Microsoft's search engine, Bing, has received a massive endorsement from Facebook, which could potentially see Bing becoming a credible rival to Google, the company that has dominated the search category for so long.Early on Wednesday at Microsoft's Silicon Valley HQ, management teams from Facebook and Microsoft gathered to address the media on new developments and partnerships between them.In a nutshell, it was announced that the social context of Facebook's information database will be brought into a Bing search. ...

Mediaite.com is an online and print analysis site which is exhaustively documenting the relative influence and power of the top-ranking editors in the world. The ranks are calculated based on the print circulation of their associated publications, unique online visitors to the site of their associated publication, online buzz, blogs buzz, and Twitter followers (if applicable -- not all editors have a twitter account).An individual might be collectively ranked higher than any of their individual metric rankings, due to Mediaite's algorithm ...

There is a mind-boggling array of different online platforms for getting your marketing message across: From classic display banners through to text-based advertorials, tweets, Facebook status updates and emails, the list goes on and on.It is very easy to get carried away with the excitement of using new technology and lose sight of basic advertising copy principles.People are often quick to blame technology for the failure of their campaigns, using it as an excuse for sloppy, boring, poorly thought out ...

Journalists may not use information from the Facebook accounts of their "friends," a Danish media tribunal ruled Wednesday in a case pitting the prime minister's brother against a tabloid. "Information on closed profiles are reserved to people -- the Facebook 'friends' -- who have been authorised to access the profile," the Danish Press Council said."That is why media do not in principal have access to use information posted in closed profiles," the media ethics court said, setting a legal precedent on ...

At first glance, it seems that dieantwoord.com has been hacked, wiping all content off the site, leaving just a three-word expletive ridden sentence repeating all over the screen, with a curiously attractive shifting colour palette in the background. But 24 hours later and there is still no word from the band, via Facebook or Twitter, about it?This story just keeps getting stranger and stranger. Call me old-fashioned but if someone had spray-painted vile messages all over the front of my ...

In another clear sign that the social media masses are exerting tremendous influence over corporates, American clothing giant, Gap, decided to scrap its new logo and go back to the old one after an outpouring of criticism on Facebook and Twitter.Gap is one of the world's largest specialty retailers, with approximately 3 100 stores and 2009 revenues of US$14.2 billion. It operates five of the most recognized apparel brands in the world — Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Piperlime and ...

Bands, politicians, charities and many more organisations are turning to Ning to imbue websites with the kinds of social networking features credited with making stars out of Facebook and Twitter.Ning hopes to create momentum with the release of a new set of tools that let even technophobes build websites that create online communities and tap into smartphone applications and software hosted in the internet "cloud"."We focus on network creators who are the people running the campaign; the band, the non-profit ...

What happens when politicians come face-to-face with a personal thought-broadcasting platform? It's a match made in heaven. We decided to find out which of the world’s politicians have ventured into this new frontier.This list isn't based solely on numbers of followers, but on those politicos who use Twitter and/or Facebook regularly to interact with their constituents, and do so effectively. Of course, the tech-savvy Americans dominate the online reputation market, but others are also starting to build substantial followings.Here are ...

We recently dipped our toes into Influence and the Social Web and it's very interesting to see how deep this rabbit hole goes. The emergence of the social graph and online influence has spurred an entirely new commercial model: Influence Measurement and Marketing.As an example, let's take that original article on Memeburn and measure its influence. By dropping the URL into Backtype, we find that the article has a reach of 14,228 impressions on Twitter from just 12 Tweets. That's ...

If you missed Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone interviewed by Brad Stone from BusinessWeek on Monday -- you were fortunate. The two executives spoke at a meeting of Inforum, which is part of the Commonwealth Club, focused on fostering discussion among people in their 20s and 30s.The location was the stunning Julia Morgan Ballroom at The Merchants Exchange in downtown San Francisco (a building owned by Clint Reilly, one of California's top political power brokers). And there was ...