Hey internet entrepreneurs, celebrities are encroaching on your market. Thanks to flexible technology and an abundance of developers, web start-ups are practically the new must-have accessory for Hollywood types, reports Business Insider. Check out their list of the 10 companies to watch. There are the A-listers like Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst Media and Will Ferrell's FunnyOrDie. But did you know that Ludacris and Will.i.am have social networks? Or that Peter Gabriel came up with a Pandora-killer and Kim Kardashian launched the Netflix of footwear?

Big numbers from Tumblr. We've periodically sung the praises of blogging start-up Tumblr, which boasts slick technology and an entrepreneurial prodigy of a founder. Today, via Mashable, Tumblr announced some serious traffic growth: 1 billion pageviews and 15,000 new users joining everyday. Meanwhile, Mashable reports that Tumblr, which has operated thus far without a business model, "plans to launch a two revenue generating features next month."

Advice for first time CEOs. Bijan Sabet deals with a lot of neophytes but he doesn't mind (via peHUB). "In consumer Internet companies, first time CEOs are the norm - perhaps even encouraged and preferred," says the general partner at Spark Capital. He has two nuggets of advice for greenhorn CEOs: 1) Share bad news with your board and investors early and 2) always be planning for contingencies. "The 'what if' exercise is incredibly valuable and tells me that a CEO is thinking extremely strategically and not afraid to admit that things sometimes do take longer."

Another acquisition for giant vacation rental company. When HomeAway raised an astounding $250 million in a single venture funding round back in 2008, CEO Brian Sharples told Inc.: "There are going to be some great opportunities [for acquisitions] the next couple of years." Now, TechCrunch reports that HomeAway has bought the publisher of AlugueTemporada.com.br, Brazil's best known vacation rental site. This is at least the third acquisition the company has made since its last funding round and the first outside of North America and Europe.

How not to kill your start-up. ReadWriteWeb has put together a list of core principles entrepreneurs should internalize in order to keep their start-ups from biting the big one. One thing the post says to dodge is the tendency to become caught up in the allure of modern technology. "Consider other sources of competitive power than just technological sophistication, such as superior customer experience or service, exclusive distribution partnerships, or other market-based advantages." The most provocative, and perhaps, pertinent piece of advice? "Remember that sometimes start-ups need to be killed, for their own good -- or yours, at least."

Apps for TV have yet to catch on It is estimated that by the end of 2010, Americans will own more than two million Web-connected TVs. And in 2009, Yahoo! announced that Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio televisions would come with its Connected TV software, which is open to all developers. However, unlike the Apple App store, which had more than 3,000 programs just two months after its debut and more than 140,000 by 2010, apps for TV haven't taken off. Only 35 full-featured apps are available on the Yahoo! service. BusinessWeek reports one reason apps for TV have yet to take off is that the approval process for television apps is more difficult than for their online counterparts. After Yahoo! approves the App, each individual TV maker must also approve the app. Some TVs cannot run certain types of code, and TV makers are reluctant to take on the risk of being blamed for an app that disappoints.

Selling your business? A lawyer can help. Over at the New York Times' You're the Boss blog, lawyer Harry Styron offers pointers on selling a business and when to get a lawyer involved (hint: not until the decision has been made to sell, ideally not out of necessity). Especially for family run businesses, Styron says, "if the decision to sell is a result of a key family member having died or become ill or if the prospect of selling the business means some family member is going to lose a good job or a good income, the decision to sell was made too late." Now all you need to know is whether your lawyer should specialize in entrepreneurship.

How to cope with changes at the workplace. From budget cuts, to massive layoffs, to new management techniques, there are plenty of reasons why changes at the office can stress out employees. A recent survey conducted by Right Management, a career management consulting firm, shows that 31 percent of employees have trouble adapting to changes in the workplace, Boston.com reports. The Boston.com team has also come up with five tips on how to deal with change in the workplace, which include taking time to get to know a new boss in order to develop a good working relationship, staying on top of the latest skills that employers expect when seeking out job candidates in your field, and having an open flow of communication with your manager if you feel too bogged down by your workload.

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Google Buzz initially launched to much fanfare but sadly the excitement has faded as issues over privacy, organisation and filtering have arose.

Google have corrected many of the privacy concerns, other features we lie in wait for.

One of the most anticipated releases is Buzz for Google Apps, Google's corporate webmail and PIM service.

Today it appears Google is rolling Buzz out to selected users. Not available on the fullemail client just yet, some users (including myself) now have Buzz available on the mobile version of Buzz. This is similar to the roll out of Buzz in Gmail, which saw it available on the iPhone before Gmail.com. We can expect to see Buzz arrive in Google Apps email inboxes very soon.

