If any of you who missed it, the remarkable clip by Dove  teaches a vital lesson about how we view ourselves compared to how others see us.

In the video, a former forensic artist for the San Jose police department meets a series of women without actually seeing them. There is a curtain kept between him and each new woman he interacts with. He then asks each to describe the way they look. He prompted them to detail everything: hair length, facial structure, their most prominent features. Based on the description provided by the women about themselves he created a sketch of each of them.

There’s an interesting thing that happens later. Each woman was asked before the study to get to know one of the other participants. The forensic artist then prompted each woman to describe the other's face.

At the end of the video, the artist reveals two sketches that he created with the help of—the participant itself, one from their partner. The differences are remarkable.

You need to see the video to see and feel for yourself. However there’s an eye opening comment shared by Dove that was posted below the video:

"Women are their own worst beauty critics," Dove says. "Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful ... we decided to conduct a compelling social experiment that explores how women view their own beauty in contrast to what others see."

To give a glimpse into the figures and the video’s popularity, this three-minute ad — which has also become the third most shared ad of all time has been viewed more than 114 million times and was uploaded in 25 languages to 33 of the brand's YouTube Channels.

Dove said the Real Beauty Sketches campaign surpassed the previous record holder- the Evian Roller Babies (111 million views) — for most viewed online ad.

"The moment that the Dove Real Beauty Sketches film was uploaded to the Dove YouTube page, it quickly started to gain traction around the world with men, women, media and even other brands sharing the film," said Fernando Machado, VP of Dove Skin, in a statement. "The campaign evoked an emotional reaction in millions of people that inspired them to share the positive message with others. Beyond just the millions of views and publicity impressions, it is the outpouring of testimonials from around the world that are exciting us."

Take a look at the video below:

The new season is said to have appearances from Kristen Wiig and many famous guest stars but the for now the first trailer posted to YouTube, shows the quirky Bluth family — including Michael (played by Jason Bateman), Lindsay (Portia de Rossi), Gob (Will Arnett), George-Michael (Michael Cera) and other members — reuniting onscreen.

The first three seasons of the sitcom were aired on Fox from 2003 to 2006. Although the show gained a cult following, it was eventually canceled due to low ratings and viewership.

But following years of fan anticipation for a series revival or feature film, Netflix announced the launching of new season of Arrested Development last year.

To promote the return of the popular series the yellow, banana-shaped hut was set up in midtown Manhattan on Monday afternoon.  A long line of diehard “Arrested Development” fans crowded the streets for a chance to try one of the famed frozen bananas frequently featured on the show.

About 2,000 chocolate dipped frozen bananas were being given away Monday to celebrate the show’s upcoming season, a rep for the series said.

“They started this in London last week, and people were waiting in followed by Los Angeles to promote the series.

“It’s been crazy. People are really into it.”

Past seasons of the show are currently available on Netflix

Watch the entire season-four trailer, below.

The actor competed with Fallon in a round of lip sync doing a mean impersonation of Katy Perry. He minced around in his suit while delivering a comic performance of the highest quality, even whipping off his jacket at one point.

But that was only part of the story, which began when Tonight Show host in waiting Fallon gave a cheesily soulful performance of Melissa Manchester's Don't Cry Out Loud.It was only after this John, 33, sprung into action with his unique take on Katy's number one hit Teenage Dream.

Jimmy, 38, was clearly intimidated by the young star’s confidence, saying afterwards: 'Fake breathing at the end and everything.'

This was just the warm up however as Fallon then lip-synced Das EFX's They Want EFX and Somewhere Over the Rainbow, not doing so badly himself.

Krasinski struck back, performing Run DMC's Peter Piper followed by Boyz II Men's I'll Make Love to You- saving his biggest moment for last.

He grabbed his earpiece, tore off his jacket, and loosened his tie inviting Fallon to fake-sing together, , 'I'll make love to you, like you want me to!'

So the real winners are the viewers who get to watch Krasinski serenade.

Enjoy the video:

According to 20th Century Fox, the May 2 Twitter chat will begin at noon ET, where Jackman will be responding to questions via video. Questions can be tweeted using hashtags #AskHugh and #TheWolverine before or during the Q&A. Answers will appear on the @RealHughJackman or @WolverineMovie accounts.

