To keep the momentum going into the weekend, we put together our favorite stories of the week to share with you in this week’s social media roundup:

Super Bowl Breaks Social TV and Broadcast Records
It was another record breaking Super Bowl Sunday this past weekend. With more viewers tuning into NBC, another two million streaming it on their phone or tablet, and more social media mentions tracked than ever before, the game was one to remember for many reasons.

Along with actual contest, the Super Bowl commercials made some noise leading up to the big game. In a less dramatic fashion than normal, there were no surprises, as many advertisers opted to release their commercials to the public days in advance. Whether you watched them all before, during, or after the game, here is a list of The 10 Super Bowl Commercials That Blew up the Biggest in Social Media.

Facebook Set To Introduce Mobile Advertising Within Weeks
Bound to make headlines for the next few months, the anticipation of Facebook’s IPO has everyone talking about how much Facebook is really worth and generating absurd stories of people who are cashing in. One of the more circulated stories was a list of risk factors that could trouble Facebook in the long run. Already less than a week after submitting their papers to go public, Facebook seems to be addressing one of these major risk factors head on. While nothing has been completely confirmed, there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing ads on Facebook’s mobile version in the not so distant future. In the mean time, companies like Coors Light are finding other creative ways to insert ads, running their own Facebook mobile campaigns.

 
How Pinterest is Becoming the Next Big Thing in Social Media for Business
Riding off last week’s news of Pinterest’s rise to being  a top traffic driver for major retailers, it was hard to open up our inbox or look through our newsfeed and avoid news and talk about the burgeoning site. Whether it was about their current business model and how they’re making money, the way it’s changing website design forever, or the countless number of sites that have already implemented Pinterest-similar features, declaring Pinterest as “the next big thing in social media” isn’t crazy. When a site hits 10 million U.S. Monthly uniques faster than any standalone site ever, it’s time to pay attention.

Youths Are Watching, but Less Often on TV
We all knew it was a matter of time. With improvements made to broadband internet, the growth of smartphones, and the rise of tablets, it’s no surprise that people are consuming “television” on something other than their TV sets. So when we see apps like the one that Grammy Awards, along with CBS, has developed, we get excited about the future of streaming video incorporating social media.

Television studios and networks aren’t building these applications just for special events anymore – TBS just announced that they’ll be releasing a Social TV tablet app to be accessed during Conan shows. While television networks are findings ways to reward viewers for watching shows and incorporate hashtags and other social branding efforts into their programs, we should expect to see the gap closing between television and social media.

YouTube CEO: The Future of Content is Niche Channels
YouTube is ready to change the way we watch videos online again. In an effort to help visitors watch videos more passively, YouTube has invested $100 million into Premium Content Channels that will focus on generating content for a specific niche. By hosting streams solely dedicated to a number of different interests, YouTube feels this will give users a better way of finding and watching what they want.

LinkedIn Hits 150 Million Members
In a press release announcing their four quarter earnings, which were higher than expected, LinkedIn revealed that it hit the 150 million member mark. To put it in perspective, Facebook has 845 million active users and Twitter is en route to 500 million total users by the end of March, according to Mediabistro. Admittedly, these social networks are all different and hard to compare. While LinkedIn hasn’t released their active member total, it is adding around 10 new members every 5 seconds. All of these reports are good signs for the company and it’s investors.

Did we miss a bit o’buzz? Let us know here and join in on the conversation! 

Social Media Week is upon us! The Affinitive team will be in and out of the New York and San Francisco offices all of next week attending presentations hosted by leaders in emerging social and mobile media.

While we are all excited about the number of “can’t miss” events, especially The Interplay of Sports, Business, and Social Media featuring our Founder & CEO Bob Troia on the panel, we don’t have the time to see them all! So if you find yourself in a similar situation, and want a look at some of our favorites coming up, we’ve got a list for you. With that in mind, we bring to you Affinitive’s can’t miss events for Social Media Week 2012. Hope to see you there!