Interestingly, Buzz on the iPhone does appear to be part and parcel of the google apps email service but a separate account isn't required. I'm logged into my Google Apps email @zee.me and am greeted with the notice above but upon visiting Buzz, it is in my fact the same account I have been using to test out Buzz on my standard gmail.com account. We can only assume that Google is making it possible to integrate your Google Apps account with your standard gmail account.

The URL of Google Buzz for your domain on your mobile http://m.google.com/app/buzz/a/YOURDOMAIN.com, on a standard browser (after a few tries) we believe you should find buzz appear at http://google.com/buzz/a/YOURDOMAIN.com. Although at the moment that redirects to a page not found url.

This evening, at 7pm PST Time, we'll see Google make a major announcement. Whether this has something to do with it is possible but unlikely. We've been reliably informed Google has bigger news in store.

H/T Sam

StatusNet, the open-source microblogging service that serves as the foundation for identi.ca, just announced the launch of the public beta of its StatusNet Cloud Service. Thanks to this, you can now easily host your own Twitter-like community for your blog, club or company.

Sponsor

Getting Started

To get started, just head over to status.net, sign up for a free account. You can choose between a single user account (good for bloggers and brands), a private network for your company or a public community site. After that, you can customize your site with your own logo and colors. You can also set the character limit for status updates from your users.

Connect to Twitter

Just running your own microblogging network isn't too exciting unless you are running an internal site for your business, but you can easily connect your Twitter account to your StatusNet site, so that every update from your personal site gets syndicated to your Twitter stream as well. Sending local StatusNet @replies to Twitter is optional.

StatusNet in the Enterprise

StatusNet also offers paid enterprise solutions, with costs ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 per year depending on the features and level of service the customer expects. Our Own Alex Williams just took a closer look at the service's future in the enterprise last week and argued that it "has the features that the enterprise customer wants and it has a strong developer community."

As of now, StatusNet's free offering can't quite replace Yammer or similar products in a business setting, but if you always wanted to set up your own Twitter-like environment, StatusNet now makes it as easy as choosing a URL.

Updated

Dalton Caldwell, co-founder and former chief executive of music startup Imeem, appears to be working on a new company called Mixed Media Labs. And he has raised $370,000 of a targeted $600,000 in debt financing to get started, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Despite getting off to a promising start, Imeem struggled to make its business work, and was acquired and shut down by MySpace last year. Most of its staff was laid off, while Caldwell and other executives were kept on only as consultants to help with the transition. So it's not surprising that Caldwell is moving on to another startup. The filing also lists Imeem's former chief operating officer Ali Aydar as a director at the new company.

I haven't been able to find any information about Mixed Media Labs online. There's a web site, but it's completely blank. Unfortunately, we don't have any personal contact info for Caldwell, so I had to resort to Twitter to try to reach him. I'll update this post if I hear back.

Update: Caldwell emailed me: I am not currently in a position to talk about my new company.

Companies: Mixed Media Labs

People: Ali Aydar, Dalton Caldwell

Mashable and the Google Wave team are proud to announce the Google Wave API Challenge, a month-long competition to create exciting new Google Wave extensions.

Google Wave's latest updated clean API and new extension abilities allow for faster development, more opportunities for integrations and lots of exciting potential for many new Google Wave use cases. We invite developers from around the world to showcase their latest extensions.

Over the next several weeks, Mashable and the Google Wave team will be showcasing and discussing the most interesting submissions.

There will be 3 voting categories: Most Fun, Most Useful and Best Use of the Embed API. We'll then pick a Judge's Choice as the overall winner.

The winning developer/development team will receive 2 unlocked Nexus Ones, see their extension featured on Mashable AND receive free passes to the Google I/O conference.

4 Step Submission Process
Step 1: Developers install the Mashable submitty extension from the public read-only wave
Step 2: After installing this, you'll get a New Mashable Submission in your new wave menu
Step 3: Just use our Mashable Submitty Google Extension and fill out the form.
Step 4: After approving valid entries, we'll create a public discussion wave with entries including a voting gadget.

Timeline:
Submissions Open: March 8th, 2010
Submissions Close: April 9th, 2010 11:59 PM EST
Public Voting on Top 20 submissions: April 12th, 2010 April 19th, 2010
Winner Announced: April 21st, 2010

Rules:
Developer or Developer Team (Preferred max of 4 names submitted)
Existing Extensions are eligible only if they use the new API (ports to the new API are fine)
Full Credit for any work due must be entered in April 9th, 2010
Over 18 to receive prize
Final winning submission will be judged exclusively by Mashable and Google Wave team

Tags: contest, Google, Google Wave, google wave api challenge

The Linux Foundation, the non-profit that supports the growth of the Linux kernel, has launched a merchandise store where people can purchase a newly launched line of original T-shirts, hats, mugs and other items that reflect geek culture.