The film deals with Wolverine's immortality. "Vulnerable for the first time and pushed to his physical and emotional limits, he confronts not only lethal samurai steel but also his inner struggle against his own immortality, emerging more powerful than we have ever seen him before," according to 20th Century Fox. The Wolverine also features Silver Samurai and Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova).

The Wolverine Twitter chat is just one part of 20th Century Fox's digital promotional activities. The team has also leveraged Twitter, Vine, Facebook and YouTube to build anticipation for the summer release. Director James Mangold, for example, shared a six-second Vine "tweaser," which showcases a 20-second teaser for the movie's trailer.

20th Century Fox on the other hand has unleashed two beautiful "motion posters" on YouTube. As for Facebook, fans can create a Wolverine cover photo with their name on it.

Watch the official trailer below:

There’s no longer the faint blue line at the bottom of its "F" icon and the letter is also placed closer to the edge of the box.

The new logo showed up in the company's newsroom webpage on Friday, according to web developer Tom Waddington for the site Cut Out + Keep.  The "F" logo has been added as the picture to Facebook's Twitter account.

Other official pages have also received logo refreshes in the past few weeks, including a developers icon, privacy- and security-related icons and a mobile icon, among others. The redesigned logos feature Facebook's signature blue color as a background creating a more streamlined, uniformed look.

Here are some of the other icon redesigns — see Tom’s blog for all the examples he’s noticed:

According to Facebook’s guidelines page, the “f” logo can be used for:

1.       Your Facebook Page

2.       Your Facebook Group

3.       An application you offer via Facebook Platform

4.       Your implementation of Facebook Connect

TechCrunch suggests the clean design could be a sign of internationalisation — i.e.an effort to better communicate the Facebook brand to non-English language users who may have been confused by the horizontal line that appeared below the f symbol. The original logo was designed when Facebook was a domestic company targeting just U.S. users.

The Twitter attack wasn't all bad news for Burger King— the account added 5,000 new followers in the first 30 minutes since the hackers took over.

The last official tweet happened at 12pm on February 17 while the hack began at 12:01 on the 18th. The hack seems to be the work of an Anonymous group and is called #OPMadCow.

Followers were posting responses while the hackers were posting things like "Try our new BK(℠) Bath Salt! 99% Pure MDPV! Buy a Big Mac, get a gram free! @dfnctsc @tshyne @mcdonalds." TShyne is a musician and "innovator."

UPDATE: At 1:15 p.m. EST, it appears Twitter suspended the @BurgerKing account.

At  4:15 p.m. EST: Burger King shared a statement regarding Monday's Twitter hacking: It has come to our attention that the Twitter account of the BURGER KING® brand has been hacked. We have worked directly with administrators to suspend the account until we are able to re-establish our legitimate site and authentic postings. We apologize to our fans and followers who have been receiving erroneous tweets about other members of our industry and additional inappropriate topics.

Burger King's competition claimed they were not the culprits.
    "We empathize with our @BurgerKing counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking." - @McDonalds

These reports, which CNET first covered Tuesday, are a result of Instagram's new terms of service, which came into effect on Jan. 19.

The users at first were understandably worried that their accounts were hacked. But Talking Points Memo confirmed Friday that the ID requests were actually legitimate.The verification is  seemingly part of a new round of checks by Facebook and Instagram for those who appear to be violating either service's Terms of Service – although a spokesperson wouldn't go into additional details as to what, specifically, could prompt a verification check.

"This is just a general practice for both Facebook and Instagram to request photo IDs for verification purposes depending on what type of violation may have occurred," a Facebook spokesperson told Talking Points Memo. "Unfortunately, I can’t share more with you beyond that as we don’t go into details beyond that."

Identification is usually requested in cases when the social networks suspect that their terms of services have been violated. It aims to confirm who's behind an account, and perhaps to determine whether a user is underage (the minimum age to use both services is 13).

Instagram doesn't require users to provide their real names, so it's unclear why the photo-sharing app would ask for official ID.
Facebook, on the other hand, does ask that its users, "will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission," which does give at least a bit of reasoning for why the company would demand certain users to verify their accounts with real-world identification.

