These are my links for January 14th through January 15th:

• PlaceWidget Allows Venues To Show Off Their Foursquare Mayors With Pride –
• Twitter’s Answer To Facebook Connect –
• 9 Specific Ways Your Business Can Use Twitter –
• Mozilla Drops Firefox 3.7, Switches to More Frequent Feature Updates –
• Where Have All The Old Tweets Gone? –

These are my links for January 12th:

• Ok You Luddites, Time To Chill Out On Facebook Over Privacy –
• Google Now Tracking The Flu, City By City. So Far, It’s Been A Mild Winter. –
• Foursquare Follows The Facebook Model, Takes Its Game To Harvard –
• "Google" Is Word of the Decade –
• Amtrak to Add Free Wi-Fi on High-Speed Trains –
• Teaching entrepreneurial journalism « BuzzMachine –
• Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows: Microsoft’s Plan to Save Windows Mobile –
• Google Seeks a Deal on China Book Scans | Loretta Chao | Voices | AllThingsD –
• Google Adds Data Storage to Google Docs | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD –
• Google Says Attack From China Was Aimed at Dissidents – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com –

These are my links for January 8th:

• Google Toilet Paper : Optimize Your Wipe | Search Engine Journal – Here’s a fun Friday post about what could be easily mistaken for a new Google product launch to accompany the Nexus One and other new Google products : Google Toilet Paper (which gives a new meaning to “just Google it”).
• MediaPost – news and directories for media, marketing and online advertising professionals – If you were on vacation, similar to me, during the end of December you might have missed Twitter's big announcement. The company acquired Mixer Labs, the creator of GeoAPI, which provides developers with the ability to query data. That data can come from about 16 million businesses and thousands of points of interest. The technology also offers developers a layer on which to handle complex geographical queries and location-based services.
• National Weather Service: Twitter Storm Reports – GeoTagging is the act of associating geographical information with something, and Twitter has recently added the capability GeoTagging individual Tweets. This allows the NWS to correlate each Tweet to your location when it was sent. This capability will help to enhance and increase timely & accurate online weather reporting and communications between the public and their local weather forecast offices.
• Wanted: Your Weather Reports, Geotagged and Tweeted – If your natural reflex when the weather gets rough is to tweet about it, that reflex can now help the National Weather Service do its job better thanks to a new Twitter storm reporting program.
• Social Media Today | Social Media Policies of 113 Organizations – With companies searching for and developing standards for social media usage, many of them have come up with social media policies of their own.
• Top CMOs on Twitter – These are the top 63 Chief Marketing Officers around the world who 1) provide useful content and consistently engage with their followers on Twitter, 2) truly "get it" when it comes to the best ways to use Twitter and other forms of social media, and 3) were active on Twitter as of January 7, 2010. Please let me know if I have missed any CMOs who have 500 or more followers. After the review and confirmation process, he/she may be added to this list, which is updated regularly.
• The Dawn of Facebook’s People-organized Web – GigaOM – In 2010, Facebook is setting out to structure a social layer of the web, indexing web pages and objects by harnessing what its users say about them, including whether those users like them or not, and what they tag within them.
• Apple And Verizon: Are Two Star-Crossed Lovers Ready To Consummate? – Apple and Verizon. Two star-crossed lovers.

  A few years ago, when Apple originally set out with the idea of giving the iPhone to one carrier exclusively in the U.S., they first went to Verizon. But the network balked at some of Apple’s demands, which at the time of complete and utter carrier dominance in this country, must have seemed like a joke. So instead, Apple with with AT&T, and the rest is history.

• Anxious Yahoo BOSS Developers To Speak With DOJ About Microsoft Deal – In July 2008, Yahoo announced a radical new product called BOSS, or “Build Your Own Search Service” that lets developers tap into Yahoo’s core search index with an unprecedented amount of flexibility. Now, in light of the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal that was announced last summer, the future of BOSS is uncertain. That’s bad news for the many developers who have built projects on the BOSS APIs, some of whom are building businesses off of the service. Now, after being met with months of silence and uncertainty, some BOSS developers are taking action: they’ve scheduled a conference call with the Department of Justice to discuss their concerns.