According a release sent out by the Foundation, merchandise available in the Linux.com store is designed to reflect the unique and varied culture associated with Linux and will support the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds. For example, t-shirts contain phrases like Free The Code, FSCK the Establishment, and Fork You. All revenue generated from the store will go directly towards Linux Foundation activities, initiatives and events.

In conjunction with the launch of the store, Linux is holding a t-shirt design contest. Design submissions are due on the store's site by April 11, 2010. The top five designs will be available for community vote at Linux.com through June 6, 2010 and the winning design will be included on T-shirts available for purchase in the Linux.com Store. The lucky designer will be awarded with travel to Boston to attend the Foundation's annual conference LinuxCon in August.

The Linus Foundation has launched a number of unique initiatives to help raise funds for the organization and its open source initiatives. Last year, the Linux Foundation launched a branded Visa credit card.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007, the Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by hosting important workgroups, events and online resources such as Linux.com. For more information, please visit www.linuxfoundation.org.

I'm pleased to announce that in the last week, we've successfully deployed our latest site update. Read along to see what we've been doing to make things a bit easier for you.

Optional Domain Verification

One of the biggest pain points for developers wanting to use Yahoo! APIs and services was that you had to verify your domain before you got Consumer Keys for our services. This security restriction was especially annoying at events like our HackDays, when developers told us they really wanted to start coding as quickly as possible. We've now relaxed this requirement and made domain verification optional. You can still verify your domain when you sign up for a key if you want, but we now offer the option to skip this process and let you verify later from the 'My Projects' dashboard. This makes it much easier to start building apps on Yahoo! services, like our Updates and Contacts APIs.

'My Projects' dashboard

As well as the changes to the domain verification process, we also made some other changes to the 'My Projects' dashboard.

1. 'My Favorite' module link. If you are a YAP developer, you can now update the destination link that your app uses in the 'My Favorite' module, when installed on the Yahoo! homepage. This option is found in the application details tab and gives you more control over how users interact with your Open Applications.
2. Update primary email address. If you submit your Open Application for inclusion in our galleries, we may need to contact you. This feature helps ensure we've got the correct email address on record.

Create Consumer Key API

The Create Consumer Key (CCK) API allows developers to easily provide Yahoo!-issued Consumer Keys, Consumer Secrets, and Application IDs to their users. You can find out more about it in this introduction.

Forum improvements

In the last few weeks, we've made several improvements to the YDN Forum, both of which make it easier to use.

1. Email notifications: You can now subscribe to a forum thread and get notified by email when someone replies, or subscribe to a board and get notified of a new topic.
2. Improved the RSS feeds: These now include replies to threads, rather than just the opening post.

New navigation bar

If you are a regular YDN user, you will probably have noticed this change already. We have made some tweaks to the navigation bar, making sure that it is easy to browse to the most popular and most used sections of the site. You can now navigate to Yahoo! Query Language, YUI, Hadoop and our Pattern Library in just one click, as well as get support from our forum. We also made some of the descriptions and names a little clearer. For instance, now you don't need any inside knowledge to know that YAP is our apps platform (Yahoo! Application Platform).

In case you were wondering, these changes are based on the results of a usability study done here at Yahoo! We invited some developers, some YDN users and some not, into the Yahoo! office here in Silicon Valley and watched them use the site through a 2-way mirror in our usability lab. We learned quite a bit from the exercise and are using the findings to make some site design decisions. The participants did know they were being spied on of course.

Bugs, bugs and more bugs

Last but not least, the YDN engineers closed a plethora of bugs (over 100). These ranged from resolving browser compatibility issues, to fixing incorrect 'new message' counts on the forum, to performance optimizations on the 'My Projects' dashboard. We'll continue to fix bugs each release.

Coming Up

The eagled-eyed amongst you may already know this, as YAP developers should see a module entitled Spring 2010. Yahoo! to introduce support for OpenSocial 0.9 on their 'My Projects' details page. We are currently working on supporting the OpenSocial gadget XML spec in YAP. This upgrade means soon you will be able to modify your application via a gadget XML file hosted on your server, rather than having to enter all your app meta-data into a form. Once deployed, you'll also be able to take full advantage of the OpenSocial APIs and increase your application's portability to other OpenSocial-compliant containers.

Suggestions? Please let us know what you think in the comments.

Matthew Lock
Product Manager
YDN

The mobile search and recommendation service WHERE announced today the launch of its new hyper-local mobile advertising network, WHERE Ads.

