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…)

A new report from comScore shows that online video views are up compared to the same time last year.  And in fact YouTube, the leader in online video, had views up 50% compared to January 2009.  

In January more than 32.4 billion videos were viewed in the US alone online.  YouTube, owned by Google, had 12.8 billion viewed videos, taking up roughly 39.5% of all viewed online videos.  ComScore reported that the average YouTube visitor watched an average of 94 videos throughout the month of January. That means there were about 136.2 million YouTube viewers in the US (that’s give or take 44% of the entire US population). (more…)

Lip-syncing, crazy weathermen, and dancing babies are just some of the types of things we expect to see on YouTube.  But what about using the site as away to post a Missing or Found ad, like one you might see on a street pole.  Well, two Canadians used the video site to do just that.  Josh Rimer and Craig Weckerle are two Vancouver residents, who were walking around city the night of the Olympics Opening Ceremony.  As they were walking they came upon a red case with a Sony HD camcorder inside, just laying on the sidewalk. 

So, they decided to create and post a video to YouTube, in hopes to find the owners.  And indeed, with more than 10,000 views it worked.  (more…)

From Twitter passing it’s 10 billionth tweets, to an amazing viral video, find out what happened this week in the world of social media. (more…)

A few months ago, YouTube announced they would begin supporting closed captions on videos.  Since that time, we here at iePlexus have been using the feature on all of our social media news briefs, and have even been praised for our use of closed captioning. 

However, now YouTubers now have a feature which should make enabling closed captioning easier.  It’s known as YouTube auto-captioning. YouTube says auto-captions will help YouTube users reach a larger audience in a simple matter.  (more…)

So I have to say as spring break approaches Kansas doesn’t come to mind as a place to visit…..ever.  I mean what do they have there?  As far as I know, the only thing from Kansas is a dog named Toto.  I mean, I hate to say it but Nebraska sounds more fun, since they have a whole museum dedicated to Kool-Aid. 

However, the city of Topeka is trying to bring in not just tourists, but also bring in the major search engine Google.  And to entise everyone, Topeka’s mayor, Bill Bunten has renamed Topeka, the states capital, to Google, Kansas for the month of March.  (more…)

The Shorty Awards, the equivlent to the Academy Awards for Twitter users, were held last night at the New York Times Tower in New York City. CNN anchor, Rick Sanchez who was the first main stream journalist who used Twitter as a connection with viewers through his show, hosted the ceremony handing out awards in a total of 28 categories.  The second annual ceremony is held to share “the diverse ways Twitter can be used to create the best real-time short form content.”

William Shatner made a brief appearance via webcam, not only to congratulate the winners, but also share some of his favorite tweets from his new show, which is based off a Twitter account.  Suzi Orman & Facebook’s Marc Zuckenberg also made a video appearance, which was one of the highlights of the night.  All the winners who gave acceptance speeches were limited to 140 characters, the amount of characters Twitter users are restricted to when they tweet.    (more…)

According to the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, the relationship between social media and small businesses  have doubled in the past year from 12% to 24% in the United States.

The study which was released earlier this week found that roughly one in five small businesses have embraced social media and are integrating those sites into their business strategy.  Among the favored sites in the survey, Facebook and LinkedIn made the list.  45% of those surveyed businesses have said they believe that within a year or less, they saw initiatives.  (more…)

You are probably saying to yourself, “what is crowdsourcing?”  According to Wikipedia, “Crowdsourcing is a neologistic compound of Crowd and Outsourcing for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community, through an “open call” to a large group of people (a crowd) asking for contributions.”

It’s also a concept that many businesses are taking on.  While many are using social media sites like a modern suggestion box, others are actually taking those suggestions and putting them into action.  WLS-TV, Chicago’s ABC affiliate took a look at a Chicagoland company which helps people and businesses connect by crowdsourcing. (more…)

It was just last week, I was explaining how some of my predictions for the next decade in the social media world were coming true.  This week, thanks to the latest study from Pew Internet, another prediction has become a reality. 

The study analyzed how American’s are now using social media and other variables to consume their news.  Just the other week, we watch the Austin plane crash unfold before our very eyes through the social networks.  In fact, based on a sample of 2,259 adults, 75% of them read news through social networks or e-mail, while about 52% of those continued to forward on the news to others. (more…)