Instagram's terms of service give the company the right to "refuse access to the Service to anyone for any reason at any time."
According to CNET, users subjected to the verification process are first told that their accounts have been "secured" and that they need to log into Instagram from a desktop computer in order to proceed forward with the validation process. Once they do so, they're asked to take a photograph of a government-issued ID and upload it.

Send me a message on Businessfriend

Businessfriend, a start-up internet company located in Southern California, is ready to take on the giants of social media, with what they believe is the latest professional social networking utility – www.businessfriend.com.

Back in the latter half of 2011, a small team of just ten people got together to kick start the development and design of their new product. Inspired by a new vision for professional networking based on what they felt was lacking in the industry, the small team of digital experts got to work. Just one year later, in June 2012 (having recruited just one more team member), they quietly launched a Beta version of the site. 

“When you have a site that’s dedicated as much to social identity as it is to professional productivity, you want to be sure you achieve a good balance,” says Freddie Pierce, the VP of Product Development. “Young professionals and experienced professionals have different needs and desires and we’re trying to accommodate all of that.”

While still in the first stages of funding, Businessfriend has no misgivings about going up against well-funded and well-staffed public companies. 

“We get it. We’re going up against social media giants at home and abroad. That’s what fuels us,” says Rhonda Marable, the Communications Director for the start-up. “There’s always room for something new at the table and I think we’re bringing that.”

The registration-based Businessfriend platform combines social networking with common business utilities like email, calendar, and CRM tools, housed in their unique “drawers”. Additionally, the cloud based storage and sharing system, the Doc Manager, provides each member with 1G of storage for free. 

“By Christmas, we’re going to begin active testing of our recruitment tools to be launched and marketed in early 2013. Businessfriend Jobs is going to be a major game-changer next year,” says Freddie.

“We’re working with hiring managers and a variety of companies to make sure that we get our recruitment manager right,” Rhonda adds. “I have 2500 free job posts to give away and I’m not afraid to use them.”

At Technology Digital we would love to hear what you think about this new social business platform. Join the discussion on Twitter, Facebook and of course Businessfriend!

For more information about Businessfriend, please visit www.businessfriend.com

About Businessfriend

Businessfriend™ is a professional networking site that operates under their signature BUSI™ platform. A Business Utility with a Social Identity, Businessfriend provides members with the opportunity to meet contacts, collaborate, and communicate in an environment that melds social networking with software-like tools to conduct business online.

The Facebook outage apparently caught the attention at around 5:45pm EST Monday. Users tweeted about not being able to access the site at all, while some were not able to see images on the site. According to the reports, the problem could be with Facebook’s Content Delivery Network.

However Facebook’s mobile app seemed to be running fine.

It was a bit disappointing to find the lack of images on the site especially considering that Instagram, which recently completed its sale to Facebook, just launched a new set of photo tools and filters Monday. The service also removed support for its pictures within Twitter, a Facebook rival, last week.

Facebook experienced downtime on November 30, making this the second time in two weeks

Update: The site was back after approximately 15 minutes of outage.

A Facebook spokesperson released the following statement. "Earlier today we made a change to our DNS infrastructure and that change resulted in some people being temporarily unable to reach the site. We detected and resolved the issue quickly, and we are now back to 100 percent. We apologize for any inconvenience."

This time the notice reads as below.

In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, graphics, comics, paintings, photos and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berner Convention). For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times!

(Anyone reading this can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook Wall. This will place them under protection of copyright laws. By the present communiqué, I notify Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, disseminate, or take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The aforementioned prohibited actions also apply to employees, students, agents and/or any staff under Facebook’s direction or control. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of my privacy is punished by law (UCC 1 1-308-308 1-103 and the Rome Statute).

Facebook is now an open capital entity. All members are recommended to publish a notice like this, or if you prefer, you may copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once, you will be tacitly allowing the use of elements such as your photos as well as the information contained in your profile status updates…

The truth

• You’re already protected by copyright law.
• Second, Facebook’s policy is this: “You retain the copyright to your content. When you upload your content, you grant us a license to use and display that content.
• Third, Berner Convention is an incorrect word. There’s a Berne Convention, which covers literary works.
• Facebook now a publicly traded company has absolutely nothing to do with its copyright or privacy policies.

Clarification form Facebook

Facebook itself has clarified with the following statement: “There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users’ information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.”

Snopes, the anti-misinformation site, has also debunked this hoax.

