Employees should be more careful than ever about what sort of work-related information they post online.  A new report indicates that companies are growing increasingly aware of inappropriate sharing, with many incidents resulting in someone getting fired.

Proofpoint found that businesses have definitely become wary about blogs.  An official statement claimed that, during the past year, "17 percent disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies, while nearly nine percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation (both increases from 2008, 11 percent and six percent, respectively)."

It seems that firms are aware of YouTube and Facebook, as well.  The report indicated that eight percent of corporations (each) got rid of people for violating policies pertaining to multimedia sites and social networks.

Finally, if employees figured they were safe using the relative newcomer, Twitter, they should think again.  Proofpoint reported that 13 percent of U.S. companies investigated "exposure incidents" involving Twitter and Twitter-like services.

You might interpret this as evidence that people should learn to keep their mouths shut (and/or fingers still).  A more charitable view is that perhaps social media sites should make their privacy notices and options more visible.  Regardless, it looks like social media is starting to have a significant impact in the workplace.

Facebook has begun rolling out a new version of its search feature, which it began testing with a select few last month. Of course, this would be real-time search, in the company’s latest effort to move into Twitter territory. Of course the announcement of Facebook’s real-time search comes hot off the heels of their big announcement about the acquisition of FriendFeed, which comes with a pretty nifty real-time search engine of its own. But that’s a different story.

How important to do you think real-time search is to the industry? For finding relevant info? Share your thoughts.

Interestingly enough, Google’s got its own project in the works that looks to have some real-time search implications. The company has announced a search update called "Caffeine," which among other things is aimed at indexing content faster. "It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions," says Google’s Webmaster Central team. Perhaps Google can bring some added relevancy to real-time search.

Well, Google already indexes content fairly quickly, even more so in recent weeks, as a matter of fact. The faster it gets at doing so, the closer it will get to real-time search, a direction the company has acknowledged that it needs to pursue.

Google is still testing the Caffeine update, but it is allowing users a glimpse into it here. WebProNews has more on the update here.

With regards to Facebook’s own search, the company’s Akhil Wable says, "You now will be able to search the last 30 days of your News Feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan. If people have chosen to make their content available to everyone, you also will be able to search for their status updates, links and notes, regardless of whether or not you are friends. Search results will continue to include people’s profiles as well as relevant Facebook Pages, groups and applications."

Just search like normal, and then use the filters on the left side of the screen (on the results page) to adjust your results to view by people, pages, groups, apps, events, your own friends, etc.

I would speculate that at some point, this real-time search functionality would incorporate more of what FriendFeed brings to the table. Searching FriendFeed gives you access to real-time results from all kinds of social networks – whatever the service’s users are sharing.

Facebook could bring masses of people into the mix on that front, and make it far more useful as an all-encompassing real time search engine. We don’t know what they’re going to do with that yet though. Facebook does say that FriendFeed will continue to operate independently, but it will no doubt become integrated into Facebook in some capacity.

As far as Facebook’s new search feature, the company reminds users that if they don’t want their stuff to show up in other people’s search results, they can adjust thier privacy settings accordingly. They’re still in the process of rolling the feature out, so you may not be able to use it just yet, but rest assured, it’s on the way.

What do you think of Facebook’s move into real-time search? Will you use the feature? Tell us.

The number of 15-24 year olds in the U.K. visiting social networking sites reached 6.8 million in June, up 14 percent compared to the previous year, according to a new report from comScore.

The overall audience of social networkers in this age group is up substantially during the past year, but the time spent on social networking sites is down 9 percent. The overall decrease in time spent on the sites appears to be due to younger users spending less time on secondary social networking sites.

"Recent reports have suggested that 15-24 year olds in the U.K. are moving away from social networking sites because they’re no longer cool as older users have encroached on their virtual space. comScore research indicates that is simply not the case," said Mike Read, SVP and Managing Director, comScore Europe.

"In fact, more 15-24 year olds are using social networking sites than a year ago, so there isn’t any particular aversion to the activity. What does appear to be happening is that younger users are beginning to consolidate around Facebook and are spending less time on competing sites."

Younger users are increasingly moving towards Facebook as their main social networking destination, even though Facebook has a significantly older user profile than MySpace and Bebo. Specifically, 77 percent of Facebook visitors are age 25 or older, compared to 65 percent of Bebo visitors and 69 percent of MySpace visitors.

"These data suggest that not only are younger social networkers not avoiding their older counterparts, but they are actually gravitating towards a site that skews more heavily towards users age 25 and older," added Read.

