Gmail Inboxes More Social With Mingly Plug-In

Heartening — and social — news are coming to your Gmail inboxes. The source of the scoop is Mingly; and it’s actually the news itself. The self-dubbed “personal relationship management tool” was released as a plug-in for Gmail this week. Think of it as a way to unite, harmoniously, your social feeds and email messages — something that could be irremediably messy, à la Google Buzz, but isn’t, because it’s something totally different.

So, what goodies does this plug-in bring to the table? For starters, it’ll give you the ability to synch your Gmail and (webby) social contacts in a “social address book” of Mingly’s creation. Another thing is that once the tool is in place, and you’re composing an email, you’ll get to see the recipient’s updates and maybe even his or her self-written, character-limited biography. And something that can’t be glossed over is that among its rather substantive nifty features, Mingly will also let you send tweets and Facebook and LinkedIn messages from your Gmail inbox.

If you want Mingly for you Gmail, head over to www.getmingly.com and keep in mind that it works on Firefox and Chrome browsers. The same press release that announced the plug-in’s launch, also stated that Mingly’s makers were working to make their tool operational on other email services.

Read More:

http://ming.ly/mingly-launches-public-beta-and-makes-gmail-social/#more-471

Ashton Kutcher Hands Over His Twitter Account

Ashton Kutcher has just declared himself overwhelmed with the responsibility of managing his popular Twitter account. Today, the actor published a blog post acknowledging that the size of his following — 8 million and counting — demanded greater editorial supervision lest he became the unwitting source of misinformation. In his own words:

Up until today, I have posted virtually every one of my tweets on my own, but clearly the platform has become too big to be managed by a single individual.

He continued:

It seems that today that twitter has grown into a mass publishing platform, where ones tweets quickly become news that is broadcast around the world and misinformation becomes volatile fodder for critics.

The words came a day after releasing this jewel of a tweet: “How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste.” Kutcher got that 84-year-old Joe Paterno had been fired from his stint as Penn State’s football coach, but he didn’t catch the reason why. In 2002, Paterno did not inform the police about an eyewitness account he received concerning the possible sexual abuse of a minor at the hands of Jerry Sandusky, a perennial assistant coach for the University. Sandusky was arrested November 5th and charged with a long list of sexual crimes against minors.

Ashton is “going to turn the management of the feed over to [his] team at Katalyst as a secondary editorial measure, to ensure the quality of its content.” The actor’s mortification and subsequent action — stepping away from Twitter — makes sense if one recalls his outspoken engagement in the battle against human trafficking.

Read More:

http://aplusk.posterous.com/twitter-management

Disney Interactive Media and YouTube to Launch Joint Channel

Disney Interactive Media and YouTube have agreed to jointly invest a total of $10 million to $15 million to turn out original video material online. Disney will be in charge of production (big surprise, there!) while both companies will share distribution credits. As of now, the plan is to set up a shared channel on the Internet’s most famous Tube. Media outlets are announcing that the deal will be revealed November 14th. Apparently, the new channel will also broadcast amateur video content that posted to YouTube — expect said material to be preselected and preapproved by Disney’s meticulous censor-editors.

So what does each company stand to gain from the deal? Commentators have not been hesitant to note that “credibility” in terms of production and quality is not something YouTube is particularly rife with, and that it’s something Disney can generously bring to the table. In a related vein, Disney Interactive’s website itself has been suffering from depleted relevance and allure. To youngsters, it seems irremediably lackluster when compared with the unexpected, if not exactly fantastically filmed treasures of YouTube. But at the core of it all, it’s clear that both companies seek to improve their individual bottom lines by teaming up on this project.

Read More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/business/media/disney-and-youtube-make-a-video-deal.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Business World Says Hello to Google+ Pages

Google+ is now officially open for business and to business. Entrepreneurs who were pining for the missing, and increasingly important, social network in their consumer outreach portfolios can now stop holding their breath and create a new business online home asap. The business section of Google+ will go by the slightly retro moniker “Google+ Pages” — an echo of the still delivered, but rarely used, Yellow Pages. Google has made the new business tool available worldwide.

Businesses, brands, and organizations were initially excluded from Google+ because, by Google’s own account, the recently launched social network was not fully outfitted for engagement with those types of entities. Google was so strict on this rule that businesses that rushed to join saw their accounts abruptly terminated, posthaste. The doors are now open and music groups will also be delegated to Google+ Pages — All American Rejects are already set up there.

Along with the Pages, a new search feature has also been rolled out: Direct Connect. Direct Connect allows searchers to type in the plus sign [+] before the name of a band or business. The plus sign will zip users to that organization’s home in the Google+ Pages. For clarity’s sake, Google has also pointed out that its Pages now form part of Google search results.