The battle between the two social networking giants is about to get intense. While Facebook stands tall with its billion figure user base, Pinterest (around 25 million users) has managed to deliver ROI as reports suggest 62% of Pinterest users follow and repin retailers as compared to only 17% of Facebook users who say they use Facebook for purchase inspiration.

Let’s digest some statistics first:

Bottica.com conducted a study of behaviour of Facebook and Pinterest followers and published an infographic revealing some interesting statistics:

Pinterest users spend $180 as compared to Facebook users' $85.

Pinterest influences 10 percent of transactions, while Facebook only influences 7 percent.

Pinterest users visit 44 percent fewer pages on the social pinboard than Facebook users do on Facebook.

Pinterest has a 51 percent lower conversion rate than Facebook.

Pinterest certainly has impressed marketers when it comes to ROI. The question whether Facebook inspires purchase hasn’t really been answered. And Facebook has its other woes such as the question of mobile ad revenues. More than 50% of Facebook’s user accesses it via mobiles and Facebook is trying hard to crack the code of mobile ad revenue and the recent effort was the launch of mobile newsfeed ads.

May be the perception of how people view Pinterest is different, primarily because of its structure and function. Users there are more comfortable with the idea of businesses trying to drive sales. Whereas it seems it is the opposite in Facebook’s case as not many good things are being said about F-commerce.

However, Facebook recently made a strategic move by announcing ‘Collection’ a soon to be launched feature that will allow users to add stuff they like to their wishlist or even buy if they would want to. This feature will certainly be most welcomed by marketers who would now have more opportunities to drive sales.

Pinterest on the other hand announced on Nov 14 2012 that it is now open for Businesses. It’s a great move by Pinterest to counteract the upcoming competition from ‘collections’ feature of Facebook. With this move Pinterest has opened up more avenues for business to drive more traffic and sales. It also strengthens Pinterest’s position as social network that is business friendly.           

Amidst all this when Facebook was facing criticism from page owners regarding decreasing reach, Facebook announced that it will roll out ‘Pages feed’ a separate section where a user can see all the updates from the all the pages he/she has liked. Clearly, Facebook wants to please marketers and it is leaving no stone unturned to do that.

Final Thoughts

Pinterest seems to be in a mood for serious competition and is leveraging its business friendly positioning in the market. One thing that it needs is growth in markets outside US. Facebook on the other hand has a massive user base which is enough to keep marketers attracted but it needs to answer some ROI questions convincingly and quickly.

As far the brands are concerned, they have no option to choose between these two. They need Facebook for the reach and Pinterest for ROI.

About the Author: Somesh is a social media blogger and currently Social Media Head of Gozoop, Dubai. He loves blogging, movies and surfing the internet for interesting news and updates. He also maintains a social media blog http://sovedo.com/

The biggest selling season of the year is underway! Retail stores and companion online shopping sites are up and running, and gunning for customers' wallets as soon as the last morsel of turkey is gobbled.

Four out of 10 shoppers prefer to shop online now for their holiday gifts, according to Shop.org’s eHoliday survey. Reasons were pretty obvious: 24-hr. convenience, free shipping and ease of price comparison all added to why shoppers prefer going online with goods.

If you're in business, and have an e-commerce transaction element to your site (or partner with one who does), it's time to think about using new marketing tools to bolster sales this holiday season. Internet research firm eMarketer estimates that online retail e-commerce holiday sales should reach nearly $55 billion in 2012. That a very healthy 16.8 percent increase over last year, and as eMarketer points out, the fourth straight year that online holiday sales will show growth in the mid-to-high teens.

Helping to drive those numbers skyward has increased use of social media sites for companies and brands. Using social media tools to grow your e-commerce channel can help stimulate interest from online customers in your products and services. Estimates show that 70 percent of adult social networkers shop online (and that number is expected to grow during the holidays) and that 53 percent of active adult social networkers follow a brand.

Clearly, social media usage is booming. So why isn't social e-commerce booming as well? For several years now, savvy marketers have used sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and others to share images, product reviews, new product enhancements and brand extensions. Developing a closer relationship with fans and those who follow the brand on various sites was supposed to move the needle in social e-commerce, or social commerce, as some call it.