Rob Marscher’s Recommendation (NYC):
How to Embrace the Metagame to Produce Long-Term Social Engagement
As a word of mouth marketing agency, we’re always looking for ways to extend online engagement to offline engagement and word of mouth.  Gamification has been a hot topic among branded social apps.  I’m interested to discuss how “Metagaming” can be applied to social apps.

Bob Troia’s Recommendation (NYC):
J.C. Herz on Unpacking the Quantified Self followed by Panel: The Sensor Continuum
“Quantified Self” is cresting as a theme in the media, with buzz about all sorts of devices and apps logging everything from heartbeat and mile-times to sleep patterns and indoor air quality.

Margot Wood’s Recommendation (NYC):
@HAHAHAHA: How to be funny in 140 characters or less
Why do I want to go to this one? Honestly, who wouldn’t?

Christina Ku’s Recommendation (NYC):
Using Social Media to Change the Way We Do Government
Because love it or hate it, your government affects you and the way you live. It’s only logical that the next step in transparency and communicating with your representatives is through social media. What I REALLY want to go to though, is #kittencamp – memes, cats, and beer? Wish I was there!

Warren Ackerman’s Recommendation (SF):
Leveraging Gamification to Drive Engagement
Eager to hear about innovative B2C examples and how they match up against our own work for MLS, Jeep, Contiki and BlueCross BlueShield.

Erica Hall’s Recommendation (NYC):
Social Commerce Is Here, Is Your Brand Ready?
Social commerce is the future, wondering what insights these folks will have on best practices and adoption rates.

Patrick Courtney’s Recommendation (NYC):
Big Data and Bigger Conversations: Measuring Your Brand’s Social Performance
Measurement measurement measurement! I eat it up.

Andrew Fox’s Recommendation (NYC):
Consumer Engagement and Online Community in Social Media
As someone who spends his day creating and consuming branded content, and as sharable content becomes even more vital in engaging consumers and increasing reach, I’m hoping this event with Causes.com VP James Windon will provide some interesting insights and spark a few furiously scribbled down moments of inspiration.

Jon Heinrich’s Recommendation (NYC):
The Insidious Plot to Socialize the Enterprise
I will listen to anything that the Global Managing Director at Ogilvy has to say about social media.  As one of the leading ad agencies in the world, they have been around from the beginning, with David Ogilvy himself being known as “The father of Advertising”.  They are leaders in interactive marketing and known as industry innovators.  Listening to global brands like Nestle, Ford, and American Express talk about how the integrate social into their corporate environment sounds like a great way to start off Social Media Week!

Adam Kossoff’s Recommendation (NYC):
To Change Faster, We Must Decide Better
It’s a topic that can have a profound impact on anyone’s life. We make millions of decisions over our lifetime, but we rarely stop to think why we do certain things. I want to better understand the decision process, why certain decisions are made, and how I can learn to make better decisions.

We’re logging off for the weekend with these in mind:

Facebook Files for $5 billion IPO

In news that’s been circulating about the web as fast as mouse buttons can click,  Facebook has filed for a a $5 billion IPO. While it’s still unknown on which stock exchange Facebook will trade, it’s safe to assume that the platform’s ticker symbol will be simply  ”FB.”  At the moment, Facebook will have to field questions and scrutiny from regulators and court investors before trading begins.

While the initial paperwork does not reveal how much of the company’s shares are going to be sold (or cost), what is known is that CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds the most amount of shares at 28%, and that as of December 31st, Facebook internally determined each share to be worth $29.73 a pop.

In other related news, it seems that advertising made up 85% of Facebook’s revenue at a solid $3.2 billion, and that Zynga makes up 12% of Facebook’s revenue. Because the 197 pg document that Facebook filed with the Securities Exchange Commission was hefty reading, Facebook so kindly demonstrated in a series of graphics where the money goes, and how the money’s made. Techcrunch has kindly summed up the IPO timeline of events in one convenient location if you want to read further.