WHERE's claim to fame is its immensely useful mobile application which goes by the same name. The app allows you to search for restaurants, entertainment, news, and more based on your location. It's currently available for iPhone, Android, Palm WebOS, and Blackberry platforms.

WHERE Ads will allow the company to leverage its mobile platform further by offering targeted ads that benefit both businesses and users. For example, a hungry user searching for pizza in a new town will likely be tempted by a pizza restaurant's ad that features a $5 off coupon. After the user clicks on the ad, they're presented with a detailed page the offers reviews of the pizza place, directions on how to get there, and more.

The company is also opening the ad network to other mobile services. At launch, WHERE Ads will be running on a dozen mobile services including Geocade, Jambase, MocoSpace, and Superpages.com.

If it functions as advertised, WHERE may have hit upon the perfect formula of mobile ads driven by location based services. WHERE Ads focus on offering users something they want at a very local level, and then follow that up by sending them to a simple landing page with all the information they need to get there.

Such an ad platform seems more local than competing mobile ad platforms AdMob (now owned by Google) and Quattro Wireless (owned by Apple, and also WHERE's previous mobile ad supplier) which have focused more on bringing traditional web advertising to the mobile environment. WHERE claims that Click Through Rates (the typical measuring stick for the effectiveness of an ad) on its ads have been up to three times as much as competing mobile ad platforms.

WHERE is a service of Boston-based uLocate Communications. The company has received funding from Kodiak Venture Partners, GrandBanks Capital, and Venrock.

Tags: WHERE Ads

Companies: Where

Does the world need more than one Twitter? How about 10,000 of them? That is how many sites are running on the hosted version of StatusNet, which went into private beta at our Realtime CrunchUp last November. Today, StatusNet is opening up its hosted service to all comers in a public beta.

You can think about StatusNet as the WordPress of microblogging. StatusNet is open-source software which can either be downloaded and run on your own enterprise servers or now on StatusNet's hosted servers. Basic service is free, with plans to charge for premium levels down the line. The premium versions will be ad-free, support unlimited users, larger file sizes, your own domain and design, Facebook and Twitter integration, and XMPP feeds.

CEO Evan Prodromou describes the various ways StatusNet can be used: as an open-source microblogging server akin to WordPress, as the basis for an online community (ning.com for microblogging); for enterprise (Open Source Yammer), or for a single user to own their social media presence (your own ping.fm). One of the cooler features of StatusNet is OStatus, which lets you follow people on different social networks all from within your hosted microblogging enevironment.

The largest site hosted on StatusNet is the company's own identi.ca, but StatusNet will also be hosting microblogging sites for ABC News, Shit My Dad Says (not live yet at the time of this posting), the Twit Army, Kirsty Ally's weight loss community Phitter, Germany's Bleeper, and Today's Mama. All together, there are more than 1 million registered users across all 10,000 StatusNet sites.

Shit My Dad Says has 1.2 million followers on Twitter and a TV pilot in the works starring William Shatner. He will use StatusNet to push his updates to Twitter while controlling the advertising. ABC News plans to use StatusNet as a central dashboard to push out its headlines and updates to different social networks. Update: Apparently, ABC News changed its mind and won't be using the service now.

StausNet is based in Montreal and raised $1 million in seed capital last year.

We've written about Twitter client Sobees, which is working to create the best social media client on the market, competing with both TweetDeck and Seesmic. Today Sobees is releasing a new version of its Windows native desktop app built in .NET, complete with realtime search, a redesign and more.

The new client includes support for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed and LinkedIn (which was added late last year). The most significant addition is the availability of realtime search on the client, with the ability to search Twitter, Friendfeed, OneRiot and FacteryLabs from within the application. Sobees integrated elements of its newly launched realtime web dashboard to power search in the client.

Sobees has also added drag and drop technology for columns in order to change the place of a column within the client. Other technical updated include the ability to preview Tweets and maps, translate messages, and see pictures posted on TwitPic from within the Tweet. And Sobees will break out threaded conversations you have with friends.

Sobees is competing in a crowded space where each client continues to innovate and offer users more options for managing their social media accounts and the reealtime web. For example, Seesmic has incorporated Ping.fm, to allows users to update more than 50 different social networks at the same time. And TweetDeck now incorporates YouTube and Flickr within its client. For now, Sobees doesn't have any mobile clients but we are told that iPhone and Android apps are coming soon.

Bubbly, a service that allows users to send voice messages to multiple followers, has gained 500,000 users in India in the first four weeks of launch.