These are my links for January 2nd through January 4th:

• More Smartphone Users Now Use Their Phones to Shop Online – Smartphone users are becoming increasingly comfortable with using their phones to shop online. According to new data from Compete, about 37% of smartphone users have purchased something with their handset in the last 6 months. Among the most popular items that these users bought are music, books, DVDs, video games and movie tickets. At the same time, though, Compete also found that smartphone users are very likely to abandon shopping sites that haven't been optimized for mobile usage. Almost 8% of smartphone owners who tried to buy something from their phone were simply unable to do so.
• Flixster Acquires Rotten Tomatoes – Flixster just announced that it has acquired Rotten Tomatoes, the popular movie review site, from IGN Entertainment. IGN is a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Flixster is one of the world's most popular movie communities and currently features about 2.3 billion user ratings and reviews from its users. Rumors about this acquisition first surfaced in late December, when Kara Swisher first reported that a potential acquisition of Flixster by MySpace would hinge upon a merger of Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster.
• Twitter’s Psychologist Strikes Again: Analyze Your Lists – Dan Zarrella has long impressed us with his discourses on the science of retweets, as well as his psychoanalytic apps that scan and parse Twitter streams – one for general analysis and one for dreams.
• The 50 Most-Blogged Albums of 2009, Streaming Free: HypeMachine Zeitgeist Out Now – Hype Machine, the smart, long-running MP3 blog aggregator, has posted its annual collection of the most-blogged-about albums, songs and musical artists of the year. Once again, the project is a pleasure to consume and will unfold throughout the month of January. Top albums 50 through 41, Mumford and Sons through Monsters of Folk, are available now in full for streaming.
• Rock & Roll Will Never Die? It Might on Facebook – The graying of the Facebook population seems to have continued according to new stats released today by iStrategyLabs. And while one might expect more of the site's now nearly 10 million users over the age of 55 to be Neil Young fans, his "Rock N' Roll Will Never Die" refrain seems to be falling through. The listing of the term "rock and roll" as an interest is down over 60% among Facebook users in the past year.
• ComScore Ups the Ante in Mobile Analytics – ComScore, a leading Web statistics provider, has joined with Flurry Analytics to provide a more complete picture on the who, what, when, where and how of our use of mobile media. Founded just over a year ago, Flurry has grown immensely and this move will only serve to boost its popularity.
• Watching TV Together in Different Time Zones – NYTimes.com – Simple technology, including video chatting services like Skype, is making it possible for far-flung friends to watch shows together, even if they can’t share the same bowl of popcorn.
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• George Washington’s Rules for Social Media « digiphile – The following “rules” are interpretation of his intent, not President Washington’s words.
• Why Twitter Will Endure – NYTimes.com – In the pantheon of digital nomenclature — brands within a sector of the economy that grew so fast that all the sensible names were quickly taken — it would be hard to come up with a noun more trite than Twitter. It impugns itself, promising something slight and inconsequential, yet another way to make hours disappear and have nothing to show for it. And just in case the noun is not sufficiently indicting, the verb, “to tweet” is even more embarrassing.

These are my links for December 29th through December 30th:

• LEAKED: New Details and the Price of Google’s Nexus One – The Nexus One, also known as the Google Phone, has been causing a stir this month after details began to emerge about the project. Earlier today, we learned that the phone will likely be revealed on January 5 at a Google press conference (which we will be covering).
• The Complete National Geographic Collection on a Hard Drive – National Geographic, the legendary yellow magazine that’s been an important part of many a young nerd’s childhood, has been around since 1888. Even if you have a very large room dedicated to storing the magazine, that’s a lot of issues.
• Facebook to Seppukoo: Die! – Remember Seppukoo, that nifty little service that lets you kill your Facebook identity? Well, Facebook doesn’t appreciate the idea.
• Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Journalists – Navigating the journalistic seas this past year has been a particularly challenging/exciting task. As many a publication foundered in the economic benthos, others rode the wave of new technology into previously uncharted waters.
• Comedy Duo Hopes Social Media Power Will Secure Slot on Showtime – Undoubtedly, social media is a powerful force. It can be used as a way to spread breaking news, organize political protests or energize campaigns, and, of course, to promote various brands and individuals. But can social media help a TV pilot ascend from reject bin to series pickup? Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo — the stars and creators of Ronna and Beverly — sure hope so.
• Weather Channel Marriage Proposal: Touching With a Chance of Viral Status [VIDEO] – First Twitter, then Foursquare, now the Weather Channel? People are broadcasting their wedding proposals all over the place these days.
• LinkedIn’s New iPhone App: The 3 Worst Things About It – Business social network LinkedIn made a major upgrade to its iPhone app tonight but coming from a service with such incredible potential, there remain some major disappointments.
• Twitter 2.0: API Rate Change Could Lead to a World of New Apps & Features – One of the best things about Twitter is its wildly creative ecosystem of applications built by people outside the company. Those apps have been constrained, though, by technical limits imposed on retrieving data from Twitter. Those limits are just about to be raised much higher and developers tell us that a whole new world of applications and features may become possible.
• Google’s 2009: A Glimpse of the Web’s Next Decade – In 2009 the web as we knew it changed dramatically. Twitter graduated to become a media darling and a mainstream communication staple. Facebook became the most significant social network of this day and age. And Google changed the way we search.
• 10 Things to Do Before the New Year – Whether you work for someone or yourself, things tend to slow down for many of us in the final two weeks of the old year. What better time to do a little business sprucing? Here are ten things to do before the New Year to feel invigorated and ready to whatever comes your way.

