These are my links for December 23rd through December 24th:

• Why B2B companies should be using social media | Socialmedia.biz – Many B2B com­pa­nies ask me whether social media is right for them. This post is all about why social media and B2B go hand in hand.
• Social media & startups: It’s a different ballgame | Socialmedia.biz – I get asked a lot: “How do I make money off social media?” Uhmm, well, you use the magic wand of online web awe­some­ness, obvi­ously. Or maybe not. We have all read a mil­lion arti­cles point­ing us toward tools we should be using, things we should be con­sid­er­ing, and the best prac­tices we shouldn’t ignore. We get it: Social media is valu­able. I think by now we all under­stand the impor­tance of social media as a vis­i­bil­ity engine and viral mes­sage maker. It can be used to enable con­ver­sa­tions, announce infor­ma­tion, put out fires, and so on.

  It can do a lot. But it has lim­its. Ohhh buzz kill.

• 7 tips to increase your online media literacy | Socialmedia.biz – t’s become a tru­ism that we’re all media cre­ators now, from blog­gers and pod­cast­ers to the most wet-behind-the-feathers Twitterer.
• 5 ways to increase the reach of your blog or RSS feed | Socialmedia.biz – You may be los­ing out on oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve the reach of your RSS feed or blo
• DDoS Attack Takes Down Amazon, Wal-Mart – If you’ve been doing some last-minute Amazon holiday shopping on Wednesday evening, you’ve probably noticed that Amazon’s website was sluggish and, at times, completely down. The same fate greeted Wal-Mart, Expedia and a number of smaller sites. The reason? A severe DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on the servers of Neustar, the company that offers DNS services to many major companies under the name UltraDNS.
• The Pirate Bay Goes Retro for Christmas – Remember how one of the most popular torrent sharing sites, The Pirate Bay, looked back in 2003? Today, you have a chance to refresh your memory, because the pirates have gone retro, changing the layout of the site to the way it looked back then, when the Internet was innocent and there was no pile of lawsuits on The Pirate Bay’s desk.
• Fun Stats: 28% Of Sites Use Google Analytics; 5% Have Facebook Or Twitter Links – # 28% of sites have Google Analytics on them
  # 12% of sites have AdSense
  # 5% of sites have EITHER a Twitter or Facebook link but…
  # 2% of sites have BOTH a Twitter or Facebook link
• Disney Wants Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg On Its Board – GigaOM – Disney’s board today nominated Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to be its thirteenth member. It’ll be put to shareholder vote at the next Disney annual meeting, scheduled to be held March 10, 2010.
• Add Clickable Links In YouTube Videos Without Using Annotations – While it is possible to add hyperlinks on YouTube videos via the built-in annotations feature, the only problem is that you cannot link to external websites from YouTube videos – that links should either point to a video hosted on YouTube or to a video search page that’s again on YouTube.
• 2010: Year of digital distraction? – CNN.com – The "real-time Web" is booming. From Twitter to Facebook to new search engines that discover information posted just seconds ago, it seems the 2010 Web will be fueled by our desire for instant gratification.
• Mall of America Tweets Holiday Parking Updates – It may not be rocket science, but it is pretty cool: The Mall of America is using Twitter to tweet parking info for last-minute holiday shoppers hoping to avoid the ever-annoying quest for a space.
• Marketing in 2010: It’s All About the Data –
• Digg’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2009 – It’s the end of the year, traditionally a time for self-reflection. While many of us are making our New Year’s resolutions and looking back on what we accomplished, a lot of social media companies are sifting through their data and sharing what was hot in 2009.
• FTC Inquiry Hinders Google’s Acquisition of AdMob – When Google formally announced their plans to acquire mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million, they didn’t expect any regulatory interference to impede upon the processing of the deal. Unfortunately they were wrong.
• 3 Powerful Social Good Trends in 2010 – 2009 saw a proliferation of online charity events, competitions, and “friendraisers” that spilled across Twitter and Facebook and filled email inboxes everywhere with more requests for money than any Nigerian prince could ever hope to make. And while it’s hard to argue that this is a bad thing — anytime someone gives money to feed the hungry instead of buying another digital potato seed in Farmville, global karma rises, if even just by a little — this focus on using the web as an ever-more elaborate means of getting people to fork over cash misses the much bigger opportunities just over the horizon.
• BREAKING: Twitter Buys Mixer Labs to Boost Location Features – Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams has just announced on the company’s blog that they have acquired Mixer Labs, creator of the GeoAPI.
• Is Hiring a Ghostblogger a Bad Thing? – At any given time, there is usually an ongoing debate in some blogging circle about whether ghostblogging is a good or bad thing. I say it depends on how you’re using the term, and how you are using your ghostblogger.
• Google News Will Not Accept Single Author Blogs – I put in an application to submit our blog to Google news, but it seems Google news will not include sites that are written and maintained by one individual!

