• Doximity Creates a Professional Network for Doctors
    To hear them tell it, most doctors are overworked and underpaid; nonetheless their coveted professional status and high average incomes make them very desirable targets for advertising in general, including social media. Except for one small problem: regulations intended to protect patient confidentiality have prevented them from using social media in a professional capacity... until recently, that is. A new social network for medical professionals, Doximity, has dealt with the regulatory obstacles so physicians can contact each other, in a professional capacity, to ask for advice, share information, and collaborate on research and articles (and heck, maybe even get a …
  • Facebook Plans IPO in Mid-2012
    The world's dominant social network may finally go public sometime in the second quarter of next year, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, which said the company hopes to raise $10 billion through a limited IPO valuing the company at $100 billion overall. With only a small portion of total shares for sales, this would still make it one of the largest public offerings ever, the WSJ reports.
  • Social Media Profiles Hurt Jobseekers More than Help
    Hopefully most readers of this column are aware that their social media profiles are fair game for potential employers, who may peruse the photos and updates posted to a Facebook page to gather evidence as to the character and sobriety (often literally) of a prospective job candidate. This week brings more evidence that ill-advised social media content can hurt your chances, courtesy of a survey of executives responsible for hiring decisions in Australia. The survey of 1,255 bosses and other hiring executives, conducted by Pure Profile on behalf of Australian telecom Telestra, found that 28% of the respondents use social …
  • Half of 12-Year-Olds are on Facebook
    Social networks like Facebook and MySpace are supposed to be limited to people who are ages 13 and up, but this is far from being the case, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which found that nearly half of American 12-year-olds -- 45% -- have profiles on these sites. Assuming the 12-year-old population has remained stable, around 3.96 million since the latest Census projections in 2009, that means 1.78 million 12-year-olds are evading Facebook's age limits.
  • Pentagon Studies Impact of Social Media on Long Deployments
    Social media has been a boon for people enduring long separations from their loved ones, and with the Department of Defense loosening restrictions on social media activities, those benefits are now being shared by military personnel who face long deployments overseas. To determine what kind of psychological impacts social media use has on service members' long-term relationships, the Pentagon has commissioned a study by social psychologists who will follow 8,000 families before, during, and after deployments, according to the Military Times, which first reported the news.
  • Qantas Shows How Not to Do Social Media
    One of the prerequisites of effective marketing -- or really, any strategic activity -- is that the company's left hand should know what its right hand is doing: any effort which isn't coordinated with other disciplines and day-to-day operations risks being a wasted effort or, worse, making the company look frivolous, insensitive, or just plain ol' incompetent. Qantas, Australia's iconic airline, has illustrated this in exemplary fashion with a Twitter campaign which invited the public to heap praise on the airline's luxury offerings in their Tweets: "Tell us what is your dream luxury inflight experience? (Be creative!) Answer must include …
  • Police Find Social Media Improves Community Relations
    Law enforcement organizations in the U.S. and abroad have embraced social media for a variety of purposes, including as a source of information for investigations but also as an important channel for community outreach -- which can yield big benefits in areas like crime prevention and community assistance in solving crimes. In fact, over half of the U.S. law enforcement agencies surveyed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police Center for Social Media said using social media resulted in significantly improved community relations. Overall, the CSM surveyed 800 U.S. law enforcement agencies (most of them local municipal and state …
  • Financial Services Get Social Media Help
    Social media has clear potential as a marketing and customer service tool for just about any industry you care to name, but some of the more "serious" professions -- e.g. medicine, law, and financial services -- face additional hurdles in the form of cumbersome legal regulations dictating how professionals may interact with their clients. These hurdles can be surmounted, however, with the help of dedicated social media products specially designed to comply with the existing regulatory framework.
  • Small Biz Embracing Social Media, But Obstacles Remain
    More small businesses are embracing social media for advertising and marketing, according to a new survey of 1,972 small businesses by Constant Contact -- a finding which bodes well for local and location-based social media ad spending in the long term. But at the same time a separate survey of 343 small business executives by Social Strategy1 found many small business owners are still grappling with the question of how to use social media to grow their businesses.
  • ConnecTV Brings TV Watchers Together
    TV watching is one of those weird borderline activities, at once social and antisocial: yes, you're in a room with other people, but your shared experience derives from the fact that you're all staring vacantly at the same thing. Anyway, regardless of how social it really is, "social TV" is frequently touted as one of the next big frontiers for social media -- and also a crucial area for TV broadcasters and content creators to establish a foothold.
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