Pinterest Drives More Referral Traffic than +, Youtube, and LinkedIn
Social sharing platform Pinterest continues to rise in referral traffic and users, as noted by Shareaholic. As of the end of January, Pinterest  rose from 2.5% referral traffic rate to 3.6%, outpacing names like YouTube, LinkedIn, and Reddit. While Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s reign are not surprising, it should be noted that StumbleUpon is now number two, signifying its rise and potential. One of our interns, Katie, looks into the hidden possibilities of StumbleUpon in her blog post.

Tumblr Hires Journos to Write About… Tumblr 
In a rather bizarre mobius strip of narcissim, blogging platform Tumblr has hired two journalists to write exclusively about…  Tumblr. Rationalizing that the almost 44 million tumblogs qualify as a city of its own, Chris Mohney and Jessica Bennett will write exclusively about Tumblr and its content from the steely, analytic eye of journalism (instead of just blogging about it). All articles and postings will  be found on the Tumblr staff blog.

Susan G. Komen’s Very Weary Week
Breast cancer organization Susan G. Komen has had a very busy week, putting out the flames on their various social media channels and navigating a PR nightmare. The initial firestorm started when the foundation announced that they planned on withdrawing the funds and grants from health care provider Planned Parenthood, which prompted an outcry and much scrutiny about its donation policies across the internet.

In addition to 22 Democratic senators calling out the foundation for withdrawing its financial support, hackers took to the web to express their dismay, alongside other netizens of the web. Children’s author Judy Blume even took to the internet to issue a scolding as well. On the brightside, the spotlight was able to help Planned Parenthood raise over $1 million in donations, with several generous donations coming from donors such as Mayor  Michael Bloomberg.

The foundation has been putting out social media and public relations fires all week and weathering a PR storm (hint, not very well), from changing its privacy settings on its Facebook page, denying accusations of deleting unsavory or negative comments on their Facebook status, their blog shutting down, and SVP Karen Handel callously tweeting,  “cry me a river”  (which was then very quickly deleted).

As of today, the embattled and wary foundation has announced that they regret their initial decision, and has issued a statement stating that they no longer wish to withdraw financial support.

Twitter Rolls Out Expanded Brand Pages and Analytics
Twitter’s been busy with expanding on its brand pages program to a few more choice advertisers, and shedding more light on its own set of analytics. While both these features could only be beneficial to the program and its growth, both in userbase and reach, we’re still waiting for tangible results – Twitter’s been promising the launch of its analytics since the end of 2010.

Farmville Post Breaks Guinness World Record
In a quiet sigh that went around the world, Facebook broke a Guinness World Record – not because of its IPO – but because of a Farmville status with over 1,001,600 comments. We don’t have much to add to this but wanted to quote the following interaction with the user in question regarding her motives:

Hodgson says she took up FrontierVille after her daughter started playing on her Facebook account. She wanted to set the record to show the strength of the FrontierVille community, with which she had become deeply involved.

“I began to play myself, and then got involved in helping with the game’s community groups as an administrator,” she told Guinness. “My friend Nattie Murphy saw the previous record and suggested I try to break it — it sounded like a great idea for our group to show what we are capable of when we work together”

Everyone go weep.

Did we miss a bit o’buzz? Let us know here and join in on the conversation! 

Happy Friday! We’ve been clutching our coffee mugs close to us for warmth and fighting off the winter blues with cute videos of baby sloths , daydreams of the other kind of sopa and lots of caffeine.

When not enthralled by a rather mesmerizing zebra dance or bemoaning the fate of the future at the mass protest of Wikipedia’s blackout by procrastinating teenagers, we’ve been keeping abuzz of the following stories. We’re logging off for the weekend with these  in mind:

SOPA / PIPA Co-Sponsors Jumps Ship
They can take our lives, but they cannot take away our freedom … to look at cat videos. The internet mobilized together in a last ditch attempt to urge Congress and the House of Representatives to stop anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA from passing, resulting in co-sponsors and legislators dropping support like flies well before the day was over.