"It’s likely that the age of one’s peers on a social networking site is not a critical factor in how 15-24 year olds will spend their time online. But as people’s digital media lives become increasingly fragmented, users are craving the simplicity of fewer platforms – and the dominant social networking platform right now appears to be Facebook."

Shortened URLs come in quite handy when you want to share a link, but the URL is simply too long. Twitter’s rise to popularity has carried the popularity of such services right up with it. Naturally, when you have a 140-character limit, such a tool becomes much more in-demand.

Over the weekend, URL shortening service Tr.im announced that it was closing down shop. This is by no means the most popular service of its kind. But the big story here is not that we’re losing Tr.im. It’s that the idea of losing Tr.im brings up a much broader issue in what happens to all of those shortened URLs?

Tell WebProNews readers what you think about the situation.

"When these services go away, tens of thousands of links on the web simply stop working," says Mashable’s Pete Cashmore. "Some sites will lose hundreds of inbound links, and the traffic that comes with them."

"If Tr.im shuts down its servers, millions of links will simply die," says Mashable’s Ben Parr separately. "Poof, just like that. Someone could even buy Tr.im and redirect all the links to spam, porn, or malware."

Tr.im says in its announcement that all of its URLs will continue to redirect until December 31. Parr thinks someone will buy Tr.im before the end of the year. Bit.ly, Twitter’s go-to shortener has a project called 301works, (which archives URLs) told the publication that they offered to host Tr.im’s URL mappings, but it is not clear yet if anything will come of that.

But once again, the issue lies on a much larger plane than that of Tr.im. If more of these sites fail for any reason or get hacked, the web could turn into link bedlam. "Millions upon millions of links could suddenly vanish, leaving users confused and a possibly uncleanable mess," says Parr.

How Big is the Problem Really?

Or perhaps we’re sensationalizing this a little bit. There’s no question that there are many, many shortened URLs out there in circulation, but if they all stopped working, what would happen? Let’s look at where they’re being used – Twitter. In a hypothetic scenario where no URL shortening service works any longer, people will stop using them from that point on. That eliminates the further spread of problem-links.

That leaves you with all of the ones out there that people have posted in the past. That means while they are out there to be clicked on, they will become more and more buried as time goes on. Twitter Search is after all about what is happening "right now."

I don’t mean to play down the issue too much. It is definitely an issue, and there would still be some hiccups experienced by many webmasters. Twitter does drive a lot of traffic for a lot of people. But most of that traffic I would guess comes from fresh tweets, rather than tweets that are days or weeks old that would carry broken links.

I fully acknowledge that Twitter is not the only source of URL shortened-links, but it is easily the largest. Links could stop working at many places around the web, but it’s not going to be a mass web apocalypse. Google results aren’t going to stop offering legitimate links.

Is the 140-Character Limit Bad for the Web?

If anything, the issue casts yet another shadow of vulnerability on Twitter, and at a time when it has already received mass media attention over a Denial-of-Service attack. Without functioning links, Twitter becomes a lot less useful for many users. Does Twitter want to depend on third party services for such functionality as it continues to grow? Is rethinking the 140-character limit in order?

Twitter does have a relationship with Bit.ly, which is alive and well, but maybe Twitter just needs its own such service, just so it (or its users at least) doesn’t have to rely on others. But what would happen to all of those if Twitter had its own shortener? Without such high demand, would they continue to thrive? If not, they could add to the problem with that many more compromised links.

I don’t know. I don’t claim to have the answers. The whole thing does raise some important questions about the web though. If Twitter is to become a long-term major player in communication on the web, some things are going to need to be addressed. Any thoughts on the situation? Please share them.

Most Twitter users are back online after the DoS attack that brought the microblogging site to its knees. Notice how I used the word "most"? Blackberry users who use the popular ÜberTwitter app are still having some major issues.

Do you use Übertwitter? Let us know.

ÜberTwitter acknowledged they’re still having Twitter service issues on their site:

"The Twitter service and in particular Twitter’s interface which third party clients like ÜberTwitter use to talk to Twitter is still experiencing slowness and occasional timeouts. Until Twitter can resolve the issue you will continue to experience problems retrieving timelines and posting tweets using ÜberTwitter and any other clients."

You may notice that ÜberTwitter is saying that ALL third party clients are experiencing the same issues as them. So we decided to do a little testing with other 3rd party clients. Below you’ll see tweets from Mike McDonald, sent from his myTouch 3G with twidroid, and Susan Coppersmith, sent from her iPhone with TweetDeck. Neither of them experienced problems reading or sending tweets. We’re not saying ÜberTwitter is incorrect, but it does seem more like an isolated issue.

