Have a look at :-

This is a YouTube vid by Odegon for their ‘Odour Absorbing Fabric Tags‘ for uniforms.

If this was a clients product contract you had aquired, how would you use the power of social media, and the internet in general, to promote this product ?

Nominations for this week are now closed.

1. Facebook Takes Another Step Towards IPO

November 24th, 2009 | by Ben Parr

“Facebook, now worth $9.5 billion and rising, may have just taken its next step towards what many believe to be the company’s inevitable IPO. Just as Google did when it went public in 2004, Facebook has opted to adopt a dual class stock structure….”

2. Toys”R”Us Explodes on Facebook With Black Friday Preview

November 24th, 2009 | by Jennifer Van Grove

“Black Friday tends to bring out the animalistic side of shoppers looking for great bargains. Smart retailers are hip to the craze, which has been somewhat of an internet meme ever since October, and they’re using the web and social media as platforms to generate even more interest. Toys”R”Us appears to have found the magic formula for not only building buzz but gaining thousands of Facebook fans by the day…”

3. STATS: Xbox Live Generates One Million New Users for last.fm

November 24th, 2009 | by Barb Dybwad

“Last week Microsoft rolled out a long-awaited social networking integration to the Xbox 360 console that included support for Twitter, Facebook, and CBS-owned social music site last.fm. The early reports are coming in about adoption of the new update, and last.fm is reporting they saw a whopping nearly one million new users sign up for the service via Xbox Live in the U.S. and UK…”

4. Cashmore: Block Google and consumers will lose

November 25, 2009 | by Pete Cashmore

“If Rupert Murdoch gets his way — and he’s not simply bluffing — you may one day need to “Bing it” rather than “Google it” to find news stories online.

Murdoch’s News Corp., which owns the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, among others, reportedly has discussed with Microsoft a plan to remove its newspaper content from Google’s search results. If it’s enacted, news consumers would have to head to Microsoft’s Bing to find stories from some of the world’s biggest news sources…”

5.  Google Profiles Turn Into OpenIDs

November 25, 2009 | by MG Siegler

“As part of its push to go more social, Google has been attempting to unify its various account profiles into one Google Profile. And now it’s more useful. Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick has just tweeted out that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenIDs.

What this means is that you can sign into any site that accepts OpenID simply by using your Google Profile domain. Luckily, a few months ago Google started allowing these profiles to have vanity URLs, like /mgsiegler, instead of the previous /32090329039402903. Chris Messina, a huge proponent of the open web movement, has just sent out a picture of what signing in with OpenID via your Google Profile looks like…”

6. Facebook Marketing: IKEA’s Genius Use of Photo Tagging

November 25th, 2009 | by Christina Warren

“We talk a lot about how big brands are embracing social media as a mechanism to connect directly with customers. Still, it’s much easier to talk about integrating social media into your brand than it is to actually do it.

That’s why IKEA’s recent Facebook campaign is so awesome. The Swedish furniture company opened a new store in Malmo, Sweden and rather than spread the word the old-fashioned way, they decided to go directly to the people using Facebook…”

? Got your own idea for the ‘Social Media Story of the week’ ?

then post it in the comments.

Voting for the weeks stories begins every Friday evening.

Lochnload.

Here are the stories/ articles that were nominated for this weeks poll   -

1. Facebook Comes to the PlayStation 3 Soon

November 12th, 2009 | by Barb Dybwad

“We caught wind of some sort of Facebook integration coming to Sony’s flagship Playstation 3 console last week, and now the news is official. Facebook support will be introduced to the console in the next firmware update, version 3.10,…”

and

2. STUDY: Most Fortune 100 Companies Don’t Get Twitter

November 17th, 2009 | by Vadim Lavrusik

“In August we reported that a large number of Fortune 100 companies have embraced Twitter, but how well are they actually using it? A study released today (PDF) by Weber Shandwick says the answer is not very well,…”

3. Social Media in Search: User-Created Content Dominates the Brand Message

November 17th, 2009 | by Jennifer Van Grove

“One of the most commonly repeated phrases in the era of the social web is that you don’t control your own message, your customers do. While those of us working in the social arena can cite a number of examples where this has proven to be the case, more traditional brands can be reluctant to embrace this ideology. However, some interesting new search data from 360i might convince them otherwise…”

4. Twitter Launches in French

November 19th, 2009 | by Jennifer Van Grove

“Twitter’s translation project is rolling along rather quickly now. Earlier in the month Twitter launched in Spanish, and as of today, Twitter is now available in French…”

5. Retweet This: Twitter Retweets Now Live For Everyone

November 19th, 2009 | by Jennifer Van Grove

“Sandwiched in between monumental feature releases like Twitter Lists and the geolocation API has been Twitter’s most controversial feature yet: native support of retweets…”

Got your own idea for the ‘Social Media Story of the week’ ? then post it in the comments below.

Voting for the weeks stories begins every Friday evening.

Our choice for this week comes from mashable (and others)….

Twitter and Facebook Come to Xbox Live

November 12th, 2009 | by Barb Dybwad

“According to Major Nelson, the new Dashboard Update will be going live to everyone next Tuesday, November 17. The update also includes a new Zune video area that picks up where the Xbox Video Marketplace left off, adding the ability to stream a number of purchases instantly instead of having to wait for them to download….”

Social media by definition is a social platform and the introduction of a new (and in the case of xbox) massive user base to the party, is in our opinion, worth the ‘social media article of the week’ mantle.