75,000 websites and countless individuals gathered together in the largest online protest in history by gathering in the streets or gathering signatures, calling up their local representatives and overwhelming Senate’s website, and blocking off their own sites. Craigslist and Reddit shut down for the day as did Wikipedia (though the Wiki mobile version and apps did still work), leaving a short blurb about SOPA and calls to action, and Google compromised by censoring its logo and running an extensive ad campaign across various sites that urged people to sign a petition that collected 4.5 million signatures. Twitter also reported 2.4 million SOPA-related tweets between midnight and 4pm EST of January 18th, and Mozilla reported that 30 million people in the US saw its Anti-SOPA message and 1.8 million visited its info page, generating 360,000 emails to Congress .

While it seems that we’re now free to browse and share on the web at our own leisure, we are far from the clear as both SOPA and PIPA have yet to be voted on. Although the number of SOPA opponents in Congress is now 122, the number of supporters for PIPA in Senate still outnumber opposers, which means PIPA can still pass. Voting on PIPA was originally scheduled to take place on January 24th, but Senate Majority Leader Reid has stated that voting on PIPA has been delayed for the time being. If you haven’t done so, you can write to your elected officials and let them know your opposition here.

MegaUpload Gets Shut Down 
File uploading and sharing site Megaupload has been shut down by the FBI in a rather surprising show of force. The site’s been through a rather rapid chain of events, but with the site effectively shut down, countless users are unable to access and withdraw their files – some of which are original copyrighted material of their own (much akin to copyright infringement). As the founder and CEOs of MegaUpload were arrested and denied bail in New Zealand,  pictures of valuables and items being seized spread across the internet, and internet vigilante group Anonymous decided to launch a counterattack in form of a DDoS (which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison) attack by tricking users into clicking a fake MegaUpload URL.

60 Companies to Unveil Open Graph Apps
Sixty companies have unveiled their open graph applications that will be housed along the right hand side of your Facebook Timeline. The brands run the gamut from food and wine, travel, entertainment, and charity, alongside other categories. Most of the applications were already in existence, but have since been tinkered and upgraded to fit Facebook’s Timeline and will also add actions such as “spot” “love” and “want” to Facebook’s repertoire. You can see the list of brands at the link – we’ve already spotted a few of our favs!

Foursquare adds Restaurant Menus
Foursquare has rolled out a new feature in addition to its Explore section  (which factors check-ins from you and your network to deliver personalized results and recommendations), which now brings all the menus and prices of all the possible venues you could possibly check into. Foursquare announced through its blog that it had teamed up with startup SinglePlatform to share over 13,000,000 menus from 25,000 restaurants across the U.S – prices included! Nifty if you’re in a jam and need to revise dinner plans on the fly, but a nightmare for the indecisive.

Did we miss a bit o’buzz? Let us know here and join in on the conversation! 

Facebook’s Comment Box Plugin goes Mobile
Facebook rolled out the mobile equivalent of its comments box plugin, which makes it easier for media sites to engage browsers across the web and for users to leave behind scathing epithets which are now connected to a face. The plugin will automatically appear on the mobile version of websites that have already implemented the Comment Box. For technical details on how to incorporate Comments Box on your site, visit here.

Watch the Throne: Twitter (and the Internet) Welcomes Blue Ivy
After months of speculation, figure watching, and uterus vigils, mogul couple Jay Z and Beyonce welcomed destined and slightly-pressured-to-be-gifted daughter Blue Ivy, alongside countless other well wishers on the Internet. Social analytics firm Simply Measured graciously provided Mashable a graph of “Beyonce’s Baby Hype,” confirming that around 11:15pm on Saturday, Jan 7^th, tweets per minute peaked at 2,379. That’s a lot of “watch the crown” jokes.

Tweet @MichelleObama
First Lady Michelle Obama has joined the many on Twitter in time to support the President’s campaign now that elections are drawing near. Like most accounts, hers will be run primarily by campaign staff, but all personal tweets will be signed with a “mo.’ At the time of copy, the First Lady’s account already had 250,509 followers, but this will soon change.