This is the Link Report for November 25th through December 2nd:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• What the duck? Aflac gets quackin’ on Facebook | Social Business | ZDNet.com – Whether or not you are an Aflac customer, you’ve at least once tried to mimic the Aflac duck’s quacking of “Aflac” at the end of its commercials. After its commercial success, Aflac has taken to Facebook with a two-fold approach: increase its brand awareness through a fan page for the famous Aflac Duck and through a presence in the “Causes” application on Facebook for the Aflac Cancer Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the same city in which the company is headquartered.
• The Do’s And Don’ts Of Creating Original Video | paidContent – Just a few years ago, web video was the great unknown. Media and tech companies agreed that it was the next big thing, but no one knew what kind of content actually worked on the web. Early adopters watched music videos online, but the average consumer wasn’t ready to reach for the computer instead of the TV remote. Content owners and creators, meanwhile, either clung for dear life to traditional development and distribution models, or threw ideas against a wall to see what would stick.
• The fall of the Berlin wall in digital media | Media | guardian.co.uk – Digital media are playing an important role in today's celebration of the fall of the Berlin wall. It is interesting that much of the mainstream press have left their historical medium behind for their online coverage, as each have chosen the format which is best for a story. For example, the Guardian has put some impressive films online in which Berliners describe how the city was divided while, readers of the New York Times submitted magnificent photos and memories of the wall and the BBC has displayed in a map how far pieces of the former wall have spread around the globe. In addition to an interactive mainstream coverage, there are several social media projects worth looking at.
• LinkedIn and Twitter link up | Technology | Reuters – LinkedIn and Twitter have linked up. Starting immediately, users of LinkedIn and Twitter can cross-file to each other's services, by checking a box on either Twitter or LinkedIn.
• The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave – Google Wave is a new web-based collaboration tool that's notoriously difficult to understand. This guide will help. Here you'll learn how to use Google Wave to get things done with your group. Because Wave is such a new product that's evolving quickly, this guidebook is a work in progress that will update in concert with Wave as it grows and changes. Read more about The Complete Guide to Google Wave.
• Podcasts, webinars most-used social media business tools – Social Marketing – BizReport – Business.com's 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study found that, of those business personnel who use social media channels, podcasts and webinars are the most popular, used by 65% of respondents.

