The introduction of the course was met with mixed reports from students with some even saying that it was a “waste of time”. Surprisingly some even commented that they didn’t know what Twitter was!

This is a very positive move by a University Journalism course to embrace new media into the curriculum and see that the way we interact with news is changing and has to change in order to keep up with the fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

[From: The Sydney Morning Herald]

The deal will not only increase the ongoing rivalry between Google and Microsoft but will allow users to search on either search and have their result include up-to-date tweets from Twitter users anywhere in the world.

Microsoft have already created their Twitter Search function and it will enable users to search by trending topics as well as seeing general results in their search including tweets in chronological order. (I’ve not been able to test this as it doesn’t seem to be functioning in the UK yet – any UK users tried this yet?)

Google have said they will implement their Twitter Search shortly.

Marissa Myers, writing in on the Official Google Blog about the deal with Twitter, said

“the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favourite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information”

I read a lot a RSS feeds and scan through thousands of tweets everyday from a massive variety of sources. With restrictions on people’s time it’s only the posts that stand out in someone’s RSS feed or Twitter stream that will be read. I’m no different. After a long drawn day today of reformating and reinstalling on my main machine I had some time to catch up on all of my feeds, some 400 potention articles and posts (I kid you not) but I only ended up reading around 10 of them. Why? Because those 10 had post titles that stood out and completely grabbed by attention, stopping me from skimming on through to the next post.

You can easily grab someone’s attention and make them read your work by starting out with a great title. Don’t just slap any old thing up there but take sometime to think it through. You shouldn’t spend hours thinking your post’s title but at least give it some of your attention, it might just make the difference between your work being read or ignored.

Image by Dr Stephen Dann

It’s a great idea. Essentially is a daily photo blogging app that let’s you record daily your life in photos but it’s got a great twitter-style feel about it with the ability to follow other users. There are some big names on their from the social media world including Kevin Rose, Gary Vaynerchuk and Mel Kirk.

Users can snap a photo off their webcam, upload direct from a hard drive or email a photo from either a computer or a web-enabled phone. This makes it a really versatile app that surpasses Twitpic due to its blogging nature and functionality.

In the words of Daily Booth themselves:

The first major event occured on the London Underground when a employee dealt poorly with a passenger. Happens all the time you say? Well yeah it might do but this time it was also videoed by blogger Jonathan MacDonald. The video then went viral via YouTube and the employee was suspsended. The full post can be found at the link above and is a really interesting read.

The second incident that Social Media got hold of was the gagging order on the Guardian for the potential environment scandal of Trafigura. Within a hour it was one the most popular trending topics on Twitter as well as all over the press and blogs. By the end of the day the gagging order have be removed.

Many large companies and organisations still doubt the power of Web 2.0 and Social Media and how it can easily affect change. How wrong they are.

As Mashable said yesterday:

The concept is rather simple. For every tweet, Facebook () status update, or blog post containing the #beatcancer hashtag, eBay/PayPal and MillerCoors will be donating 1 cent to cancer research. With a captive audience of social media addicts, the hope is that the campaign will go viral and raise significant money for several charities.

More details are available on the beatcancereverywhere.com website, along with badges that you can embed on your blog to further expand the reach of the campaign.

It’s a great cause to get behind and easy to do.

#beatcancer

Mashable

Mashable’s founder, Pete Cashmore, says (via Coolhunting) that it is…

a small, plastic card reader that fits in to the headphone jack of an iPhone (or iPod Touch) and transfers the credit card’s swipe data to the app.

For anyone running a small business or making key sales on a customers site this could be a massive app.

We shall wait and see what happens from here.

This Socialnomics video brilliant puts forward the agruement against Social Media being a fad in such a great way.

I think the biggest statement to take away from this video is that Social Media is a fundamental shift in the way we communication. Traditional forms of communication, marketing, and ways of getting your voice heard are all falling away and struggling to keep up.

Now is the time for everyone to embrace the new world order of social media.

Jane cites Andy Williamson of political research group The Hansard Society in her report how, very truthfully remarks that

“In order to effectively engage citizens, an organisation needs to believe that the voice of citizens matters and there is still a culture of ‘I’d rather not’. Web 2.0 is, by its nature, user driven and government isn’t.”

It is a very well put together article that gives a good insight in to how the British Government is making tentitive steps towards using Web 2.0 to engage with the masses but it is clear that on the whole there is still so much more that they could do if they just bite the bullet and just engage with Social Media.

You can read the full article here: BBC reports: Moving towards Government 2.0

Here are just 2 of my current favourites but check out the whole Flickr Pool here