The number blasted expectations out of the water, said Tom Clayton, chief executive of Bubble Motion, the Sequoia Capital-backed startup that created the Bubbly service.

We were expecting 10,000 to 20,000 users in the first couple months, Clayton said. We haven't even really told anyone about it, it's just sort of grown virally.

Bubbly is cell phone service that aims to bring social media to the masses. It builds on the foundation set by Bubble Talk, which has 100 million users who use the service to send voice messages to on other individuals. With Bubbly, messages go to a bigger audience followers.

Users can easily follow friends, family, celebrities, religious leaders, and BBC News by typing in the person's number or access code, then *. They're notified when there's an update - a friend inviting a group of classmates to a bar, a short news update from BBC News, or a message for fans from a Bollywood star.

Followers get notified when someone sends out a new voice message normally just 30 seconds long - and Bubble Motion earns money by taking a cut of the airtime used to listen to the message. It's free to send a message, though in the case of celebrities, it could be thousands of fans who dial in.

From a fan's perspective, there's a little more intimacy from hearing the voice, Clayton said. They know it's not fake or a PR agent or some guy in a call center typing out a message.

Most of the 500,000 new users are teens and tweens, Clayton said. The average Bubbly message gets listened to by about half of the senders' followers. The company has launched the service in three of India's 23 states, and plans to expand to the rest of India, Japan, Europe the Middle East and later, Brazil.

Bubble Motion also hopes to offer video Bubbly messages, where followers could easily dial into watch homemade videos, or even give users the option of including text making it a true mobile Twitter.

There's just one glitch to that idea, though - Bubble Motion wouldn't make money off texting, because users in Asia don't pay to receive text messages.

Tags: Bubbly

Companies: Bubble Motion, Sequoia Capital

People: Tom Clayton

Retweet.com, which put itself up for sale last month, has sold for $250,000 in an online auction on Flippa. The auction saw a fair amount of interest with 45 bids in total, but it appears that the winning party came in with a buy it now offer for $48,000 more than the current bid to take ownership of the Tweetmeme competitor.

Like Tweetmeme, the site aggregates the most popular links on Twitter, and also provides third-party websites with buttons that lets their visitors easily retweet articles. Although the service isn't as popular as Tweetmeme, it has been able to accumulate respectable traffic, and it's ideal name give it significant branding power. According to the company's listing on Flippa, there is not yet any revenue.

At this point, we don't know who the buyer is, though we heard rumblings last month that a major social news site was interested. We're looking for more information and have contacted the team behind Retweet.com for details. We'll update if we learn more.

[thanks Matt Binder for the tip]

Tags: retweet, tweetmeme, twitter

We've just released the latest update to the Disqus WordPress plugin! You can download it here or update directly from the WordPress admin panel. This is version 2.3 and includes many updates that we are very happy to announce.

• Updated user interface to better sit within the WordPress admin aesthetics. Clean up of moderation, navigation, and support interfaces.
• Improved comment exporting and local backup. Exporting is now down in smaller chunks and addresses execution timeout and server memory issues.
• Faster JavaScript loading. The main comment system JavaScript is now loaded asynchronously and will not block the loading of other widgets and scripts on the page.
• Better handling of closed/disabled comments on pages and posts.
• Disqus now updates the permalink URL of the comment thread when it changes from WordPress. This addresses previous issues with missing Reactions (tweets, etc) and missing comments.
• More consistent handling of comment counts. Comment count script is included the default post loop, but can also be tweaked to be included in the wp_footer.
• Single sign-on with WordPress accounts integrated into plugin (VIP only).
• Fixes and compatibility workarounds with other WordPress plugins.

This is strongly recommended for all WordPress users; please let us know if you run into any issues. Thanks to our friends Alex and Devin at Crowd Favorite for all of their help and WordPress-expertise!

Daniel

As you can tell we've been busy lately at SocialToo. Today I'd like to announce some of perhaps our most significant features yet. The most significant of those features being the introduction of a new Premium program which monthly paying subscribers can participate in.

SocialToo Premium

Starting today, if you log into SocialToo.com you should be prompted to upgrade. You can also click on the big UPGRADE tab in the upper right in the SocialToo dashboard. Today we're introducing a new $29.95/month subscription plan (free for 7 days) that will enable us to provide continued premium features for just our subscribers. Right now these include a new Stats interface, multiple Twitter account support, and better ways of filtering out your spammy friends, but in the future you can expect better survey features included as part of this, even more filters, more ways to automate, all just to those that subscribe.