Google: We Never Indexed “@” to Begin With
Google and Twitter’s increasingly public spat about recent decisions and changes to  search results –  Google’s “Google Plus Your World” –  is just getting started. After Twitter’s Alex Macgillivray pointed out specific examples of Google’s  skewed search feature which highlighted the exclusion of Twitter related terms  -  more harmful than good –   Google has officially went on record to say that “@” was never indexed to begin with, and the engine would have never recognized a handle formatted in such a way to begin with. While Twitter’s concerns are certainly valid, the termination of its agreement with Google regarding appearing in real time results may have played a factor into this.

London Olympics Volunteers Prohibited from Social Media
Volunteers at the 2012 London Olympics will find themselves being asked to put down their phones now that the organizing committee has released its social media policy, effective for all 70,000 plus volunteers. While volunteers are allowed to retweet and relay official news, releases, and statements, they will be prohibited from posting VIP or backstage pictures, disclose any breaking news pertaining to athletes – or discuss athletes for that matter – or get involved in detailed discussions about the games. While it’s a lot of preemptive damage and image control, we can’t help but wonder what the penalties of slip-ups will be?

Marvel Times the Avengers movie with Facebook Game
In suspiciously convenient timing, Disney has revealed that the very first Disney branded Facebook game will be a combat RPG game titled Marvel: Avenger’s Alliance. Although no one has confirmed yet that the game release is intended to time with the Avenger’s movie, the tie in is certainly helpful as some of the superhero cast is part of the Avengers team. A release date has yet to be announced, but will launch in first quarter.

Facebook Begins News Feed Ads
We reported not too long ago that Facebook had plans for rolling out featured ads directly within user’s newsfeeds, saying that they were expected to start January. The difference is however, that instead of being called “Sponsored Stories” as many originally thought, newsfeed ads will be going by moniker “Featured” instead. Add this with Facebook’s new “Listen With” feature (which aims to ultimately bring you back to Facebook chat), and you’ve got yourself a feed full of potential annoyances.

MySpace Keeps On, Carries On
MySpace still lives. The now ancient social media platform has managed to weather many a storm, ignore the cruel japes of the Internet, and retain 12 minutes of user’s time and attention span. What’s truly mind boggling however, is how it’s still a bigger platform than Tumblr and Google + (could it be from user accounts that were never deleted?). Maybe the second life is due to Justin Timberlake’s attempts to revive MySpace’s relevancy with a TV service.  Cue the “I’m bringing MySpace back” parodies.

Did we miss anything? Let us know and join in on the buzz here! 

@BarackObama joins Instagram
Social media savvy President Obama has furthered his online presence yet again this time by joining Instagram as @BarackObama. The president and his team are no strangers to utilizing various social media platforms (most recent forays being Tumblr and Flickr), although Instagram is their first mobile only platform. While it’s hard to figure out how the photo sharing nature of Instagram plays into the upcoming 2012 campaign, it’d be foolish to dismiss it completely either as more news organizations – such as the Washington Post and NBC World News – have opened accounts to share behind-the-scenes snapshots. Take a look at Obama’s first photo here and leave a tip on which filter would suit him best!

Facebook App Profile Pages to Disappear on February 1^st
Page managers should be noticing banners on their application pages  kindly notifying them that:

“By February1, 2012, we are removing app profile pages. You can migrate likes and the vanity URL of this page to an existing Facebook page with the same name and product/app category.”

These banner notifications come six months after the initial announcement that Facebook would phase out its App directory  and it appears to be an effort to encourage both app developers and users for more search-friendly (and search reliant) apps. A Facebook Developer blog post credited the move to inconsistencies between app profile pages and regular pages concerning insights, APIs, and distribution channels. Admins will be able to transfer likes to new pages, but unfortunately this does not apply to content. You can read further on the matter here.