From Twitter to TV: Sh*t My Dad Says Gets CBS Deal

November 9th, 2009 | by Barb Dybwad

Another mashable story. This time about the owner of a twitter account @ShitMyDadSays getting a television deal on top of the book deal he already has.

For those people how don’t know, @ShitMyDadSays tweets the funny stuff his live-in 73-year-old dad says. Apparently Will & Grace creators, David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, will produce the show.

Mashables list of the week can be found here -  http://bit.ly/1zx6DN

Of course, you may have other ideas so tell us about them in the comments….

I’m helping to raise funds to
#beatcancer, by blogging, tweeting
and posting Facebook status
updates.

Click here to join me!

It is another day and Social media has another target in its sights. Yesterday it was climate change, today, it is the big ‘C’. Beatcancereverywhere.com helps Twitterers everywhere raise money (by posting #beatcancer) and getting 1 cent for charity for everyone counted.

So go on and add #beatcancer to all your posts today.

Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. We ask bloggers to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue.

By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue.

Out of this discussion naturally flow ideas, advice, plans, and action. In 2007 on the theme of the Environment, we saw bloggers running environmental experiments, detailing innovative ideas on creating sustainable practices, and focusing their audience’s attention on organizations and companies promoting green agendas. In 2008 we covered the theme of Poverty, and similarly focused the blogging community’s energies around discussing the wide breadth of the issue from many perspectives and identifying innovative and unexpected solutions. This year we aim to do the same for Climate Change, an issue that threatens us all.

From the smallest online journals to huge online magazines, Blog Action Day is about mass participation. Anyone is free to join in on Blog Action Day and there is no limit on the number of posts, the type of posts or the direction of thoughts and opinions.

Visit Blog Action Day and get involved.

**** UPDATE ****

Hey bloggers,

You did it!

Yesterday you and bloggers in 155 countries across six continents wrote about a single issue that impacts us all, and turned Blog Action Day 2009 into one of the largest social change events ever held on the web.

Your participation helped change the conversation and showed the power of the web to connect people across the world who despite their varied backgrounds have one shared desire: to make a difference. According to blogpulse, we increased the number of posts about climate change on a given day by 500%, and CNN wrote a great article covering the excitement and diversity of today’s event across the web and around the world.

A full recap is up on our blog, and here are some highlights:

We hit 31,000 total trackable blog posts, and our current estimate is that together we reached at least 17.9 million people yesterday. We just exceeded 13,000 registered bloggers on the site and are working to get all of you who posted but haven’t yet registered into the final count.

We had at least three major world governments as active participants in this year’s event. United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon BrownForeign Minister David Milliband and many others from the UK stationed around the world. The PSOE governing party of Spain hosted a bloggers event focused on climate change and transformed their website for the day to promote Blog Action Day. And late in the day, President Barack Obama’s White House blog joined in become part of the global movement of bloggers shaking the web. posted the first Blog Action Day entry in Britain at the stroke of midnight on the 15th, which was followed by

Of course, well-known bloggers were a big presence yesterday as well:

• The Official Google Blog gave a green tour of the company’s campus;
• Mashable asked what you’re doing to reverse climate change;
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog suggested “Five apps to help save the world”;
• Treehugger gave us two simple things that could, by themselves, stop climate change;
• Global Voices posted a roundup of bloggers from around the world writing in many languages;
• Gadling spent the whole day posting about green travel;
• BlogHer covered the road to the next international climate negotations in Copehagen.

There are many more, and we encourage you to check out the Featured Posts on the blogactionday.org homepage for a longer list of some of the world’s largest blogs.

Many of our nonprofit partners, leading organizations from around the world, were also actively involved in making the event a success:

• TckTckTck released a beautiful and touching new video;
• Greenpeace bloggers from around the world joined in;
• World Wildlife Fund featured Blog Action Day on their international climate blog;
• Oxfam helped emphasize the human side of the climate crisis;
• 1Sky wrote about the front lines of political activism in the US;
• The Nature Conservancy helped us understand the science of climate change;
• NRDC’s Switchboard bloggers wrote informative posts all day;
• Consequence wrote a whole series of posts on youth climate leadership.

You should all feel proud of this remarkable collective effort. And it doesn’t have to end today. For many, we hope this serves as an entry point into the broader movement to address the issue of climate change. There are a number of ways and some amazing organizations through which you can continue to remain involved, and we encourage you to check out our Take Action section to learn more.

We will continue providing updates and information about the success of today’s event and ongoing opportunities for involvement–including the the October 24th International Day of Climate Action organized by our friends at 350.org–here in the weeks ahead, and we hope you’ll stay with us.

Thank you so much,

Robin Beck
Lead Organizer
Blog Action Day 2009

The Technorati website is blocked today by AVG free anti-virus software search-shield.

It is not known, at this time, if it is just an error or if there is indeed some sort of problem on the site.

Google

• http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=WWW.YOUR-SITE.COM/SITEMAP.XML

Microsoft Bing

• http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=WWW.YOUR-SITE.COM/SITEMAP.XML

Yahoo

• http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=WWW.YOUR-SITE.COM/SITEMAP.XML

Ask.com

• http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=WWW.YOUR-SITE.COM/SITEMAP.XML

Moreover

• http://api.moreover.com/ping?sitemap=WWW.YOUR-SITE.COM/SITEMAP.XML

Then just hit enter and the engine will be notified of your new sitemap.

You can also resubmit website sitemaps from within the Webmaster Tools section of each Search engine.

Do you know of any others that should be on this list? Comment it below.

Let us know what your experience with these tools has been like or how they could be improved.