These are my links for December 28th:

• Former Morgan Stanley Coder Gets 2 Years in Prison for TJX Hack | Threat Level | Wired.com – The two great friends talked every day and shared information about all of their exploits — sexual, narcotic and hacking — according to prosecutors. Now another thing they’ll have to share information about is their experience in federal prison.
• Torrent Search Engines Unlawful, U.S. Judge Says | Threat Level | Wired.com – The operator of a popular BitTorrent search site said Monday he will likely challenge last week’s landmark decision by a U.S. judge declaring such sites unlawful and no different from conventional peer-to-peer piracy services.
• Piracy Surcharge Set To Force 40,000 Households Offline | TorrentFreak – Earlier, ISP BT predicted that operating an anti-filesharing scheme in the UK would cost £365m a year. Now the government has admitted that not only will broadband customers have to foot a £500m bill, but that burden will prove too great for 40,000 households – who will have no choice but to give up their Internet connections.
• Top 7 Disruptions of the Year | Epicenter | Wired.com – Technology is like a dog; each year of it seems like the equivalent of seven human years — at least when you get to the end of it and realize it’s only been 12 months since that now indispensable service first launched.
• Code That Protects Most Cellphone Calls Is Deciphered – NYTimes.com – A German computer engineer said Monday that he had deciphered and published the secret code used to encrypt most of the world’s digital mobile phone calls, saying it was his attempt to expose weaknesses in the security of global wireless systems.
• Palm Pre Users Rejoice: webOS 1.3.5 is Coming Today – Here’s a nice Christmas present for Palm Pre users: According to Sprint’s website, a new version of Pre’s operating system, webOS 1.3.5, is due to go live today.
• Facebook more than doubled its number of users this year | Technology | guardian.co.uk – Even by Facebook's standards, the past 12 months have been remarkable. The site cemented its position as the world's favourite social network, reached the verge of profitability and even exerted its influence over the race for the Christmas No 1.
• Twitter’s List Of 370 Banned Passwords – Twitter appears to have learned from its security scare earlier this year and seems to be taking password security more seriously than most Internet services.
• 5 Reasons to Learn Social Media | Search Engine Journal – Have you ever noticed how many bloggers and social media marketers just tell people that they should go out try social media? How you shouldn’t worry about learning social it? That you’ll learn it on the fly and everything will be fine.

These are my links for December 28th:

• HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy – Just having a policy isn’t good enough — you need a plan to put it in place. Here are five areas to discuss when implementing a social media strategy.
• Google’s AdMob Acquisition Meets Opposition from Consumer Groups – Is Google simply buying its way into the mobile advertising market via its $750 million acquisition of AdMob? That’s what two consumer groups allege in a letter sent to the FTC today, as the organization continues to review the deal.
• What Social Media Can Do For Your Business | Social Media Explorer – There are still a number of business people, executives, owners and more, that have doubts about social media as a business driver. Part of that skepticism has to do with the fact the medium is quite new and participating in it requires a different approach from traditional marketing efforts. Part of it has to do with the fact that social media thinkers and advocates have never been very good at illustrating a definitive tie to business success through their medium of choice.
• Social Media Today | Social media needs fewer rockstars, and more rockstar ideas –
• Social Media Today | Long Tail Fans…Television’s Survival Might Rely on Hyper-Local Coverage Online – MediaPost recently reported that Akamai Technologies CEO Paul Sagan warns that television is about to experience the major impact that print and music have already felt. Akamai Technologies facilitates more than one-fifth of the world's Web traffic so they have a good view on the subject. What will cause this transformation? The article states that, “the ability to match high-def TV picture quality with Internet interactivity is creating a sea change for online video that will begin rippling through the television industry in 2010. Only TV station owners that leap to the new arena, playing the strength of their hyper-local connections, will survive.” Otherwise they will feel the same big impact form the Web that music and print have felt.
• Social Media Today | Twitter Economics – With a $1 billion valuation, Twitter is becoming, according to Co-Founder Evan Williams, an information network, a practically priceless exchange for connections, information, and the resulting activity that ensues.
• Social Media Today | Seven Reasons You Should Care About Disclosure on Twitter –
• Social Media Today | The More Than RSS Market – Richard McManus of RWW notes the continuing decline of RSS Readers, suggesting the market is largely dominated by Google and in disarray. Five years ago there was a perception that this was a hot category. An underlying standard was freeing up new atomized content and conversations that could be pulled and curated. Bloglines was acquired, and new clients were popping up weekly.
• Social Media Today | Twitter Economics – With a $1 billion valuation, Twitter is becoming, according to Co-Founder Evan Williams, an information network, a practically priceless exchange for connections, information, and the resulting activity that ensues.
• What Small Business Needs to Do to Get Ready for Mobile Marketing Now | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing – Mobile marketing has taken far longer to evolve than people imagined, but I believe we are on the doorstep of an evolution in marketing that will rival social media in terms of impact.