Google + Sees Member Growth
Google +’s growth in 2011 hasn’t been as fast as some had initially speculated or hoped. Although Plus  has yet to gain footing as a serious Facebook contender, December saw its strongest month, member growth-wise, with US visits reaching over 49 million, and up by 55% since November, according to Experian Hitwise.  According to analyst Paul Allen, Plus just passed the 62 million mark, compared to Facebook reaching 60 million four years after its debut. While Facebook still reigns with a whopping 800 million active members, Allen predicts that Plus will reach 400 million by the end of 2012.

Post Your Instagram Pics to Facebook
Candid photographers rejoice! Thanks to a small tweak on the mobile photo platform, users can share full sized Instagram photos in all their filtered glory directly onto Facebook, utilizing Timeline’s aesthetic value to the max. While all Instagram photos end up in a designated “Instagram Photo” album, they’re published onto Timeline with its original caption and a public URL. If you want to get a headstart and start sharing photos you’ve already uploaded, follow these instructions. For more old fashioned users who want the print experience, you can check out these services that’ll print your Instagram pics in various ways.

Groupon Introduces a New Merchant Center 
Groupon rolled out a new merchant center that’ll allow for more transparency concerning customer deals, available to all merchants. Features include real time percentages of customers who’d recommend the business and their comments, although data on satisfaction rates is a little scarce. The dash also includes the deal statistics that launched last month, and aggregates buyer demographics such as zip codes, genders, and ages. To read up further on Merchant Center’s features, you can read Techcrunch’s breakdown here.

Facebook’s Daily Deals, Revisited
When Facebook announced the end of its daily deals service back in August, it was a quiet concession to Groupon’s dominance in that area. It seems however, that the Daily Deals Agency is reattempting another go, launching a Facebook Marketplace Network  in over 40 U.S cities with over 500 sources of daily deals, offers, and steals – all sortable by category and location. Better luck this time!

Did we miss anything? Let us know here and join in on the buzz!

Is Timeline an Advertising front?
Facebook is a free platform for users. That much is set in stone and crystal clear. While the public roll out of Timeline took a long time coming, it seemed a natural step in Facebook’s evolution as a platform. A former CTO is now charging that the feature isn’t entirely benevolent and without strings, but a front for advertisers to cull consumer info:

“What most users don’t know is that the new features being introduced are all centered around increasing the value of Facebook to advertisers, to the point where Facebook representatives have been selling the idea that Timeline is actually about re-conceptualizing users around their consumer preferences, or as they put it, “brands are now an essential part of people’s identities.”

While Timeline does lay out posts in a rough chronological order, the writer charges that when it comes to what’s on display to a social circle, metrics including direct payments to Facebook influence ranking and placement, which is crucial to graph rank, a metric and non-published algorithm for placement that determines what appears on your profile (basically what lumped all those posts on your newsfeed about “Christmas” together).

With sponsored stories and call to actions submissions rolling out as well, it doesn’t seem to be a big secret that Facebook is tapping into user activity to recommend and push brands and advertisements. At the moment Facebook has not offered a comment.

Twitter Beats Out Facebook for Media Coverage
When it came to news coverage in 2011, Twitter ruled the roost with 50% of media attention with Facebook trailing closely behind at 45%. In a study released by HighBeam Research, Twitter consistently captured the most media coverage each month, with the exception of February and April, when Facebook took the lead due to the release of new page layouts and deals, respectively. Twitter’s constant media attention throughout 2011 is to be expected as various protests, uprisings, and social change conversation took place on, and was organized most notably by Twitter.

Fab on the Rise with 100,000 orders a Month
E-commerce site Fab has had a busy year. The platform originally started out as a gay social network startup, but switched gears to become a design-oriented shopping hub. Founder Jason Goldberg created a fabulous timeline to showcase just how quickly and rapidly the company’s grown throughout the year. Most impressive was how Fab’s order growth went from 20,000 in July to 100,000 in November, with orders continuing to grow throughout December due to the holiday. With a growing consumer base, it’s possible Fab might become “the Amazon of design.”