Our Free plans still exist if you choose not to be part of this program, just click Please do not show this again when you are prompted to upgrade and you'll still get all the same features you always enjoyed. In addition, our lifetime, one-time purchases for the auto follow catch up, daily stats e-mails, and bulk unfollow, all still exist, and you can still purchase them. We are, however, starting today, increasing the price of each of our one-time features. The auto-follow catch up is now $10 for life. The daily e-mail is now $40 for life. The bulk unfollow is now $50 for life. Those all remain, in case you only want a feature or two. We may still add more in the future.

New, Powerful Stats Interface!

You asked for it, you got it! Now, just for SocialToo Premium users you have access to a very powerful new stats UI that includes new follows, new unfollows, total follows, net follows, as well as total and new Tweets, all presented in a nice line graph over time. You can show as far back as you need if you want to show stats over time. In addition, if you click through to any specific day on your timeline you can see the individual Tweets for that day, along with exactly who followed you and unfollowed you. You can go back as far as we have been able to track and do this! So, in essence, for those that sign up for SocialToo Premium, we are also now backing up your Tweets for you and organizing them on a day-by-day basis that you can refer back to any time. I think that's valuable.

Stats start accruing the minute you sign up for SocialToo Premium, so if you're not seeing anything at first, wait a day or two and those graphs will start filling up. If you are already a daily e-mail subscriber, we've already been tracking stats for you, and you probably already see information in there. Try out the 7 day free trial to see what I mean!

Multiple Twitter Account Support

This has been perhaps one of our most requested features. Now our Premium subscribers can have it! Just upgrade your account, and now when you mouse over your name in the upper-left, you'll have the option to add additional Twitter accounts. Add as many Twitter accounts as you like and you can manage them all right there! No need to log out and log back in for each account you manage just mouse over the name, select the Twitter account you want to manage, and it switches for you automatically!

Here's my favorite part: SocialToo Premium subscribers get all these premium features for every single Twitter account they manage. You can manage stats across all your accounts, add filters that work for all your Twitter accounts at once, as well as enable auto follow or daily e-mails for each account you manage, or even just one or two. Right now there are no limits, so add away, and enjoy the features we offer! I hope this makes you a bit more productive in automating, tracking, and cleaning your Twitter stream.

New Filters

Starting today, new SocialToo Premium subscribers can access new filters. In addition to DM filters that free subscribers can already use and the free phishing protection, we're now providing content and source filters our premium subscribers can use to unfollow, block, or just filter out the people they follow on Twitter. After upgrading, just go to the Filters tab, go to the content or source filters sub-option, and start adding some filters and actions. If someone Tweets from a specific app you can now unfollow based on that app. If you don't want to follow people that mention specific terms, you can now unfollow or block people based on those terms. In addition, while free subscribers only have access to 4 DM filters per account, SocialToo Premium users have access to unlimited DM filters. Add as many as you like! Oh, and there will be many more filters coming soon!

One-Time Features

Right now Premium subscribers have access to all the one-time features you can purchase on a one-by-one basis. Need to catch up your auto follow? No need to purchase an additional service. Need daily stats e-mails with a list of those who follow and unfollow you? Those are included as well. If you ever need to unfollow everyone and start over on any of your Twitter accounts, that's included as well. We thought we'd make this nice and easy for you by not having to worry which features you need to purchase.

As I mentioned, for our existing customers, no need to worry the features you purchased still work and aren't going away. In fact you can still purchase these features on a one-by-one basis. We just thought this would provide an easier solution for you to manage it all and get some additional, very useful new features along the way.

Much, Much More!

With your support, these monthly Premium subscriptions are going to allow us to continue adding more powerful features. We already have several being tested as we speak, and much more to come. Expect more across Facebook and other social networks. Most of all we want to hear from you! Especially if you're a Premium Subscriber, please let us know what you would like to see moving forward. This is our most significant update yet, I can't wait to see what else we're going to bring to the table!

Log in, and go here to upgrade your account immediately for free! You can of course cancel any time, and the first 7 days are free!

Jesse Stay
CEO, SocialToo.com

Facebook's move into location has seemed inevitable for some time, and it now appears that the company will officially reveal its plans at next month's Facebook developer conference f8.

According to The New York Times, the social network will incorporate location in two ways: (1) its own features for sharing location and (2) APIs to let other apps like Foursquare and Gowalla offer location services to Facebook users.

Presumably, Facebook will make sure to address privacy issues with its location features for example, perhaps with settings that allow you to share your location only with a select group of friends. The Times' report doesn't detail the specifics of such features, though it notes that the social network updated its privacy policy late last year in preparation for a location launch.

Facebook will be rolling out its location features to an enormous user base there are now more than 400 million users of the social network in total, 100 million of which access the site via mobile regularly. The company also has its own native apps for all of the major mobile platforms. All of this gives Facebook's location features an enormous edge over the competition.