Internet investor Fred Wilson wrote recently at his blog about how e-commerce conversion rates can increase with a good social layer:

“When a retailer or e-commerce service implements a highly social layer into their service with hooks into the major social platforms, the conversion rates can be significant. I have seen this first hand. This is an indication that users enjoy and benefit from social commerce when it is built into a native e-commerce service."

But it hasn't always turned out this way. In fact, some social networks are more inherently designed around socializing-  not buying. For instance, people go to Facebook generally to connect with friends, but not necessarily to transact or buy. And if the marketing pitches get too hot on Facebook social streams, its users may become annoyed with the marketing commercial updates.

There are exceptions, of course. If you see a forwarded update on your Facebook that touts the ease in ordering Christmas flowers for a spouse, you might be hooked to buy. But holiday ads on your feed (sponsored or not) for irrelevant household appliances, mismatched clothing or office equipment may cause you to unlike a brand (or a friend!).

Facebook

Facebook started online merchant stores in 2011 for customers to buy the merchant's goods directly through Facebook. But the shopping experience wasn't that different than the retailer's own sites and the process for social customers was slowed down on Facebook. And Facebook users just simply didn't respond to the sales initiative. One analyst remarked that it was like "trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar." Thus, many Facebook stores started closing almost as quickly as they originally opened.

But the social media site continues to plug away and make its site more open to merchants and users who might want to buy things while online on Facebook. A more recent Facebook activity has been its test introduction of a 'want' button, similar to user's 'like' button but one designed to drive more commerce activity on the site. Already, Facebook accounts for 60 percent of social media driven purchases by Q2 2012.

Twitter

At Twitter, many merchants, brands and companies use their Twitter feed to monitor customer support issues, like product praises, complaints and technical or informational issues. Depending on the use of Twitter, you can engage as deeply with users and customers as you'd like.

Establishing greater rapport with your core users can not only bring them closer to the brand, but can also open up dialogue about key aspects of your products and services. Often, these tidbits of wisdom shared over Twitter can become your next marketing campaign.

Not only that, but you can position your brand as a leader in your industry. For instance, if you sell repair services for appliances, use Twitter to point out ways in which your company has fixed appliances. Use Twitter hashtags with common repair terms on them so people can search for your tweets. Use a geographic designation in your tweets as well to localize your content. With enough exposure, your company will soon be seen as a prime mover in your town or city for getting refrigerators fixed.

Amazon

Amazon was an early leader in e-commerce on the Web, and today dominates digital purchases of e-commerce, electronic books and reading devices. And its customer reviews were social media between friends before social media existed. But it missed social networking and social media in recent years, and have had to play catch-up since.

In fall 2011, it hired a director of its social operations. And by summer 2012, Amazon started giving users the chance to share their purchases on social media sites. Today, you'll see share links for Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook below the 'Add to Cart' sign at Amazon. That's a huge step for the company, but nothing that other companies with social sites aren't already doing. One hopes that Amazon swiftly starts to combine its social media efforts with its e-commerce prowess.

As a business owner, finding new ways to share your e-commerce availabilities via social media can only enhance your business. With more shares, you'll find more friends of your brand and customers of your products. The world is moving toward social, and it's a ripe opportunity for your brand to start sharing a little social commerce this year.

Author Bio: After getting her Computer Science degree in NorCal, Alana's interest in writing about technology took over & she started freelancing for various blogs & publications. She loves the beach & Apple products!

47%  - this is the percentage of people who have unfriended someone on Facebook because of this election, according to our poll from a few hours back (which has 1,500 respondents and counting).

That’s not even counting the folks they have tried to avoid on the social network, since unfriending them would have serious repercussions.

With Thanksgiving coming up users can’t possibly unfriend that liberal relatives of theirs. Some of you have been kind enough not to straight-up unfriend someone as you might feel that such type of behavior is cold. I commend such people.

We already live in the clustered world with more and more of us living in like-minded communities in like-minded states. One group prefers nerdy friends while other others enjoy the company of extrovert personalities.

Social networking site is the place that brings together all these different types of personalities and eventually hoping to inculcate a sense of respect in these individuals for each other’s beliefs. Facebook and Twitter are the places where you’ll see geographically and politically diverse relationships, coming together expressing their views, agreeing and disagreeing each others opinions and comments at the same time.