In fact so many Twitterers are having issues with the Blackberry app that ÜberTwitter is a trending topic. A search on Twitter will show you that most people are incredibly unhappy with Übertwitter, some are even turning to other apps to get them through this downtime.

Soon to be ESPN NFL analyst, Adam Schefter, seems to be taking the ÜberTwitter service issues really hard. He even equates the apps downtime to a "smoker tyring to quit".

It should be noted that Schefter is currently in Canton, Ohio for the NFL Hall-of-Fame game, which will be held this coming Sunday. So he’ll be relying on ÜberTwitter to relay news to his loyal followers.

Is the Übertwitter downtime causing you any grief? Let us know.

Press releases are a form of online marketing that we don’t discuss very often. They don’t have the new and exciting appeal of social media or even search engine marketing, but they’ve been around a lot longer and are still working. In fact, they can play right into those other forms.

"Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it drives Web traffic — and potential prospects — to a small business’ Web site," a PRWeb spokesperson tells WebProNews. "However, because improving search rankings is desirable, achieving results can be both challenging and highly competitive."

PRWeb shared a case study with us, involving a firm that typically sees a boost in search engine rankings and a 50% spike in web traffic after they issue a release. In fact, for one release in particular, the firm saw a spike of 400% on two different Web sites, and the firm doesn’t believe they were from the same users. They also incorporate social media tools like Twitter to extend the "shelf life" of press releases, and say that drives additional traffic.

"If you want a release to rank highly in search engines you have to use key words and link those to your Web site," says Peter Figueredo, CEO of NETexponent, the subject of the case study.  "In addition, you need to put them in the release a few of times, for example in the headline, the sub-headline and again in the body. This is different from a traditional news release with a catchy headline where you may not have your key words included." 

"When we included a link to our press releases on Twitter and other social media networks, we saw these both expanded the scope of distribution and the extended the longevity of the announcement," adds Figueredo.  "With other news releases we saw an initial spike in Web site traffic on the first two days and then it dropped off.  With these features we’ve seen increases in traffic up to five days after the news release was issued."

Some have suggested that Twitter could actually replace the press release. I wouldn’t go that far, but it provides a complimentary service for announcing news quickly. The press release just has much broader potential. That hasn’t stopped at least one company from offering a service that provides one line "Twitter-style" press releases.

When we think of press releases, we often think of distribution, which is a huge part of it definitely. But when using a newswire service like PRWeb, BusinessWire, PRNewswire, etc., don’t forget about your own website as well. Earlier this year I discussed how some companies’ own press centers are holding back some marketing opportunities for them.

Your site should have a section for press releases, and that should be up to date with the latest release when it goes out. You’d be surprised at how often these go without being updated even when a press release has been spotted elsewhere. It is also a good idea to link to any company blogs, Twitter accounts, or any other place where company announcements are made.

Another thing I notice is that many company press pages also do not have RSS feeds set up. Some offer different kinds of press alerts, but otherwise, they are relying on people to frequently check back to see what is happening. Google does this well. They announce a lot of their news via their wide range of blogs (which is a great strategy in itself), and while their press release section doesn’t get nearly as many updates, they offer a feed so that users know when it has been updated. They also provide links to other press-related resources where their latest info can be obtained.

The bottom line is that press releases inform interested parties of what is going on with your business. Despite their name, they’re not just about the press anymore. The web has made them available to anyone. Social media is an extension of this, and opens up the opportunity for sharing. Search engine rankings of course bring releases right to searchers. Make your releases good.

Do you get good boosts in traffic from press releases? Tell us about it.

Facebook has just announced some updates to the Open API Stream. Among these are simpler JavaScript methods for publishing, Facebook Pages support, and attribution. A spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews:

- Developers can now build deep experiences for Page admins to allow them to consume and update their Page stream from applications, such as those on the desktop.

- Application names will now appear in the stream for stories published with the Open Stream API. This feature will help users better identify from where stories are published, and more easily discover the applications their friends use.

- Publishing to the stream is now as simple as share – just a couple lines of JavaScript.

Developers can now access the full stream from Faecbook Pages that publish posts to their streams. Facebook has also created a way for apps to publish to the stream on behalf of a page.

"Once a Page admin grants permission to the application for that Page, your application can request the publish_stream permission for the Page by passing a new special parameter when you prompt for the permission," explains Facebook’s Yariv Sadan. "This enables a profile selector in the permission dialog. Your application can now post stories on behalf of the Page using any of the stream.publish calls just like it would for a user. You can do this through any the methods described for extended permissions including JavaScript (showPermissionDialog) or directly targeting the prompt_permissions.php URL; we’ll describe the new parameters in these documents."

