With talk of Google Plus Business Pages not too far away, Foursquare (a location based social network) has announced pages for businesses and brands.

Will this push Google’s plans forward? Will Foursquare be crushed as Facebook and Google slog it out? Or will others players (looking at you Community Engine) emerge that allows people to create hyper local networks with more utility and meaning.

Today we’re making foursquare Pages self-serve (to the great relief of our BizDev team). Any brand, organization, or publication can now create their own Page, gain followers, share Tips, check in, and reach their fans. Join the likes of MTV, the New York Times,Tiffany & Co, NASA, and Scanwiches by creating a Page for your organization now!

There are a bunch of features that make this perfect for brands:

• Reach the whole foursquare community with your Tips and check-ins (and push those check-ins to both Facebook Pages and Twitter).
• Let entire teams of people manage the same Page. With our new tool, you can make multiple people Page ‘managers,’ so that they can all contribute. It’s perfect for big organizations.
• From the web or your mobile phone, you can upload photos to your Tips and check-ins. It’s great for making them really shine for all of your followers.
• And, when your page is complete and you’ve added a few Tips, you’ll be featured in our Page Gallery.

To get started, just head here. It takes just one click to sign-up with your organization’s Twitter account.

It’s no secret we have been more and more enamoured with Tumblr, it’s not just the numbers (which are compelling it’s the ease of us. We’re not the only ones who think so, check out this quote from Rick Sanchez

That’s where Tumblr comes in.

It’s what Goldilocks would call, “just right.” It’s not a full-blown blog and it’s not a one-sentence message service. It is, as Steve Rubel noted last week, a “hybrid,” a platform that is “…a social >network for both original and curated content… longer than a tweet and often more visual in nature.”

And that’s what makes it the newest and potentially one of the best tools that journalists now have.

In a month where Facebook may have lost as many as 6 million users in the US, and Tumblr — with now over 20 million blogs — >[surpassed wordpress.com in size], Tumblr is about to hit the >critical mass necessary to make it useful as a platform to broadcast and receive news.

If you’re not yet using Tumblr, check it out. Maybe start with searching terms that realate to your niche, market or industry, have a look at what people are talking about. If you are we’d be honoured if you’d follow us on Tumblr

Tumblr Enjoyment* by hunsonisgroovy, on Flickr

The benefits of marketing on Facebook have become almost impossible to ignore. However what should we do when fans go bad? Here is an excerpt from a handy article on dealing with negative and inappropriate behavior on Facebook.

If someone is posting comments that you find to be offensive or lewd, you can block them. You can also let that person know that you did not appreciate their distasteful comment by using the report links and choosing “I don’t like this post.” Or you could opt to send a message directly to your friend and request that they remove the posting.

Bullying, Intimidation And Harassment

If things are more annoying than simply inappropriate comments, never fear. There are three things you can do to drop kick that menace: unfriend, block and report

Take that pest off your Facebook site by unfriending the person. Next, go to your privacy settings and block that annoyance from peeking at any information about you, including posts and updates.

Finally, report that abuser to the Facebook powers-that-be by going to the help section at the bottom right of your page. There you will find info on how to report everything that offends you from an event, to a posting, to a message.

If the Facebook team finds that the info does in fact violate the site’s terms, the content will be removed and subjected to, in some cases, legal or some other action.

Pornography And Perverts

If someone sent you a lewd picture that just unnerved you ,know that you can put an end to that creep’s shenanigans by reporting him. Any photo that is found to violate Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities governing the relationship with Facebook users can be subjected to deletion. And if there’s anything illegal about the activity, it will get reported to the proper authorities.

Terrorist Activity

If you’ve been receiving material that promotes or raises funds for a known terrorist organization, put an end to the negative proselytizing by reporting the source. Facebook with law enforcement in order to ensure that its users are enjoying the social site in a safe and unmenacing atmosphere.

Don’t Hesitate To Take Action

Don’t think twice about ending any abusive behavior that is directed to you on Facebook. Whether you choose to use the personal controls that the site offers you — such as blocking, hiding or even unfriending — or you chose to go the full route by reporting the offensive actions, Facebook believes that safety is a shared responsibility.

All reports are strictly confidential. The people you report won’t know that they’ve been reported by a user like yourself. After you submit a report, Facebook will investigate the complaint and determine whether the content should be removed based on the site’s terms.  Facebook has provided you, the user with all of the tools you need in order to make the best decision to keep your Facebook experience a safe and happy one.

Original Article

How To Deal With Jerks On Facebook
http://www.allfacebook.com/how-to-deal-with-jerks-on-facebook-2011-06

(via Instapaper)

The growth of the mobile web has spawned a raft of new publishing opportunities. 

Rather one book that everyone reads the future would appear to be appear to point towards a personalized version of the book for each reader.

The big question is “will the future book be an app or a cloud based subscription style service”? 

Graphically a digital comic platform has chosen “both-and” rather than “either-or”.

“With our focus on HTML5, storytelling, collaboration and sharing that you can be done anywhere online or mobile, Graphicly’s full vision is becoming a reality,” said Baldwin. “over the past year, we have met a lot of awesome fans, creators and stories, and they have no place to truly interact online. This release is the first move towards allowing all that awesome to connect in one place.”

With the battle over the definition of the cloud raging between the major Web giants, Graphicly has sided with both approaches – building dedicated apps and even being featured at Google IO for its Chrome Web app, but now moving into the full Web, backed by HTML 5. This sets them up nicely for reaching any mobile or desktop device its users want to leverage to read content. In fact, they promise in a release today to help bring author content to Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, or “any platform they choose”.

Full story via Louis Gray

http://blog.louisgray.com/2011/06/graphicly-expands-website-with-html5.html

(via Instapaper)

As many voice concerns about Facebook’s face recognition strategy Tim O’Reilly thinks it might be the best way to open up a technology that will be used whether we like it or not.

Face recognition is here to stay. My question is whether to pretend that it doesn’t exist, and leave its use to government agencies, repressive regimes, marketing data mining firms, insurance companies, and other monolithic entities, or whether to come to grips with it as a society by making it commonplace and useful, figuring out the downsides, and regulating those downsides.

Full story here::

http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/facebook-face-recognition.html

(via Instapaper)

They include such gems as;

11 Mind-Blowing Reasons Your Company Needs Facebook

Top 10 Reasons You Should Have a Fan Page

R.I.P. 3 Ways Facebook is Killing Your Website

How to Build the Perfect Facebook Fan Page, 2011 Edition

How To Set Up The Vanity Url For Your Facebook Fan Page

21 Creative Ways To Increase Your Facebook Fanbase

… and many more. So get your bookmarnimg tools out, Evernote, Instapaper, Read It Later whatever you cam get your hands on. Then head over and grab the whole damn lot.

Here’s the link.

http://www.copyblogger.com/ultimate-facebook/

(Congrats to my old pals Andrea Vahl and Amy Porterfield on finishing their book: Facebook Marketing All-in-One For Dummies)

If your Facebook friends were responsible for your TV programming would it be an improvement on the current schedule? 

You might not have long to find out if Mark Zuckerberg has his way. Speaking at the recent eG8 techology forum in Paris, the Facebook CEO said that TV, music and books being media experiences, stating that

I hope we can play a part in enabling those new companies to get built, and companies that are out there producing this great content to become more social.

More at Lost Remote

What do you think is it time TV got a real shake up? Is Facebook the platform to do it?