Facebook Officially Releases Desktop Messenger for Windows
Facebook has officially released a desktop messenger client for Windows that’ll allow users to access Facebook chat without having to log into Facebook. The client also includes tickers and notifications that ultimately goad one back onto Facebook. Although the client is not available for Macs at the moment, Instant Messaging platforms AIM and Live Messenger might have to step smart. You can download the messenger here.

Google Testing Adwords 
In an attempt to go beyond traditional text ads, it seems  Google is toying around with its Adwords offerings with Google Email Subscription Ads that’ll allow  companies to buy ads that automatically fill in a call to action (specifically, subscribe) slot with a user’s Gmail address already filled in. You can check out the screenshots of said experiment at the link.

40% of Facebook Users Use Mobile Apps 
According to data released by Enders Analysis , monthly active users of Facebook’s mobile apps recently passed the 300 million mark, which roughly equates to about 40% of Facebook’s 800 million active users. What remains unknown however, is how many Facebook users access the platform solely through their mobile devices.

Startup Trends of 2011
Startups can be such fickle things, but what started in 2011 could very well dominate the trend lists of 2012. We took a moment to take note of six notable startup trends and especially liked the last one. We’d like to hear what trends and predictions you’ve made note of, so leave them in the comments ! You can also read our own predictions for social platforms in 2012 !

Did we miss a bit o’buzz? Let us know and join in on the conversation here!

Facebook to Host Ads in Newsfeeds
Those semi-discrete “Sponsored Story” ads on the right of your screen are about to get more facetime. As of January, Facebook will start featuring “Sponsored Story” ads directly in newsfeeds, aiming to increase visibility, especially for mobile users, although mobile advertising won’t be rolling out until March. Not only will these ads feature directly on one’s newsfeed, Sponsored Stories will be the same size as other updates and posts. In the meantime, you can read the “Facebook Wants You to Know How it Makes Money” disclaimer on the top of your user page. Other changes that are quietly being tested and rolled out: Suggested Events, which pulls in data from previous check-ins, your friends’ events, and pages you’ve liked to suggest you get out there more.

You Can No Has Cheezburger: Go Daddy and SOPA
Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh (of the I Can Has Cheezburger, FAIL blog fame) has thrown down the gauntlet at Go Daddy, the web’s largest hosting and domain registration provider for its support of SOPA. The CEO  tweeted challenging Go Daddy to recant its support of the controversial bill, or the Cheezburger franchise would be moving its 1,000 domains elsewhere. While Go Daddy has not issued any statements, Huh followed up with another tweet directing people to ask Google to pressure GD, which is a third-party registrar.  You can check out the complete list of companies who support SOPA here.

UPDATE: Go Daddy has since announced that it has withdrawn support of SOPA, with CEO Warren Adelman issuing a public statement reading:

“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation – but we can clearly do better. It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.”

Facebook is #1 Search Term (Again)
Much to the dismay of Google + , it appears that “Facebook” and its variations remain the number one search term in the U.S. for the third year in a row, accounting for 3.1 percent of all searches, which is a 46 percent increase from 2010. This is not the be all end all list of all lists however, as Google and Yahoo released their own “most searched” lists.

Pinterest Piques Interest with 11 Million Weekly Visitors and a 4000% Traffic Increase
Social sharing platform Pinterest is booming. The image dominated, invite-only site started in March 2010 and has since been rapidly growing. Traffic has increased 40x in six months, accounting for 11 million visits within a week (ending December 17th). Further user demographics reveal a 58% female userbase and 59% userbase between the ages of 25-44. As Pinterest is solidly invite-only, if you want to scope out the platform for 2012, you had best request an invite, or finagle one from a friend.

Twitter, Journalism, and Social Change
The International Journal of Communication has released a report analyzing the flow of information and communication as seen in earlier uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia this year. In both Egypt and Tunisia, 70% of the accounts tweeting news were linked to individuals, as opposed to 30% of organizations, despite the larger number of followers and higher frequency of tweets. Individual bloggers, journalists, and activists were responsible for generating 43% of tweets regarding Egypt and 44% in Tunisia, as opposed to the 7% generated by media outlets. To download and analyze the full content of the report, you can check it out here.