It’s harder to see dozens of random people agreeing a comment that you don’t like and get buried by people you don’t know if you reply to disagree.

But unfriending someone just because you don’t like the other person’s view is not cool. If such rift is repeated on a national scale, it isn’t good for democracy.

You did like that person, or you wouldn’t have friended them in the first place. Besides, life’s too short, and the distances between us too great, to hold grudges. And it is your patriotic duty to listen to opinions that are different from your own.

Try not to be judgmental. Empathize. What’s their experience, and what might you learn from it?

There’s also a very popular saying that goes, “Try to be nice to everyone because you don’t know what they are going through.” Philosophical but worth putting in practice.

So if you won, don’t blabber about your guy’s success. You get to be the bigger person, so show your humility. It would also be great on your part to reach out to those you unfriended, or who unfriended you. Send them a request now.

For the Republican fans, if you were to reach out to your democratic friends now, you might be surprised to find that they don’t rub it in. They know how much guts a move like that would take.

The President himself reached across the aisle in his victory speech, reprising his very famous 2004 convention speech line- “there are no red states or blue states but only United States.” This thought could help in making a fresh beginning with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.

But according to the latest reports, the social-networking site has also become a new literary format that is improving student learning.

Christina Greenhow, an assistant professor of education at Michigan State University, discovered that students using Twitter as part of their education are more engaged and have higher grades in her study “Twitteracy: Tweeting is a New Literary Practice.”

 “Tweeting can be thought of as a new literary practice,” said Greenhow, who also studies the growing use of social media among high-schoolers. “It’s changing the way we experience what we read and what we write.” 

Greenhow said the students participate more through the site than they do in a face-to-face class setting.

Greenhow also notes that Twitter use among U.S. teens has doubled in less than two years.

There are now more than 200 million active users posting more than 175 million tweets a day, according to the study, which appears in the research journal Educational Forum.

Why is Twitter so appealing to Students

Greenhow found that Twitter's real-time design allowed students and instructors to engage in sharing, collaboration, brainstorming and creation of a project.

"The students get more engaged because they feel it is connected to something real, that it's not just learning for the sake of learning," she said. "It feels authentic to them."

"One of the ways we judge whether something is a new literary form or a new form of communication is whether it makes new social acts possible that weren't possible before," Greenhow adds. "Has Twitter changed social practices and the way we communicate? I would say it has."

Facebook has almost become synonymous with the word “Like” and rightly so as the social networking giant processes nearly 3 billion “likes” on a daily basis. While, Twitter, has had remarkable success with its Favorite button and Google followed suit with its own version of Like and Favorite called +1 button.

But looks like Twitter has been totally inspired with Facebook’s “Like” button and decided to introduce the same button on its site.  The social networking site is contemplating to introduce new buttons that will likely replace the “Favorite” button- called “Like” and “Star.”

Testing out different features across swath of users isn’t uncommon. Facebook does it all the time.

The new terminologies appear to be showing up for certain users on the service as of now.

Take a Look:

Favorites have been available to Twitter users from at least 2008 on. Back in May, tweets were even redesigned to make ‘favorites’ more prominent. The feature has been used quite literally billions of times.

According to ATD, the “favorite” was almost originally named “Thanks.”

I like the options of “favoriting” and “liking” tweets and statuses. It’s a form of acknowledgement and affirmation given to comments without requiring an actual verbal response. The buttons are versatile, useful, amusing and have a feel-good factor associated with them.

Since people are so used to the word “Like” already, I believe they wouldn’t mind using it on Twitter either.

 “Sometimes a particular friend might not notice your post, especially if a lot of their friends have been posting recently and your story isn’t near the top of their feed,” Facebook said in a blog post. “When you promote a post – whether it’s wedding photos, a garage sale, or big news – you bump it higher in news feed so your friends and subscribers are more likely to notice it.”

Promoted Posts has already been rolled out to 20 other countries and is available to people with fewer than 5,000 total friends and subscribers. 

Businesses are already able to promote their posts and get updates in front of more eyes for a fee.

Facebook first began testing the product, then called Highlight, for Pages (like Coca-Cola), in May in New Zealand. It’s still testing price points for the U.S. so it could go up or down from $7, and cost varies across international markets to sync with what’s appropriate for local economies.

Investing in a promoted post will increase the chance of someone seeing your post at the top of their news feed, the company said.