More details about the updates to the Open Stream APIs can be found here. 

A man named Robert Botts from Louisville, Kentucky has gone missing, and those who know him have taken to social media to help them find him. He’s been missing since Thursday, July 30. His car was found abandoned at an intersection in Louisville.

A photo and physical description have been posted on the social publishing site Scribd.

This is being shared around other social networks like Facebook and Twitter in hopes that someone will be able to help find him.

 

They have posted the story to iReport, the citizen reporter site that CNN uses stories from, although CNN has not picked this one up yet.

We often talk about the marketing and business benefits that users can get out of social media, but stories like this remind us that there are far more valuable uses.

This is not the first time social media has been called upon to find missing persons. For example, earlier this year, a father began using it to try and find his missing daughter after 20 whole years. She had disappeared from Gainesville, Florida in 1989. There were no amber alerts or web sites displaying her picture or anything, but he set up a site at TiffanySessions.com. He counts YouTube among his social media resources.

The viral nature of social media provides hope for friends and family of missing persons, and if it can work for marketing products, there is reason to believe it can provide value for something of real importance. Spreading the word is crucial though. You’ll find some sharing options below. Share where you have friends/followers.

eBay Motors has launched a video contest to find what it calls  America’s ultimate automotive enthusiast.

Winners of the 2009 Motors Master contest will receive a trip to Las Vegas to attend the Specialty Equipment Market Association Show (SEMA) and receive an eBay Motors shopping spree.

Participants will make a short video about their favorite car, truck or motorcycle and explain why they would make the best do-it-yourself project expert for their category, and upload it to the Motors Master website. Judges and the public will vote for the top contestants in the following categories:

• Muscle cars
• Tuners
• Off-road vehicles
• Motorcycles 

eBay Motors will bring the winner in each category to the SEMA Show in Las Vegas from November 4-7, where their winning project vehicle may be displayed for over 100,000 attendees. Each winner will receive $2,500 eBay Motors shopping spree to buy parts and accessories.

The projects will be selected on the participant’s videos and their written descriptions of how they used eBay Motors to drive their projects and why they should be chosen to win. Video entries must be submitted by August 31, and voting will continue through September 14, 2009. Ten finalists will be chosen for each category and the four winners will be named in early October.

There is a new Twitter book out called All a Twitter. It was written by Tee Morris, author of Podcasting for Dummies. It comes with a foreword by social media guru Chris Brogan and a dedication to Jon Stewart of the Daily Show.

"Social Media has the potential of increasing your presence, both from a commercial and from a personal perspective, on the global stage," says Morris. "With All a Twitter, I bring several years of tweets and observations on Twitter’s growth, evolution, and reinvention."

This is certainly not the first book to be written about Twitter. In fact, if you search "Twitter" on Amazon, you will get about 50 results, including Twitter for Dummies (which was actually not written by Morris). Morris tries to explain why All a Twitter is different though.

"I have heard people equate ‘the power of Twitter’ with the numbers in their networks. Have you ever looked at the feeds for people who have these gargantuan followers? Usually they are endless retweets, repeated roll calls on ‘Follow Friday’ and quotes from other people," says Morris.

"Both my accounts are modest in their numbers, but I look for quality in my network," he adds. "I do not follow everyone who follows me. I block spammers. I review feeds that query me because I will always make a better judgment call than an automated service will. This is something that sets All a Twitter apart from the other books on the market. Instead of being written by a marketing representative obsessed with numbers, my book is from a user’s perspective."

To be clear, I have not read the book, and I am not endorsing it. I’m simply pointing out its existence, and highlighting the fact that the Twitter phenomenon has created such an array of literature.

Last week, a Twitter documentary was announced as well. You can find our interview with its creator Siok Siok tan here.

the Association of National Advertisers along with B2B Magazine released results from a survey, which found that marketers are increasingly using social media platforms. No surprise there. What’s more interesting is how they are using them.

According to the results, about 66 percent of marketers utilized social media this year, up from just 20% in 2007. Half of those surveyed use viral videos, up from a quarter in 2007.

Top social networks used by marketers according to the survey:

- Facebook (74 percent)
- YouTube (65 percent)
- Twitter (63 percent)
- LinkedIn (60 percent)

The most effective newer media platforms in 2009 according to the survey:

- Search engine marketing (SEM) (65 percent)
- Own Web site (59 percent)
- SEO (55 percent)
- E-mail marketing (45 percent)

"As more media platforms become available, it is imperative that all marketers continue to assess their capabilities and select the platforms that are best suited to help them meet their brand’s goals and objectives," said Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the ANA. "With this proliferation of media, marketers must work harder, survey the entire landscape available to them and create their brand’s most optimal media mix."

