp” and fired off a response to Kardashian’s Tweet that read “No disrespect I love a girls’ night out but a pimp and pimping is nothing more than a slave owner! If we want to end slavery we need to stop glorifying the ‘pimp’ culture.”

The two traded Tweets back and forth before agreeing to disagree on the subject. So keep this in mind when you Tweet — Demi Moore is watching you!

Manager of Teen Heartthrob Justin Beiber Arrested Over Twitter Riot

The manager of teen heartthrob Justin Beiber turned himself into police on Wednesday to face charges that he was responsible for causing a riot by not distributing news fast enough through Twitter that the singer would miss a scheduled appearance at the Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island in November. According to The Associated Press, some of the more than 3,000 fans who showed up for an autograph refused to leave and became rowdy. In all, five people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

Scott “Scooter” Braun, 28, faces up to one year in jail if convicted of charges of reckless endangerment, criminal nuisance and endangering the welfare of a child. Nassau County police say that Braun contributed to the unruly scene by sending out a Tweet from Beiber’s account stating “On my way to Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island, NY to sign and meet fans! I’m pumped. See u there.”

James Roppo, a senior vice president at Beiber’s label Island Def Jam, was also arrested in connection with the botched appearance. Police had asked both he and Braun to send out a Twitter message informing the crowd that the event was canceled, but authorities say no message was sent.

“My mother and I are 100 percent behind my manager,” the 16-year-old singing sensation said in a statement released to The Associated Press on Wednesday night. “He is someone of high moral character and principle. The decisions he made that day were to protect the safety of myself and my fans and I am very thankful to have someone in my life who watches over me the way Scooter does.”

Facebook Warns Users of Latest Hoax Email

Facebook last week warned its users about another spoofed email that is being circulated around the popular social networking site. According to Facebook Security, the latest spoofed email asks the user to open an attachment in order to receive a new password.

“This email is fake. Delete it from your inbox, and warn your friends. Remember that Facebook will never send you a new password in an attachment,” said the message from Facebook Security.

Twitter Causes More Problems for Chicago White Sox

The Chicago White Sox again were forced to deal with a Twitter-based controversy involving manager Ozzie Guillen. Two weeks ago team officials asked Guillen to tone down his posts on his Twitter account; now the Chicago Sun-TimesM reports that the team has ended its relationship with Guillen’s son Oney - who worked in the player development department - after a series of negative comments he made about team management.

It started when Oney Guillen, 24, ripped the food and service at The Market, a restaurant owned by White Sox General Manager (and frequent foe of his father) Kenny Williams. He said the restaurant had “hands down” the “worst food in the city.” This led the elder Guillen to ask his son to resign, but it didn’t stop Oney from continuing to make inflammatory posts talking about “3 geeks who never played baseball a day in there life” (sic), referring to Williams and other front-office staff.

Oney Guillen appeared on a Chicago sports talk show yesterday despite his father telling him not to, leading to harsh words from Ozzie.

”I do mind,” Ozzie Guillen said. ”I’m the last person that can tell people what to say. In the meanwhile, he put some people on the spot. I know for a fact that this will be the last time he talks about this because I still have a little power over my kids.

”He said what he had to say, maybe people don’t like what he said, it can go either way. I just told him it’s over with, you expressed yourself, you took this thing off your chest.”

LinkedIn Enhances Job-Matching Feature

LinkedIn today unveiled a new real-time profile matching feature, making it easier for users to be matched with the right job opportunities and hiring managers and recruiters to find qualified candidates.

According to the announcement, the new beta feature–which is automatically included with very job posting on LinkedIn–uses proprietary technology to locate the best candidates from over 60 million professionals. Job posters are then presented with up to 24 qualified matches in a new, business card-style format. Managers and recruiters can easily view qualified profiles and contact the best applicants for the job.

Facebook Tops Google in Monthly U.S. Web Traffic

Google has finally been knocked off its throne as the king of Internet destinations — at least temporarily. The San Jose Mercury News reports that for the week ending March 13, social media site Facebook surpassed Google for the first time in visitors in the United States. According to Experian Hitwise, Facebook accounted for 7.07 percent of all Web traffic during the week, compared to 7.03 percent for Google.

According to the numbers, Facebook added roughly 100 million users between September 2009 and February 2010 and now has 400 million active users.

“The key trend to think about here is people are spending more time talking to and interacting with each other,” said Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at the Altimeter Group in San Mateo and author of the blog Web Strategy. “This does impact Google because people may be making decisions by listening and talking to each other rather than using traditional search avenues.”

New Version of LinkedIn for IPhone

LinkedIn today announced that Apple has released LinkedIn for IPhone v3.1, an updated version of the v.3.0 app that was released in December 2009. Available now in the iTunes App Store, the new v3.1 app includes over a dozen small feature enhancements including an easier way to navigate through connections and mark Favorites and the ability to set your status directly from your profile page.

Although LinkedIn is in the process of developing a large number of bigger improvements, the company chose to focus the recent changes primarily on making the application “faster and more stable for people with large networks.”

Since its launch in December 2009, the number of active users of the application has tripled.

Twitter Launches @anywhere

During his keynote speech at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas yesterday, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams announced a new set of frameworks called @anywhere. PC World says that similar to Facebook Connect or Google Friend Connect, @anywhere aims to let third-party sites put technological “hooks” into Twitter and let people connect to their sites through their Twitter accounts.

@anywhere will make it easier for partners to add the “Hovercards” - the mini user profiles that you see pop up on Twitter - to their sites via simple Javascript code. A launch date has not been set, but a post on the Twitter blog lists a wide range of initial partners including Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo! and YouTube.

Facebook Unveils Intentions for New Office in India

Just one week after the social networking company announced plans to open a new office in Austin, Texas, Facebook announced intentions to launch another office in Hyderabad, India.

“The new offices come at a significant time in our international growth,” said Don Faul, Director of Global Online Operations at Facebook. “Seventy percent of the people using Facebook are outside the U.S. and are accessing the service from more than 70 languages.”

According to Faul there are more than eight million people in India actively connecting on Facebook. With multiple support centers in a variety of time zones, Facebook hopes to offer better round-the-clock, multi-lingual support for its more than 400 million users worldwide.

The new offices will house online sales and operations teams.

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