• L.A., Philly Use Social Media to Promote Tourism
    Americans have always loved their road trips, and during a down economy, tourism to destinations in the U.S. is more popular than ever: according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, spending on domestic tourism increased from $610 billion in 2009 to $654 billion in 2011, and is projected to reach $675 billion in 2012. Meanwhile more and more U.S. cities are using social media to attract some of those itinerant dollars.
  • Employees Asked Not to Tweet About BBC's Problems
    So after the BBC's reputation has been dragged through the mud due to an alleged cover-up (of a pedophilia scandal within its ranks) and shamefully incompetent reporting (falsely accusing a member of Parliament of being a pedophile), what's the best way to restore trust in Britain's venerable but troubled news institution? Easy: by becoming less transparent to the public.
  • Docs Need to Disclose Conflicts of Interest on Social Media
    Social media can be a useful tool for doctors to communicate with other doctors, patients and the public in general, but doctors run the risk of ethical breaches if they fail to disclose any potential conflicts of interest, according to a new article published online by the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
  • Med Schools, Residencies Check Candidates' Social Profiles
    If they're doing it for college admissions, it only makes sense to do it for medical school admissions, and guess what: they are. A small but growing number of medical school admissions officers and post-med school residency program directors say they are using social media sites to do background research on candidates, according to a new study published in the Postgraduate Medical Journal.
  • DHS Taps Accenture for Social Media "Biosurveillance"
    Although they probably could have chosen a better name -- maybe something a little less, I dunno, Orwellian -- the idea is pretty nifty: Accenture Federal Services has received a $3 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to develop a "biosurveillance" system that will allow the Office of Health Affairs to monitor and react to national health emergencies via social media.
  • Election Was Most Tweeted Political Event Ever
    Presidential elections are pretty much made for Twitter, as news media, analysts, pundits, bloggers and ordinary citizens generate streams of easily-condensed information and opinion to tweet and re-tweet. With important news emerging in small increments, minute-by-minute, Twitter might actually be the ideal medium to track election results.
  • Please, God, Let This Election Be Over
    Hey, did you know there's an election going on? I know, I was surprised too! But apparently it's a big thing -- it's all over the social media! According to a new survey from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life project, 22% of registered voters have already announced who they voted for or will vote for via social media -- and unsurprisingly the portion goes up among younger folks (also known as the "oversharing generation").
  • Dress Displays Tweets
    There's something about social media that makes people want to mash it up with everything, and that includes clothing. In the most recent sartorial application of social media, "fashion technology" house CuteCircuit has created a dress containing 2,000 LED lights which can display Twitter messages received via wireless Internet. The dress was commissioned by EE, a British 4G mobile network, and modeled at an event in London last week by Nicole Scherzinger, the former lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls, who is currently a judge on the British version of X-Factor.
  • Sympathy For Shashank
    I feel bad for Shashank Tripathi. No, not THAT Shashank Tripathi (the guy who tweeted a bunch of very false but very alarming "news" about made-up events in New York City during Hurricane Sandy). I feel bad for Shashank Tripathi -- the guy with the same name who lives in Singapore, and who became the unsuspecting target for cascades of Internet vitriol because people thought he was the other guy.
  • Who's To Blame For False Twitter Rumors?
    Okay, so obviously the first person to blame when untrue and potentially dangerous rumors spread on Twitter or other social media sites is the person who started the rumors. If you haven't already guessed, I'm referring to a jackass named Shashank Tripathi, a hedge fund analyst who was, until recently, the campaign manager for Republican congressional hopeful Christopher R. Wight, and who got his jollies during Hurricane Sandy by tweeting alarming but false tidbits of non-news from his account, @ComfortablySmug.
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