This is the Daily Link Report for September 15th

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Facebook COO’s advice: Just post quickly – Postcards – Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg offered up some tips on how businesses can best use the social networking site during Fortune’s Most Powerful Women conference.
• Mood Lighting and DIY Privacy Screens – Workspaces – Lifehacker – What do you do if you want some extra privacy in your office but you're not at liberty to go around tearing walls down and remodeling to fit your needs? Don your DIY hat and set to work.
• Fast Food Chart Rounds Up the Unhealthiest Items at Popular Chains – Eating – Lifehacker – It's a given that fast food isn't the most nutritious way to sate your hunger, but as a helpful reminder, the gang over at web site Next Generation Food have charted the unhealthiest items from the most popular chains.
• Windows 7 Transfers Your Wireless Settings Easily – windows 7 – Lifehacker – After discovering how easily WEP can be cracked and creating a long, secure WPA2 key, you've probably noticed it's a pain to get friends connected to your Wi-Fi network when they stop by. Windows 7 makes this process easy.
• Facebook Crosses 300 Million Users. Oh Yeah, And They Just Went Cash Flow Positive. – 300 million is the obvious big news. But really, it was always just a matter of time before Facebook was going to hit the milestone. They hit 250 million back in July. Really, the much bigger news is the second item.
• Breaking: Adobe To Acquire Omniture For Approximately $1.8 Billion – Adobe Systems has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Omniture for the former to acquire the latter in a transaction valued at approximately $1.8 billion on a fully diluted equity-value basis. Under the terms of the agreement, Adobe will commence a tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Omniture for $21.50 per share in cash. The proposed offer represents a premium of 45% over Omniture’s average closing price for the last 30 trading days through yesterday’s close.
• The US Government Is Going Google – It looks like The White House has copied a page from Google’sGoogleGoogle playbook and is now advocating that federal agencies move to the cloud. Google has long been a proponent of business in the cloud, most recently advocating their web-based Google Apps to enterprise prospects in the “Going Google” campaign.
• Google Releases Chrome Version 3 – While the new stable release doesn’t introduce anything groundbreaking (unless you just love custom themes), it does provide some important tweaks. The biggest one focuses on Google’s (Google) #1 obsession: speed. This is Chrome’s (Chrome) bread and butter. The search company claims that the new browser is 25% faster at executing JavaScript than Chrome V2, among other speed fixes.
• One in Five Tweets Are Free Brand Advertising – Research from Penn State found that a full twenty percent of tweets mention specific brand names or products. Out of half a million tweets examined during the study, one fifth were essentially free brand advertising.
• Of course the Zune HD has been torn apart and photographed – It’s a tradition around these parts to photograph a dissected gadget. This time around it’s the new Zune HD which looks just as good on the inside as it does on the outside. Hit up anythingbutipod for the complete gallery of the teardown.

This is the Link Report for August 26th through August 27th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Phone Call Tracking in Google Analytics – Website Magazine – Website Magazine – UK Internet marketing company ClickThrough Marketing today introduced a module add-on for Google Analytics that allows advertisers to track phone call conversions from any source/advertising channel.
• Ready for a Mobile (Advertising) Storm? – Website Magazine – Website Magazine – A report from Juniper Research has found that growing consumer adoption of mobile Internet services and heightened brand engagement with mobile services will be reflected in a sharp increase in expenditure on mobile Internet advertising. How much of an increase? According to the report, ad spend on the mobile Internet will reach $500 million globally in 2009 and rise to nearly $2 billion per year by 2014.
• Essential WordPress Plugin: Add To Facebook – Website Magazine – Website Magazine – Plenty of plugins are out there to help readers share your blog content, but perhaps the new Add To Facebook plugin for WordPress is the most significant. For starters, consider Facebook's more than 250 million users.

  The plugin is extremely easy to add if you are using one of the latest versions of WordPress. Simply download the zip file and upload it through your WordPress administration panel. You can then choose your settings for the plugin under your WordPress "Settings" section – either a text-only link or a small image and text link, and whether to add the link to every post.

• Snow Leopard review – A very thorough review of Apple's new Snow Leopard OS at Engadet
• EASTER EGG: Yelp Is the iPhone’s First Augmented Reality App – This makes your iPhone just that much more cooler and helpful. Augmented reality uses your iPhone’s camera, GPS, and compass to show virtual items in the real world. Put your camera in front of a restaurant and it will come up with info, or use it to find nearby Twitter users
• Audi Taps its Facebook Fans to Help Design Car of the Future – The German luxury car maker is taking a stab at using social media to create buzz about the company, the brand and their cars. Very clever
• New Facebook Privacy Policies Will Have A Significant Impact On Platform Applications – As a result of a new privacy agreement with Canada, Facebook has issued statements suggesting that there could be major platform changes ahead for developers.
• New Attack Cracks Common Wi-Fi Encryption in a Minute by PC World: Yahoo! Tech – Computer scientists in Japan say they've developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in about one minute. (That's great! <insert sarcasm>)
• Social Networks: Boomers Feel Left Out – Even though baby boomers make up more than one quarter of all US Internet users, and even though the majority of this group spends over five hour per week online, a new survey by Burst Media found that only 14% of boomers feel that the content on the Internet is focused on people their age.
• 5 Social Media Lessons Learned from Whole Foods – Whole Foods is into using Social Media. The best way to improve your own company's use of social media is to learn from others. Check out the case study on Mashable.