Read More:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-pages-connect-with-all-things.html

LinkedIn’s First Stock Market Upset

LinkedIn, one of this year’s most prominent stock market darlings, has just made the acquaintance of the quarterly loss. Although the market showing must certainly come as a blow to company CEO Jeff Weiner and his team, they will still be able to keep a great deal of their bullish optimism because the loss wasn’t terribly precipitous, this time. Also, they’re experimenting major revenue increases and a stock market value that still doubles that of its initial public offering. Analysts’ forecasted that LinkedIn would see a greater loss, but the decline did not go beyond 8 percent. In all, the depreciation comprised $1.6 million. The company went public in May of this year.

On the brighter side, LinkedIn’s revenue performance bested the predictions that had been tossed around: the company’s revenue was twice that of last year’s. Also of note, the professionals’ social network has embarked on an increased spending plan to bolster development research. Still, investors are expected to remain tetchy because once November 21st rolls around, LinkedIn’s workers will be able to sell their shares; if too many decide to dump them at once, stocks will go down again. What’s on the horizon for LinkedIn? Selling more stocks and growing its member count and services.

Read More:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/11/linkedin-loss.html

In Order: Improved Sociability and Google+ Incorporation for YouTube

YouTube has been the property of Google for a good number of years now, but as its parent company reaches out for improved sociability and “sharing” features, the famed democratizing broadcaster of video content still has some maturation to undergo. To help YouTube achieve its full social potential, Google acquired the startup Fflick, along with its sharp development team. The goal is to have Fflick’s developers helm YouTube’s integration into Google+, the online behemoth’s newfangled social network.

Out of Fflick’s team of four developers, Ron Gorodetzky has been getting especially good press — Nathan Olivarez-Giles, a Los Angeles Times tech writer, recently profiled him. In the piece, Gorodetzky says that selling Fflick to Google, a mere six months after launching it, was not a decision he took lightly. Google zeroed in on Fflick’s ability to take social data and content — like tweets and online conversations about movies — to create useful applications. Fflick’s most prominent product was a movie recommendation website based on just such materials.

Although Gorodetzky did not divulge any technical details of how the integration of YouTube was going, he did mention that his bosses were trying to extract more useful information form YouTube comments. He also made it clear that Google had most definitely turned its focus to “sharing.”

Read More:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/11/fflick-google-plus-youtube-ron-gorodetzky.html

Highbrow Socialbots Infiltrate Facebook

Scholars at the University of British Columbia created 102 fake Facebook profiles to analyze security weakness of the world’s super social network. The fake profiles were socialbots or “automated software” that once introduced into Facebook could make friend requests and maintain a steady stream of updates. The droid activity is what conferred the guise of authenticity to the profiles. The academics published an interpretation of the experimental data obtained in a paper titled: “The Socialbot Network: When Bots Socialise for Fame and Money“; the credited authors are Yazan Boshmaf, Ildar Muslukhov, Konstantin Beznosov, and Matei Ripeanu.

So what did the learned folk find out about Facebook’s security? That it was quite susceptible to socialbot “infiltration.” The Canadian bots were able to friend a great number of people and gain access to users’ and the friended users’ friends’ personal intel: email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and even home addresses. In other words, they stated that identity theft was possible through Facebook reconnaissance missions.

In all, the researchers’ socialbot network tallied 8,570 outgoing friend requests, 3,055 friends, 46,000 email addresses, and 14,500 home addresses. Through the initial 3,055 friends made, the researchers gained access to details of 1,085,785 separate Facebook profiles.

Facebook responded to the publication stating that they had “serious concerns about the methodology of the research by the University of British Colombia,” and would be “putting these concerns to them.”

Read More:

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/11/01/socialbot-network-harvest-data-facebook/

http://allthingsd.com/20111102/researchers-infiltrate-facebook-through-mutual-friends/

On Facebook, Israel Writes in Arabic to Engage a Contentious Public

The men and women in charge of branding and marketing for Israel’s military are known for their active engagement in social media, but something they had not been particularly known for, at least not until very recently, was the generation of content written and produced in Arabic. Incredibly, this week didn’t just see Palestine voted into full membership at UNESCO, it also saw the public unveiling of the Israeli army’s first bona fide Arabic Facebook page. It’s set to join the ranks of the army’s official Arabic Twitter, YouTube channel, and the Israel Defense Forces’ official Arabic website.

The army’s updates on the world’s largest social network are intended to supply “approved public information” about its “activities in the Palestinian territories” and spark off interactive engagement with its readership — something the Israelis don’t expect to have much trouble with.

That Israel is providing military dispatches in the language of its famously disputatious brethren is being viewed by many as the country reaching out to the domestic and international Arabic-speaking community — most especially the great numbers that find themselves under new, if unresolved, leadership on account of this year’s phenomenal Arab Spring uprisings.

Maj. Avichay Adraee, spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, is credited with championing Arabic social engagement. He has referred to the need for Israel’s military to build a relationship of trust with the Arabic-speaking public — one that is “maintained on a daily basis” and that extends beyond times of crisis.

Read More:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/10/israeli-army-launches-arabic-facebook-page.html

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