The survey highlights the differences in social media use among B2B and B2C marketers. B2C use more mobile and Facebook marketing, while B2B use LinkedIn and even Twitter more. B2C marketers get more out of search engine marketing, while B2B marketers get more out of webinars.

When it comes to paying for social media campaigns, 55 percent of those surveyed shifted funds from their traditional media budgets, while 48% shifted funds from other marketing communications budgets. Only 26% created an incremental budget. ROI and metrics are still the top concerns companies have about social media.

Google quietly launched an official Facebook page this week. Although that quiet didn’t stop the page from attracting over 264,000 fans already so far.

Google has two favorite pages listed – the AdWords page and the iGoogle page. Both of them have been around longer. iGoogle came on the scene last month it looks like, and the AdWords page has been around for quite some time. It doesn’t look like Fans of the Official Google Facebook Page will be getting access to much more than Official Google Blog posts, but that could certainly change in the future.

Google seems to have been more interested in communicating via Twitter in the past. A while back the company launched a slew of Google accounts for various products, and have acquired piles of followers on those.

Google launching a Facebook Page certainly makes considering the enormous popularity of the social network. What makes less sense is why they have just now gotten around to launching it. To be honest, I’ve never noticed that they were lacking one.

I’ve always considered Google to be one of the premier examples of a company that knows how to do corporate blogging. I regularly read most of their blogs for announcements, and most are frequently updated and their directory of blogs does a fantastic job of keeping interested parties informed of what is happening throughout various parts of the company.

It looks like they’ve got some work to do on the corporate social media use front though. On the other hand, they’re Google. It’s not like they have to worry about word of mouth too much.

According to Email Data Source, Twitter has become the most linked to social media outlet in email marketing campaigns. Email Data Source collects, analyzes, organizes, and archives millions of marketing messages to provide competitive intelligence and analytics to the email marketing community.

"In the data Email Data Source has been tracking, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of email marketing campaigns that contain links to Facebook and Twitter," says Bill McCloskey, chairman and co-founder of Email Data Source. "In fact, starting in 2009 twitter.com and facebook.com have become the two most prominent linked to sites in all of email marketing."

So far this year, the number of campaigns with Twitter links has grown to 41,399 (with 41,052 for Facebook) according to the firm. Twitter officially passed Facebook in this regard back in March, they say.

"Since March, Twitter has continued to dominate the email marketplace by being the most prominently linked to website, and the gap between Twitter and Facebook has grown," says Email Data Source. "In June, Twitter was linked to in 9,506 campaigns and Facebook was linked to in 8,636 campaigns."

Those numbers are tremendously higher than they were a couple years ago as you might imagine. The first email campaign with a link to Twitter that was tracked by the firm was back in 2007, and for that entire year, there were 215 email marketing campaigns that linked to it. There were 729 linking to Facebook.

Last week, rumor had it that MySpace was about to launch their long-awaited MySpace email service. It didn’t happen last week, but it’s starting to happen now. The company is rolling it out. It could be several weeks until you have access to MySpace Mail, but trust that it is on the way if you don’t already have it.

The offering makes for an interesting move on MySpace’s part, and one that could be a huge success or a huge flop. It’s no secret that MySpace has felt the pressure of competition from Facebook, which continues to gain users left and right.

MySpace is in something of a rebuilding process, as indicated by News Corp’s Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller. MySpace email could end up being a significant factor in future success. The keyword is could.

A few things that won’t work to MySpace’s advantage:

1. Most people are probably comfortable with their current email services.

2. Sharing on Facebook is reported to have overtaken sharing by email by at least one firm

3. Lots of people have abandoned their MySpace pages in favor of Facebook accounts

4. Email is not a new concept, and you have to wonder how many people it will attract

A few things that could work to MySpace’s advantage:

1. MySpace still has a lot of loyal users, and many of them might love the idea of having an @myspace.com address.

2. Facebook doesn’t have email addresses.

3. MySpace plans on getting much more involved with gaming, which could attract a lot of users, which in turn could attract them to MySpace email addresses.

4. It has a nice list of features like: unlimited file storage, the ability to embed photos from user profiles or the desktop with one click, the ability to send and receive music and videos as attachments (good considering how great of a role music and video play on MySpace), etc.

It will be very interesting to see if MySpace is able to turn an old idea like email into a new attraction. Will you be checking out MySpace mail? Share your thoughts here.