Politicians have been devising ways to communicate with the public and reach out to their constituencies since the inception of the democratic system. And while each form of new media has given legislators more opportunities to communicate their manifold messages, the communiqué has often been filtered through reporters and the discourse has been decidedly one-sided. Social media, unlike any previous innovation, has fundamentally changed the way voters glean information about public officials. Not only do candidates now have unbridled access to the electorate, but social media also offers voters a way to voice their opinions in an open forum.

Traditionally, a candidate needed to take out ad space in order to deliver a message that wasn’t filtered through a journalist, and aside from an op-ed piece, there was little opportunity for conversation or to gauge the public response. With social media, however, there is no intermediary or barriers of communication. Politicians now have the capacity to justify why they voted for a piece of legislation, elected a certain cabinet member or any other decision in their own words—and voters have the chance to respond. (more…)

It’s been a slow week across the social media and search engine world.  Most of the online hype has been about the iPad, which came out over the weekend.  Other than that, nothing.

Mashable.com has been doing a great job of keeping their readers entertained with social media news with a few infographics.  Yesterday, I shared one of those with you, comparing Facebook’s American population to the actual countries population.  Today, I decided to share with you “The History of Location Technology.” (more…)

Today is April 1, 2010, which is also known to many of us as April Fools Day.  And depending on how gullible you are today could turn into a long day.  For me, I was fooled before 6 this morning and I have a feeling I have a surprise or two more coming at me.  Even though I know not to believe anything anyone says today, I still happen to fall for it!

Today however, there are a number of sites trying to fool everyone.  I thought that we would take a look at some of the top online pranks today! (more…)

Ah, the power of Twitter.  We use it to share and learn about breaking news, to express our feelings, to offer and find exclusive deals, and to keep up to date with our friends.  Twitter can be so much more than that though, like making new friends and/or making a difference.

I, myself have met some of my best friends here in Seattle through Twitter.  And I always am using the site to promote things that can make an impact, like Earth Hour happening this weekend.  But wait! Wouldn’t it be a neat concept if myself and all of my Twitter friends and followers could do something to make an impact on the world.  Luckily, there is such an event. (more…)

I’ve been talking about Foursquare a few times this year, and how both companies and consumers are taking advantage of the locationed based social network and app.   Foursquare gain popularity over the past year, and had roughly about 500,000 users last week.  A half-million users isn’t bad, but it looks like the network is growing now at rapid speed.  With the South by SouthWest festival happening right now in Austin, Texas, Foursquare has gained “100,000 users” in the past 11 days. 

The company tweeted right before their new 100,000 user saying they were almost there.  The company also says that there has been a surge of friend requests on Foursquare, so users can see where there friends are actually at.  (more…)

One of the greatest parts about my job is how I get to always keep up with the latest viral videos.  I don’t often write an aritcle about certain viral video, although I have been showcasing at least one viral video a week in iePlexus’ Social Media News Briefs for the past few weeks.  But this viral video, I think deserves it own article.

Posted on March 9, “The Future of Publishing” has had more than 125,000 views at the time of this posting.  While the video is intended for book publishers, I think the video is a good marketing as well.  The video is sort of like a palindrome, something you can read forwards as well as read it backwards. (more…)

We often here of studies that find consumers who follow or fan companies or brands on a social networking site, like Facebook or Twitter are more likely to purchase products or services from them.  Once again, the latest study from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies confirms that.

Amazingly, the study found that consumers who follow companies or brands on Twitter are 67% more likely to buy from them, while 51% are more likely to buy from a brand that they follow on Facebook. And when it comes to recommending companies and brands to friends, 79% said they were more likely to recommend them if they were on Twitter and 60% if they were on Facebook.  (more…)

AJ Bombers, is a popular burger place in Milwaukee owned by Joe Sorge.  On Sunday, Sorge’s sales were up 110% thanks to the new social media  application FourSquare.  161 FourSquare users checked into the restaurant at the same time, that’s between 25-35% of Milwakkee’s FourSquare user population.

So what brought 161 FourSquare users to this already popular burger joint?  Sorge decided to promote the restaurant with the idea that customers could unlock a Swarm badge, which is awarded to those who check in at a location with at least 50 other users at the same time.  (more…)

It seems that there’s an app for just about everything.  Whether you are looking to play a game, trying to keep track of your finances, search the latest trends in the social media world, or even make new friends, there’s an app for it.   And with several apps profiting in the 7 digit range, everyone is trying to create an app for something or another. But actually building an app takes time and money, unless you have the skills of an advanced developer.  But now anyone can create an app for a pretty affordable option.

A service known as AppMakr launched this week, and promises to help you create an application for iTunes.  That means parts of your website could be turned into an application for iPods & iPhones alike.  Sharing news, your Twitter feed, video blogs, and just about anything else you can think of could now be part of your very own app. (more…)

As we approach a new year, it’s always fun to take a look back at what happened over the past year.  I thought it might be fun to take a look back at some of our favorite viral videos from 2009.

As I began looking into some of top viral videos from the year, I discovered that Visible Measures, a video tracking site, created a list of the top 10 most watched viral videos for 2009.  I was a little heart broken to learn that 8 out of the 10 were music videos.  While music videos are a major part of the American culture, I think the videos below, are the ones that really make 2009 complete. (more…)