The Times' report suggests that the competition isn't the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla, however, but rather Google and its huge base of local small business advertisers. Of course, the startups aren't ignoring this opportunity either earlier today, Foursquare shared details of upcoming features it plans to release to help local businesses utilize checkin data.

With Facebook entering the space though, the other players will need to look to create value in ways beyond check-ins and knowing where your friends are located at any given point in time. That's why Foursquare seems to be so focused on partnerships and gaming, while Gowalla is making moves (as recently as last night) in virtual goods.

In any event, location remains the huge trend so far in 2010, and literally each day seems to bring new indications of which way it will all play out.

Tags: facebook, foursquare, social networking, trending

It looks like advertising via social media is about to grow up. New guidelines for advertising on services like Facebook and Twitter are being proposed in the UK.

For the past couple of years, advertising via Facebook and Twitter has been a Wild West of experimentation where brands could do pretty much whatever they liked. We've seen innovative ideas like Ikea's Facebook photo-tagging and just about every brand you can think of has started to use Twitter to varying degrees of success.

Social media marketing has had a number of fail moments' as it has grown (just think of Habitat and its ill-judged use of hashtags), so it was only a matter of time before rules were tightened up.

Under the proposals, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) would control digital marketing to ensure that it is responsible, legal, honest and truthful. The ASA currently oversees print, TV and radio advertising in much the same way. The proposals, first reported by The Guardian, would regulate advertising by UK companies across their websites and all social media activity.

According to Clickz, the new advertising rules are to be published this month and should be in force later this year. Details of exactly how offenders will be punished have yet to be decided.

Foursquare for Socialites + MySpace for Bands

Just in time for SXSW, social butterflies can share favorite hot-spots with friends on Foursquare, plus bands and filmmakers can quickly connect with fans on MySpace all from HootSuite's Social Media Dashboard.

Mayor of the Nest

Don't know about Foursquare? This web juggernaut combines way-finding, social marketing and gaming in an addictive mobile app which encourages everyday socialites to check in at cafes, pubs, and conferences. They can alert friends, share tips, and even become mayor of a location. Note: CEO Ryan loves it.

Bands, Meet Fans

Of course, you know MySpace. The venerable web giant is the place where creative types hang out and share their work and is the first stop for discovering emerging and established bands and filmmakers. With HootSuite, artists can easily outreach to fans about shows, releases and screenings. P.S. Let's be MySpace friends.

Tools for Marketers

Today's release includes a powerful addition of default settings to custom URL parameters which were added in HootSuite's Barn Owl release (Feb. 15, 2010). This feature helps marketing and customer service teams track campaign results by adding unique referral identifiers. The release also includes a variety of bug fixes and performance enhancements.

Bar-B-Q and Apps in Austin

Are you headed to Austin for the massive interactive media, film, and music conference? The HootSuite team will be on-the-ground keeping an eye out for users updating Foursquare and MySpace with HootSuite and sharing swag specifically designed for the culture of the conference.

Track us down on the road by following @HootUp and/or the #hootsxsw hashtag, plus this handy SXSW Twitter list, for meet-ups, demos, prizes and photo ops with the Owl mascot.

You don't have to be on the ground in Texas to enjoy the fun just add Foursquare and MySpace to your HootSuite social networks and learn locals-only tips and/or find where your favorite band is playing next right from your beloved dashboard.

As you can see in the picture to the left, Lt. Commander Data (in a scene from Star Trek: First Contact) is loaded and ready for bear, as they say. But just a few minutes earlier, he was almost ready to collapse into a puddle of trembling jelly, full of fear. While talking with his captain, Data expressed his feelings of fear of impending battle with the Borg. This feeling was a gift newly available to him from an emotion chip that he had recently found.

As we know, Data is an android, a machine full of information and devoid of emotion. The chip changed that. However, he also had to deal with negative, paralyzing feelings while the emotion chip was active. So, naturally, when Data expressed his fear, Captain Picard very logically suggested that Data turn off the chip. So he did and he calmed down. In the next breath, Picard expressed his envy of Data in that moment, when the android could just turn off his emotions like you would turn off a lamp.

Haven't we all felt that way at one time?

Emotional fuel (or fire)

Our emotions are powerful motivators. Joy, love, anger, envy, and fear: they make us want to do things. Or keep us from doing things.

Unlike Data, we really can't shut off our emotions. We can train ourselves to ignore them, we can accept them, and we can use chemicals to temporarily deaden them, but they don't go away. Feelings don't have on and off switches.