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!

These are my links for December 23rd:

• Twittered Toddler Death Immediately Converted into Flame War – twitter – Gawker – Shellie Ross lost her two-year-old child when he drowned in the family swimming pool. She tweeted about the incident, hoping for emotional support. How do you think that went?
• How a Fake Twitter Death Report Tragically Came True – Chris Henry – Gawker – On December 16th, someone impersonating a newspaper writer falsely reported the death of football player Chris Henry. Henry died about 12 hours later, according to news reports, finally making one of Twitter’s many fake stories come true.
• Play And Share Your Music Collection In The Cloud With tunesBag – Vienna, Austria-based tunesBag is opening up the public beta version of its social music service today, after allowing access by invitation only for the past year or so
• Qik Live Recording Finally Makes It To The iPhone (Legally) – The live video streaming application Qik has just been approved in the App Store and should be available shortly, we’ve learned. The company submitted the app a couple weeks ago following the approval of Ustream’s live streaming application, and as expected, Apple also had no problem with it now. This marks a change from Apple, which previously was blocking all apps that did live video (recording) streaming
• More People Around The World Get Their News Online From Google News Than CNN – Well, Rupert Murdoch is going to love this. More people around the world get their news online from Google News than from CNN or the news properties of the New York Times. In November, 2009, according to comScore, Google News attracted 100 million unique visitors worldwide, making it a larger news site than CNN (66 million) or the combined properties of the New York Times (92 million). But do you know who is even larger? Yahoo News, with 138 million unique visitors worldwide. Funny how you never hear Murdoch complaining about Yahoo News.
• Making Facebook Pay – Facebook – Gawker – Facebook doubtlessly hoped forcing open user profiles would help the social network compete more profitably with open systems like Twitter. But there could well be a multi-million-dollar price to pay for the aggressive change, particularly if Facebook broke the law.
• How Google CEO’s ‘Ex’ Girlfriend Keeps Tabs on Him – marcy simon – Gawker – Eric Schmidt’s rekindled relationship with sometime girlfriend Marcy Simon may be heading into another season: After a summer of hanging out and an autumn jet ride, they’ve been spotted again this winter. And Simon’s keeping a close eye on Schmidt.
• Google Attempting to Swallow Trashy-Tasting Yelp – yelp – Gawker – Google is more likely than not to buy Yelp, say news reports. Which raises one glaringly obvious question: Will Google exacerbate or correct the local review site’s worst tendencies, which have brought extortion allegations, porny bacchanals and physical violence?
• Did Yelp’s Star Banker George Boutros Just Screw Up The Google Deal? – yelp – Gawker – There’s some amusing finger-pointing going on in the aftermath of the Google-Yelp affair (which, like any affair, may just be in remission).
• Criminal Escapes Prison, Taunts Police Via Facebook – Craig Lynch – Gizmodo – Say hello to Craig Lynch. He’ll give you the finger. The police has been hunting him since he escaped from prison last September, and now he’s using Facebook to taunt them. He seems like a very charming man:
• OneRiot Launches New Real-Time Ads to Monetize Trending Topics – OneRiot, one of the leading real-time search engines, just announced the launch of a new advertising product for real-time apps. RiotWise Trending Ads will give OneRiot’s partners a feed of ads related to currently trending topics on the Web. These ads can, for example, be integrated in a user’s stream of updates in Twitter apps or displayed as regular mobile ad units. Digsby, for example, plans to place these ads directly in its users’ streams, but because the units are delivered as a feed through OneRiot’s API, developers are free to use them in whatever way they see fit.
• 2010 Predictions – ReadWriteWeb Staff’s predictions for 2010
• Experts Predict 2010 the Year for Social Media ROI – ReadWriteStart -
• Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month – 5 years to the month after it was founded, cross-blog social networking widget MyBlogLog will be closed down by Yahoo! in January, we’re hearing from sources close to the project. MyBlogLog is a service that shows blog writers and readers the faces and profile information of other MyBlogLog users that visit their sites.

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 Microsoft Launches its own Twitter… in China – Microsoft is making its own Twitter… in China. They are capitalizing on the popularity of their Instant Messenger client in that country.