Along with more visibility in friends' feeds, Promoted Posts come with a tool that lets you see how many people have seen your post.

Facebook usually tests its new features with a small group of people. So if you’re a part of that group, you might see a new "Promote" button next to "Like" and "Comment" underneath something you've posted.

The company did not specify how long a Promoted Post will stay in your friend's News Feeds, but indicated that once somebody has seen the post, it'll be treated like a regular post according to Techcrunch.

How Promoted Posts are Beneficial

After you publish a post, a Promote button helps you to up its rank in the news feed — dispalying it higher in the feed, and to a larger portion of your friends. Unpromoted posts are typically only seen by 12-16 percent of your friends.

After you Promote a post, it will be marked “Sponsored,” and you can check to see how many more people viewed it. For example, you’d see “So far your post has had 4x as many views because you promoted it.”

Is Pay for Post Fair?

Facebook is becoming a critical communication medium for people. If someone’s trying to sell all his or her possessions before moving to a new place, Promoted Posts could be a cost-effective way of making sure more friends know about his or her garage sell. So the feature could have positive implications.

But Promoted Posts could change the essence of Facebook and the rich can dominate the news feed.

The new feature looks to get inspired from Tumblr's Pinned Posts, as well as Twitter's Promoted Tweets initiative — both generating revenues for the respective company.  After the IPO, Facebook has experimented with new ways to make money. The Social networking giant introduced Gifts, which lets users buy each other chocolates and teddy bears for special occasions, and Facebook gets revenue.

Here's the e-mail, from Kenneth W. Krause, a lawyer in LaCrosse:

Subject: Community Responsibility

Hi Jennifer,

It's unusual that I see your morning show, but I did so for a very short time today. I was surprised indeed to witness that your physical condition hasn't improved for many years.

Sure you don't consider yourself a suitable example for this community's young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain. I leave you this note hoping that you'll reconsider your responsibility as a local public personality to present and promote a healthy lifestyle.

Livingston read this letter to her viewers on the show.

Livingston’s husband also a WKBT anchor, Mike Thompson, posted the emailed letter on his Facebook Page writing, “Ok. I really don't know where to begin here. I've posted about negative emails the station has received in the past, but this one delivered specifically to my wife, morning anchor Jennifer Livingston, has just infuriated me. Seriously, the fact that there are people out there like this (and I understand this person is a lawyer in town) makes me sick to my stomach.”

And he received an outpouring of support.

Encouraged by this, Livingston responded to Krause on the show. “The truth is I am overweight. You can call me fat and yes, even obese on a doctor’s chart. To the person who wrote me that letter, do you think I don’t know that? Your cruel words are pointing out something I don’t see? You don’t know me. You are not a friend of mine. You are not a part of my family, and you admitted that you don’t watch this show so you know nothing about me besides what you see on the outside — and I am much more than a number on a scale.”

She continued: “We are better than that bully. We are better than this email. We are better than the bullies that would try to take us down.”

The Video:

Livingston also said that many children are bullied every day, and it needs to be stopped.

“That man's words mean nothing to me, but what really angers me about this is that there are children who don't know better — who get emails as critical as the one I received or in many cases, even worse, each and every day. …I leave you with this: To all of the children out there who feel lost, who are struggling with your weight, with the color of your skin, your sexual preference, your disability, even the acne on your face, listen to me right now. Do not let your self-worth be defined by bullies. Learn from my experience — that the cruel words of one are nothing compared to the shouts of many,” she said.

Her video response went viral on Tuesday night and Livingston took to "CBS This Morning" to address the controversy and the aftermath.

"What happened next has been truly inspiring," Livingston said, of the onslaught of supportive responses she received when her husband -- also an anchor for the station -- posted the viewer's email on Facebook. "I am literally overwhelmed by your words," Livingston said, before pleading with viewers to "do not let your self worth be defined by bullies."

Livingston also spoke to Gayle King about the issue and the viewer's email.

"I have always struggled with my weight...since my daughter was born 10 years ago...it has been a roller-coaster ride of weight gain and loss," she said and admitted, "If I could choose and snap my fingers to be a size that I don't have to buy off the plus-size rack, that would be great...but I'm not ashamed of myself, I'm proud of who I am. Talk to me about the stories I cover, not the way I look."