Digg Digs into Facebook’s Open Graph
Like other news outlets, social sharing platform Digg has tapped into Facebook’s open graph to make the sharing of links instantaneous and seamless. In addition to the integration, Digg will launch a newsbar that sits atop its pages that allow users to turn off Facebook sharing or individually monitor the stories they want to publish on their Facebook newsfeeds. If you’re still a bit unsure of how to navigate the Facebook’s Timeline, you had better read up on this.

Memorable Tweets of 2011
From social change to social faux pas, Twitter usually manages to snag the moment just as it happens. Just 21 tweets can’t quite sum up 2011, but they certainly are very memorable as we took a look back on some PR slipups, major news events, and deaths. Notably missing from the list are reaction Tweets about the death of Kim Jong Il, so we’re adding this list to the blurb.

Did we miss a bit o’buzz? Let us know and join in on the conversation here!

Tis the season indeed! When not wrapping things up (literally and figuratively), arguing about the placement of ornaments on the office tree, and getting ready for the holiday, we’ve been asking Santa to respond to our Tweets and hearing out George Takei’s impassioned plea for Star Peace. We’re logging off for the weekend with these in mind:

Facebook Timeline Opens to Public

Those who have been avoiding Facebook change have run out of time – the long awaited Timeline has been released to public as of Thursday morning. Those who don’t feel like waiting any longer than they’ve already had to can activate the change by clicking “Get It Now”before grabbing some free Timeline art from Mountain Dew. Timeline is also available for Android and m.facebook.com. The more reserved have a seven day grace period to preview and tinker about privacy settings before Timeline goes live. While individual users will be navigating the changes brought about by the feature, Facebook is still mum on Timeline for brand pages.

Zynga Prices IPO at $10 a Pop 

Facebook’s largest game vendor has priced its IPO in the upper range from $8.50 to $10 a share, and sold 100 million shares, raising $1 billion at a $7 billion valuation. While this is about half of what early reports speculated,  Zynga opened to trading with a bigger market cap than LinkedIn, which currently is at $6.4 billion. Prospective buyers can search on the Nasdaq Stock market for “ZNGA.”

Lowes PR Boo-Boo aired on Facebook, Results in Facepalm

Home improvement retailer Lowes has had quite the page moderating nightmare this week. The proverbial storm began when Lowes ran ads  during TLC show “All American Muslim,” which prompted conservative Christian group Florida Family Association to demand that Lowes pull its ads.  A status update explaining the executive decision resulted in more than 23,000 unsavory comments that only escalated further. Lowes has since then deleted all updates concerning the fiasco, leaving in its stead a post asking people to remain respectful in the future. Although the original post is gone, the infamy of user comments live on. Check out 25 of the dumbest comments left on Lowes Facebook post here.

Payvment Integrates with Twitter

Facebook commerce vendor Payvment has rolled out a mobile shopping experience, optimized to support Twitter’s new homepage. Users can now simply click on a Tweet to view more product details before designating its placement in a shopping cart for immediate purchase, or a Payvment wishlist. As 43% of Twitter users access the platform through their mobile devices, it seems impulse shopping just became a little more dangerous.

U.S. Teens Triple Data Usage

Nielson released a study stating that teens’ stronghold as leading message senders is not likely to slip anytime soon. In fact, teens aged 13 –17 have tripled their data usage throughout the year. While SMS messaging remains the strongest use, other popular data heavy activities include mobile internet, social networking, email, app downloads, and app usage.

Huzzah! Automatic IE Updates!

Microsoft has finally taken a step to help IE get on level with Firefox and Chrome by issuing automatic updates of its internet browser. While there are options available to opt out of the automatic upgrade, we figure that this can only be a good thing. Embrace the change!

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