I spoke at a panel session with Hester Tinti-Kane and Jeff Seaman at the Pearson CiTE conference in Denver yesterday, unveiling a survey of higher education on how social media is used. You can download the survey report, the slides we used, and lots of other great information at the Pearson social media survey site [...]

We thought it wouldn’t take long and Google certainly didn’t disappoint. Less than two months after its release, Google has started pushing reviews and ratings from Hotpot into Google Maps.

Facebook is actively defending their position in the privacy and consumer information wars, seeking to strengthen their defense counsel as they consult with privacy advocates. The topic of debate is how well the 500 million member social networking site is managing and protecting the personal information of their users. As Facebook and other sites that [...]

Forrester Research recently released a 2010 update to its Social Technographics® data that analyzes the social behaviors of global Internet users. For the first time, the percentage of U.S. consumers engaged in certain social behaviors actually went down, not up. Is the bloom off the rose? Is this the long-promised social media backlash?

I realize that the terms “social media” and “slowing down” are never to be used in the same post (let alone a headline!) according to the Secret Brotherhood of the Social Media Industry Public Relations and Hype Machine (the SBSMIPRHM for short ) but I did it. Why? Well, this week I came across a [...]

MySpace‘s critics have been complaining about it’s confusing design since the service launched, and dissatisfaction may have contributed to the rapid migration to Facebook and that social networker’s more functional look. Today, as part of an ongoing makeover, MySpace announced new profile designs for musicians, celebrities and all users: Highlights include: a cleaner simple look [...]

MySpace has begun rolling out a new user homepage which prominently displays the activity stream and is designed to simplify the content discovery experience. At log-in today, MySpace users can opt-in for an early look at the new homepage.  It  will formally launched to all users on Monday 8/19.

Facebook has introduced a new “Ask Question” feature. Can you give us a quick demo of how it works and offer some thoughts on how to best use it, Dave?