CNN explores a topic that we know well here at Blue Fountain Media: Making Money through Social Media. Anchor TJ Holmes explains that you can use social media “for more than just building up your fans, friends, and followers.” CNN sent financial expert Clyde Anderson to a small retail business that wasn’t using social media to give them a few tips. (more…)

Mashable.com, the gold standard in media coverage of social media, thinks that QR and barcodes are ready about to go mainstream. In author Jennifer Van Grove‘s estimation, the primary roadblock keeping scanable codes (i.e. barcodes and QR codes) back from being used by the masses is an application that can “take the nerd-factor out of the QR code scan, and drive home the potential rewards of seeing a code, scanning it, and then engaging with the served-up content.” Enter Stickybits. “Stickybits…integrates the barcode scan in intelligent and fun ways.”

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No, I’m not taking about adding bass drums to the background of your blog. I’m referring to the pattern of your blog posts, and how they should be congruent with your audience’s lifestyle.

How Often Should You Update Your Blog?

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More and more tweets include geolocation meta data these days. This means that tweets are interwoven with GPS coordinates that mark where each tweet was sent from. There are sites that show live tweets on a map and the advanced search page on Twitter.com even lets you search for particular words in tweets from or near a particular location.

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Integrating Facebook Open Graph (formerly called Facebook Connect)  is a relatively easy way to give your website a boost.

1. Promote Your Site In Your Users’ News Feeds

When a user connect his or her Facebook accounts to a site, that site can then publish information to that user’s News Feed. For example, if a user’s user’s Facebook and Yelp accounts are linked, when the user leaves a review on Yelp, that review can then be simultaneously posted to the user’s Facebook News Feed. The user’s friends will see a snippet from the review and a link to read the whole thing over on Yelp.

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Facebook is no stranger to encouraging or suggesting user actions. The site regularly suggests potential friends as well as encourages users to connect with friends who haven’t been active on the site lately.

But it appears this may be the first time Facebook has actually used peer pressure to encourage action. This new message, apparant to visitors who sign in, encourages users to scan their Skype address book for friends that they might not have connected with on Facebook.
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In a rare instance of the Associated Press Stylebook directly responding to a publication, the AP sent the above tweet a few hours after a story broke (via The Awl) that the New York Times would no longer allow its journalists to use the word “tweet.”

Word came yesterday via The Awl that the New York Times Standards Editor, Phil Corbett, banned writers at the Gray Lady from using the word “tweet” in articles for the paper, except when for “special effect.” (more…)

While users have long pointed out the need for a “dislike” button, Gary Coleman’s untimely death comes as the first celebrity passing since Facebook’s release of the “like” button to the greater internet (i.e. not directly on Facebook). The awkwardness of having a “like” button on an obituary is obvious. Users don’t appear to be too concerned with the unfortunate “like” button, but that may change in the future as more and more negative news headlines get paired up with “like” buttons. Plane crashes and terrorist attacks come to mind.

One solution that sites can implement immediately is to add a setting to their content management system (CMS) to allow editors to remove the “like” button.

This week’s App Tuesday award is being split between two cool new websites that exemplify the future of location-aware applications: Assisted Serendipity and The Hotlist.

Assisted Serendipity

Get alerts about the male/female ratio at your favorite hangouts

AssistedSerendipity.com lets users set up alerts for when the male/female ratio at favorite Foursquare venues reach a favorable level. Critics might point out that the site’s singular feature is cheesy or more of a novelty than genuinely useful tool. But one must look beyond this early, starter-feature. What makes Assisted Serendipity a significant development is what it could (and probably will) do in the near future.

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How long does it take to make a blog?

Not long. If you’ve got an email address and an untapped well of misanthropic angst, you can set up a blog using a free template in a matter of minutes.

How long does it take to make a good blog? The kind of custom, robust content provider that’s going to get your ideas to the world and the world to your site?

That’s a different story.

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