This is the Link Report for August 25th through August 26th:

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

• Google Now Using You To Provide Traffic Data To Maps – Google is now using location-enabled mobile phones that have Maps for mobile installed to improve its real-time traffic data.
• Bing Continues With Fake Referrers: What Part Of Stop Don’t They Understand? – Among Microsoft's search identity crisis one thing has been consistent, their bot's have been sending fake referrals to Websites. Read More.
• My Favorite Link Building Lie – While it is pointless to seek links (via email or any other method) for crappy content from other sites with equally crappy content, link building via email does in fact work perfectly – but only under one perfectly obvious and sadly overlooked circumstance: when the link seeker represents meritorious content and the link granter is looking for that type of meritorious content to link to. It’s so painfully obvious to me, that I fight the urge to laugh out loud when I read quotes like the one above.
• Amazon Adds A Virtual Private Cloud – ReadWriteEnterprise – Amazon has created a hybrid cloud that can work securely for the enterprise, balancing the need for encryption with the low cost and scaling power that the cloud provides.
• The Twitter Exploit That Could Have Stolen Your Info and Much, Much More – Found by David Naylor, the vulnerability exploits an issue with a recently added an HTML tag to all of their links (rel=nofollow, which tells GoogleGoogleGoogle that links on Twitter shouldn’t count in its algorithm). The result is that David was able to change the links in such a way that it generates a huge cross-site scripting vulnerability.
• Over 80% of Americans Use Social Media Monthly – The demographic data follows the trend we see overall—younger people are more heavily involved, but over-35s and over-55s are becoming more and more active in social networking. While 10% or less of online adults aged 18-34 are “socially inactive,” the older age ranges are showing high growth. Among adults 35-54, participation grew 60% over last year:
• Top 5 Current Email Scams You Should Know About – There are numerous ways to be scammed nowadays. Pyramid schemes, ‘too good to be true’ investments and of course the good old internet. There are literally millions of websites that will gladly take your money, personal info, bank details and a host of other things from you and then skedaddle.
• Make Firefox Faster by Vacuuming Your Database – Firefox – Lifehacker – Speed up Firefox!
• Yahoo’s Testing a New Search Interface…Bing’s Interface Actually – Examples of how Yahoo! is now Bing!
• Twitalytic Alpha Preview–Archiving, Curating, and Threading Tweets | Smarterware – Lifehacker Founder Gina Trapani has a new twitter app. It's not like anything else out there… well except for Twitters business model. Check it out it's in alpha. Open source too.

So you’re getting into Social Media for both business and personal use. You’ve heard the hype about how you can not only build your brand using services such as Facebook and Twitter, actually sell products and now you’re ready to get started. But wait there are a few things you need to realize before you start spamming the social media services. These are the Six Rules of Social Media and are rules to live by.

• First rule of Social Media… DON’T SPAM THE SYSTEMS – people hate this and it won’t help your cause. If anything it will not get you any business and will hurt your brand
• Second rule of Social Media… Remember it’s all about the relationship – most people forget this, if you build a quality feed or a quality profile where good information is shared then people will come. I know I sound like Google’s Matt Cutts when I say this, but it’s true, CONTENT IS KING.
• Third rule of Social Media… Remember to listen as much if not more than your broadcast. Unlike traditional media, Social Media is about the conversation and in any good conversation there needs to be listening and participating.
• Fourth rule of Social Media… Respond to naysayers and people who are unhappy with you or your brand. Following how you message is perceived in the Social Media space is crucial. Responding quickly and appropriately will look good for your company’s brand as well as turn someone who is unhappy into a loyal customer.
• Fifth rule of Social Media… have fun with it. Yes Social Media is a great way to get the message out about your product and brand. But remember to actually enjoy communicating with people. If you don’t people will sense that you’re all business and will be turned off
• Finally, the Sixth rule of Social Media… DON’T SELL. I know it’s hard not to push your latest product out there for the world to see, but I’m not telling you not to do that. What I’m telling you to avoid is the overly used car salesman approach of berating people to try your new product. Introduce your product on a one-on-one basis with people, bring it up in conversation and try and make it seem natural.

If you follow these six simple rules of social media you’re on your way to getting the full benefits out of social media. You will not only generate conversations and be active in the online communities, but you will even grow your business and your brand.

Image: Flickr – BonkedProducer

This is the Link Report for August 8th through August 10th:

• FriendFeed Co-Founder: Facebook Acquisition Talks Began in 2007 – The details!
• SEOmoz | 4 Essential SEO Infographics – Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz.org published a great post with Info Graphics that relate to SEO
• 2009 Facebook and Twitter Growth by Age Group | Ignite Social Media – The following chart by Nielsen shows that audiences above 25 have experienced a whopping 84% growth in Twitter adoption over the past 6 months. Also interesting is the 20% growth happening within the 55+ age range, compared to the 16% increase in 2-24 year olds. This slight discrepancy in growth doesn’t mean that younger audiences aren’t interested in Twitter, but suggests that they have already adopted it. (Also, after seeing the age ranges listed on this chart, I now want to see what a two-year old would tweet.)
• Facebook Acquires FriendFeed (Updated) – Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now.At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few of features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates.
• 6 Twitter Directories To Add Yourself To – Everyone is always looking for new ways to get more Twitter followers. Well, one of the best ways to do this is by getting discovered through Twitter directories. There are many out there to choose from and it’s very quick and easy to add yourself to them. So, here are a few to get you started. Feel free to share your favorite (whether listed or not) in the comments.
• What is a Natural Link Growth Profile? | SEO Book.com – 3 Common Link Building Strategies1. spiky. if the spikes are associated with news and viral marketing then that is not a big problem, but if they are sorta bought links, low quality links, etc. then this is sorta the worst way to do it.
  2. linear. not as bad as spiky…but not as good as geometric. this is where a webmaster tries to build the same number of links each month.
  3. geometric. this is where link building starts off slow, but then keeps getting better each month.
• Company Boasts it Sold Twitter Followers to Michael Jackson – With the increasing popularity of social media sites and the power of marketing on them, more and more people have been investing in services which can increase their rankings faster than they could do on their own.One such service is the highly-controversial paid Twitter follower service which has been offered by web promotions company uSocial.net for several months now. Now they’re claiming they’ve had the attention of some of the world’s largest names, including one interesting one in particular.
• Reporting SERP Spam: Know How to Report & Reclaim Your Rankings – Below is a guide about spam results, how to detect them, and finally where to report them. If you want all the links to submit a spammy site, they’re at the bottom (but if you skip all the interesting info you might not know what to look for!).
• NBA star’s Twitter ID crisis rebounds on him and the site | Technically Incorrect – CNET News – The NBA, Players and Twitter. A good mix? Debatable
• Twitter Co-Founder: Attacks Continue to Change in Nature and Intensity – Apparently, we’re not out of the woods just yet. While Twitter itself has been working reliably for most of the day, some third-party applications remain impacted by measures the company has taken to defend against DDoS attacks.