Fear is one of the strongest feelings, at least it is in my experience. How many things have I kept myself from doing because of fear? (Note: I don't claim that the fear stopped me; I let the fear stop me.) Perhaps you've had the same experience?

No matter how you feel about privacy, there's no doubt that having a social media presence using your real name is a test of fear and bravery. After all, people can Google you and find out what you're saying. They can judge you, for good or evil. You can be made fun of. Hell, your boss might read your blog and decide that what you're doing isn't in her best interest, or that of your employer. And so on.

Fear of exposure

I've done it both ways: I've used aliases and I've used my own name. Every now and then it's very tempting to create a new identity so you can write and rant about your more extreme views without fear of reprisal. The possibility of telling the unembellished truth is seductive and perversely empowering when you can do so without connecting the words back to your true identity.

To borrow one of the most famous analogies of our times, I consider that to be the Dark Side. Power without responsibility, without remorse, without accountability that is both the lure and the damnation of the anonymous blogger. Better to keep your name and face in the light, to add power to your thoughts.

However, that doesn't mean that you need to share everything. Despite any trends in technology and society, we all have a right to some privacy. We don't need to continually bear our souls, we don't need to expose all of the secrets.

Authenticity is worth pushing through the fear

But if you want to say something with power, it sure helps to have your real name and face behind it. It may be scary and you may wish for your own emotion chip to deactivate your fear, but fear can be mastered and that energy can be used. One of my favorite super-heroes is focused on willpower and mastery of fear. It can be done and you can use your courage to do great things.

If you have something reasonable to say the world, please don't be afraid to say it using your own real face and voice. It could be the best thing that you ever do.

Data, Picard, Star Trek are all properties of Paramount. Please don't sue, guys. Kthksbai.

Other posts that you might enjoy reading:

• Think again a checklist for weighing the impulsive act
• Social media moving beyond your weaknesses and limitations
• Social media your will is your only limit
• When a river stops running
• Book Review The Paradox of Choice Barry Schwartz

Google's recently announced $25 million acquisition of DocVerse represented one saga of an ongoing war between Google and Microsoft over dominance in the productivity suite place. Today, Israeli enterprise software company Mainsoft is launching a Docverse-like plug-in that may up the ante in the battle. Harmony is launching free plug-ins that bring Google Docs documents and Microsoft SharePoint document libraries directly to Microsoft Outlook.

Once downloaded, Harmony for Google Docs will open in a sidebar pane within Outlook. The new Harmony sidebar enables people to share a single, centralized copy of the document, eliminating the many intermediary steps associated with sending e-mail attachments back and forth. The plug-in allows users to locate, share, and work on Google documents directly from their email client.

Once logged in to your Google account, you'll be able to drag any files (ie Microsoft Word files, PDFs) directly from an email to the Harmony sidebar to upload and convert them to Google documents. You can drag a Google document from the sidebar to create links in your e-mail messages and meeting requests to other users and viewers. Harmony automatically shares the document with the recipients. You can decide to give recipients read or write access. Recipients simply click the link in the message to open the document in their browser and don't need to have Harmony installed to view the document.

Harmony also allows you to search document contents on Google Docs from the Harmony search box and locate documents using the View Bar, which allows you to switch between common views, such as spreadsheets, starred items, items owned by or shared with you, and more. One of the major features of Harmony is the ability to actually open and edit Google documents from directly in Outlook. All your changes are saved online and are available to your colleagues. You can organize and create folders to store Google Docs and also save Google documents in Office format. Harmony can export Google documents to Office, Open Office, PDF, RTF, HTML, TXT, and image formats.

The SharePoint plug-in isn't nearly as sexy as as the Google Docs app but still offers a useful set of tools for enterprise users. The plug-in aims to transform Microsoft Outlook into a collaboration console, with access to documents stored on SharePoint. Similar to the Google Docs plug-in, you can drag e-mail attachments or entire e-mail messages to publish them on SharePoint. You can search the contents of documents in your current SharePoint site or library and share documents via e-mail message, calendar appointment, or task. You can edit a document from within Outlook, view document history and more.

Harmony was built using SharePoint Web Services interfaces and Google Docs open APIs and in the process has transformed Microsoft Outlook into a more collaborative application. Most importantly, the Google Docs plug-in makes the transition between web-based documents and the desktop email client seamless. It gives Microsoft users the best of both worlds, much like Docverse did with Microsoft Word documents and web-based files. If you use Microsoft Outlook and Google Docs, the plug-in seems like a no brainer to download. Plus its conveniently free. Considering the fate of Docverse, it may only be a matter of time before Microsoft and Google come sniffing around Harmony.

Shared by Jesse Stay
Caja's so cool! (My cousin is on this team)

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