Mr. Krause was invited to be interviewed on WKBT-TV but he issued a statement instead which was also shared on the air.

His statement concluded: "Considering Jennifer Livingston's fortuitous position in the community, I hope she will finally take advantage of a rare and golden opportunity to influence the health and psychological well-being of Coulee region children by transforming herself for all of her viewers to see over the next year."

Reacting to the statement, Livingston said her station joked that he is "standing strong."

The video points to a new MySpace URL, New.MySpace.com, where users have to give their email address for an invite to the new service.

The video overview hints at these details so far:

• Users can log in with Facebook or Twitter.
• Status updates look similar to the mobile app Path, with photos largely displayed and user comments appearing underneath.
• Music is the large component of the service allowing to browse albums, find popular songs, artists and more. This is interesting — especially since music was always one of Myspace’s assets.

“We’re hard at work building the new Myspace, entirely from scratch,” reads the site.

“But we’re staying true to our roots in one important way—empowering people to express themselves however they want. So whether you’re a musician, photographer, filmmaker, designer or just a dedicated fan, we’d love for you to be a part of our brand new community.”

MySpace was bought by Specific Media for $35 million in 2010.

Check out the Video below:

The new Myspace from Myspace on Vimeo.

The professional social network announced the additions in its blog post.

Android and iPhone users will get real-time notification when someone views their profile or likes what they share, says the post.

Now even the Company pages can be accessed from mobile.  So users can learn about current job openings, follow recent news and updates from those companies.

With LinkedIn’s customers spread across the world, the company also launched several different languages on iPad including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese and Korean — with more to come. Like those on their smartphones, iPad visitors get the same updates to notifications and company pages.

Another long-awaited and much-requested update that is arriving soon: the ability to edit profiles from mobile apps.

LinkedIn has seen its mobile users more than double since 2011 with the percentage increasing 10%  to more than 23% today.

These latest changes are part of LinkedIn’s effort to provide “an entirely new … mobile experience,” and the new features will certainly be welcomed by the users.

The new home screen for iPhone App

The Notification inbox for iPhone

New Company Page

Job Searches

Courtesy: LinkedIn

LinkedIn for iPad

There are two things that Facebook seems to be really good at: providing a massive social network to more than 900 million people; and angering everyone who is involved with the website in one way or another all at the same time. This simply has not been Facebook's year in terms of branding. First their public offering went completely sour, and the value of Facebook's stock continues to dwindle.

Then it was revealed (by Facebook itself for legal purposes) that more than 80 million accounts on Facebook are fake. Just last week, officials from Germany reinvestigated the act of Facebook taking information from users without their consent for facial recognition purposes.

Also last week, the Federal Trade Commission went public with a report that they conducted last year that shows a possible scam committed by Facebook to collect fees from app developers in return for security checks. According to Computer Business Review (CBR), Facebook had hosted a program called Verified Apps back in 2009 between May and December, in which developers would pay either a fee of $175 (for students/non-profits) or $375 to have Facebook conduct certain security measures, which in turn would have the developers believe that their apps were clean and trusted to use.

While these apps got higher rankings when searched for on Facebook, the FTC claims that no real security checks were ever conducted, and that Facebook simply took the money paid – estimated to total $95,000 – and more-or-less just promoted the apps.

Having this sort of clean appearance for an app wouldn't be so bad for its developer and traffic towards their work, but being told that their app is secure when it may not be at all is where the FTC, and developers themselves, have the big problem. The FTC said that such an act by Facebook “...constitutes a false or misleading representation.”

This is just another notch in the belt of Facebook's dishonesty track record, and it looks like the social network has agreed to take the heat. ZDNet said in an article that they have agreed to undergo additional watchdog monitoring to ensure that third party developers and users are informed of what the website is really doing. This should hopefully prevent further instances of false conduct by the company.

Developers who paid for the supposed “checkmark” certainly have every reason to express disconcert over these actions. With so much under pressure today in a world of cyber and home security, such a breach is difficult to take lightly. As the final third of 2012 continues, perhaps Facebook will start making some New Year's resolutions to stop this sort of branding compromise.

About the Author: Mike Lamardo is happy to contribute this article to Technology Digital. As a blogger in various tech and science outlets, you can find his work on several technology sites.