Social Dose

The iPod is indubitably the most popular personal music player of recent times. However, that reality may be about to change soon with the meteoric rise of the iPod Touch and the iPhone. If certain industry observers are correct in their analysis, the iPod may disappear altogether with its coveted market being secured by such popular Apple products as the iPhone.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ll probably know that the new iPhone is a small computer and mobile phone all rolled into one. Little wonder it is then that it is also set to become the most popular music playing platform in the world. Potentially able to store gigabytes of music files, the iPhone can also play music videos with great speed and clarity.

The Intertubes are also responding to this new portable music reality. iPhone Music, a blog about music production and playback apps on the iPhone is dedicated to providing news, information and analysis about the platform’s music capability. As the iPhone gradually replaces the iPod as the preminent music player of choice, the Web will probably see a lot of commotion about what is essentially a powerful new computing platform.

The fluid and rapidly changing nature of the Internet often gives rise to intellectual property claims, counter claims and misunderstandings across cyberspace. In a move widely lambasted across the social networking realm, tech blogging giant Techcrunch has claimed to publish over 300 allegedly stolen documents from Twitter. Twitter management is apparently inflamed at Techcrunch’s perceived audacity.

“Nevertheless, the publication of stolen documents is irresponsible and we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared” wrote Twitter cofounder Biz Stone on the Twitter blog.

In its defence, however, Techcrunch claims that Twitter was well aware of the document acquisition, and that the act of publication took place with Twitter’s acquiscence. The latest tussle highlights the need for transparency and better communication between Internet based organizations and businesses.

The smartphone wars are heating up once again. Apple and Palm are the titans in this epic technological struggle to win the hearts and minds of millions of devoted smartphone users. Now, your phone is more than just a phone. Used for communication, business, entertainment and even health, the new generation of smartphone is in fact a mini computer.

Apple’s iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre were released within short periods of each other. Now the Palm Pre is set to debut in Europe, and few doubt its ability to take the continent by storm. The Britsh Isles, however, are a different story with their markedly different preferences for handheld tech devices. If past experience is anything to go by, the 3GS is likely to remain the dominant player in the UK.

Social Media monitoring service provider Techrigy has been bought by global marketing provider Alterian. This high profile social media acquisition goes to underscore the immense importance of social media feedback and monitoring as a prime marketing intelligence tool, providing deep insight into consumer behavior as it affects large global brands.

International businesses and multinational corporations across the spectrum of industry have come to realize the importance of cyberspace as not only as a marketing tool to reach customers and prospective target markets but also as a diverse and increasingly challenging goldmine of marketing, public relations and industrial information.

Social media has become big business – not unlike the search  marketing paradigm pioneered by the likes of Google and Yahoo. While pay per click advertising on a massively  popular consumer platform like Facebook is one aspect of the business model, more diverse and innovative commercial solutions are being generated by business to business solutions providers.

Brand monitoring is all the rage on places like Twitter, and advanced monitoring consultancies have sprung up, offering their services to large businesses and blue chip clients. Social media monitoring is one area that promises to hold greast value for corporate business managers as they scramble to analyze and cash in on the buzz their corporate empires are generating among the consuming masses.

Geocities, the iconic free web host of the archaic Internet is due to be decommissioned sometime later this year. Evoking nostalgic reactions from across the Internet, the end of Geocities has driven many commentators to protest against what is seen as an end to one of the most preferred free hosts in history.

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As most of us using microblogging service Twitter already know, there’s no option to create a group. While Facebook, MySpace and other social networking services allow congregation of people around common interests, Twitter currently offers no inherent feature to help people create groups or discussion forums.

This has changed with the launch of Twitter Groups in the UK. Twitter Groups UK offers Wordpress MU integration with a Twitter account, so that multiple people can sign up to the same group – in the form of their own unique blog. Wordpress offers many users to register and blog at the same blog.

This is just one of the many great uses Twitter is being put to. A wordpress blog on the site effectively becomes a Twitter Group because all bloggers that post on one blog  automatically get their posts posted to the same Twitter account, effectively creating a Twitter Group.

As the weeks have gone by, the notoriously iffy members of the Digg community have come to air their animated gripes against Digg’s much vaunted URL shortener, the DiggBar. Of course, it’s more than just a URL shortener. DiggBar operates as an iframe that keeps traffic on the Digg website.

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Here’s breaking news: Twitter’s traffic for the month of march has increased by over 130 percent to 9.3 million visitors. And these are only US figures presented by Web analysis firm Comscore. The coming months and years may see Twitter meet or exceed the popularity levels of such mainstream networks as Facebook and MySpace.

Twitter, the social networking-cum-microblogging-cum-text-messaging facility taht has taken the Western world by storm is causing a flurry on the nascent Internet.

An integration of mobile communication and Internet messaging, Twitter has spawned a multitude of applications aimed at making life easier or solving problems in various domains.

Twitter is spawning a wide array of domain specific services that pull relevant information from its API. With celebrities news and environment based Tweet sourcers all the rage, the business world isn’t far behind.

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