Socialmedia

NEW YORK, Mar 11, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) –Mediabistro.com (a division of WebMediaBrands inc.) /quotes/comstock/15*!webm/quotes/nls/webm (WEBM 1.04, +0.04, +3.95%) announces its annual Mediabistro Circus, a conference about media and technology, will be held May 20, 2010 at 92YTribeca in New York City. this year’s Circus theme is Visionaries and Provocateurs: Women in Media and Technology.

The ever-dynamic Mediabistro Circus returns as a forum for exchanging ideas with foremost thought leaders. this year, the Mediabistro Circus focuses on women as visionary leaders who have challenged traditional thinking at a time of great economic upheaval.

Some have rewritten conventional rules as they lead organizations in media and technology. Others have surmounted huge challenges as they built startups into viable businesses. All have uncovered new ideas about growth, change, and innovation. “The Mediabistro Circus is about bringing the community together to learn from media gurus, get inspired, make contacts, and have some fun,” says mediabistro.com Director Carmen Scheidel. “This year, we’re excited to feature women who we admire for challenging traditional thinking and forging new paths in a time of great economic upheaval.”

Confirmed speakers includeAlice McKown, Executive Director of Marketing at Conde NastDigital, on Social MediaLisa Hsia, Senior Vice President at Bravo Digital Media, onthe next Age of BroadcastingSusan Lyne, CEO at Gilt Groupe, on taking a Fresh ApproachCarol Smith, SVP, Chief Brand Officer at ELLE Group, onEmbracing RiskBrandon Holley, Editor in Chief, Yahoo! Shine, on OnlineCommunities for Women

For a complete list of speakers and the agenda, visit mediabistrocircus.com.

The vendor area will be a marketplace for organizations that offer products and services for all aspects of the media world. Mediabistro Circus will also provide the critical element that can only be found at a live event — face-to-face conversations that lead to business development and partnership opportunities.

About Mediabistro Events

Mediabistro has a full line of more than 20 in-person conference and panel events for media and technology professionals. In addition to think Mobile, other bi-annual events include the Social Gaming Summit (May 6-7, San Francisco), Virtual Goods Summit (October, San Francisco), eBook Summit (December 15-16, NYC), and the Semantic Web Summit (November 8-9, Boston). One-day events scheduled for 2010 include the Freemium Summit (March 26, San Francisco), Social Developer Summit (June 29, San Francisco), Mediabistro Circus (May 20, NYC) and the Mediabistro Career Circus (August 4, NYC). Mediabistro also hosts more than 130 cocktail parties each year, and produces evening panels on topics including social media, journalism, advertising, design, and web content and video. for more information, visit mediabistro.com/events.

About mediabistro.com

Mediabistro.com is the leading content, career, and event resource for media and technology professionals. this community comes to mediabistro.com to read news and features, take courses, attend events, and find work on the industry’s best job board.

About WebMediaBrands inc.

WebMediaBrands (webmediabrands.com), headquartered in New York, NY, is a leading blog network which provides content, education, jobs, and events for business, media, and creative professionals. the company’s brands include mediabistro.com, LearnNetwork, Graphics.com, AdsoftheWorld.com, BrandsoftheWorld.com, SocialTimes.com, AllFacebook.com, Freelance Connect, Semantic Web, and others.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery available: businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6210475&lang=en

SOURCE: Mediabistro.com

Mediabistro.com for sponsorship and exhibit information: Dave Arganbright, 212-547-7931 eventsales@mediabistro.com or for information about mediabistro events: Stephanie Mack, 212-547-7888 events@mediabistro.com

Copyright Business Wire 2010

BusinessBlogs says the propensity toward social media inactivity is due to a lack of followers, fans, updates, tweets and posts. Creating relevant content takes time and effort and companies looking to take advantage of social media need a plan. Providing valuable knowledge and insights is key to bringing people in and also provides an opportunity to directly engage with customers and give them a reason to continue to come back.

A study released by Barracuda Networks reveals that 73 percent of Twitter accounts are inactive. the number is large, but it is down from 79 percent last June. Thirty-four percent of Twitter users have never made one tweet. according to the study, only 21 percent of people signed up for Twitter use it regularly, reports Computerworld.

As with any business initiative, getting started is often the hardest part. Social media must be embraced by the higher ups and preparation and savvy are needed to make it sustainable.

GLASGOW, UNITED KINGDOM — (Marketwire) — 03/11/10 — Internetters, one of the leading providers of domain names, web hosting and email services in the UK, has this week announced the upgrade of its shared hosting to be Wordpress compatible.

Following on from recent service upgrades including the move to unlimited bandwidth provision on shared hosting and the changes to management, pricing and upgrading of its MySQL database products, the company has now engineered Wordpress compatibility on its web hosting platform and has developed an easy to follow how-to-guide on Wordpress installation.

The move has so far been met with positive comment from customers, with many already having taken advantage of some of the many hundreds of templates currently available for use via the Wordpress system.

“A few segments of our customer base will find this upgrade incredibly useful, from those unsure how to start developing their websites to those who simply don’t have the time to manage a website development project.” Comments Errol Vanderhorst, Managing Director at Internetters.

The move allows customers to use a hosted version of Wordpress, allowing them in turn to not have to move their domain or email to another provider. as well as providing centralisation for the customer, it also gives access to over 900 templates and over 6000 installable widgets currently available for Wordpress, not to mention the wealth of knowledge available online created by the many millions of people worldwide who have already used Wordpress.

Errol continued, “We’re always looking at ways to improve customer experience and helping customers get their businesses online quickly with minimum effort while providing maximum future flexibility is a perfect way to do it. not only can this Wordpress integration help customers develop a basic website now, they can go on to expand and develop it in future using the numerous templates and plugins available.”

Internetters is an established UK based web service provider offering domain names, web hosting and email services to suit the requirements of both consumers and businesses throughout the UK and beyond. A variety of recent service updates and high profile promotions has seen a positive reaction from its global customer base and the company continues to put together plans for further improvement to cement its position as one of the leading providers in the UK.

Contacts:
Internetters
Brian Tait
0141 931 6400
brian.tait@internetters.co.uk
internetters.co.uk

Today I am experimenting with CSS3. I decide to recreate some of the social media icons using only CSS and HTML markup. Nothing is new here actually, except I’m having fun in doing the icons. And I will share to you the result.

And please not this is only tested in latest version of Webkit and Mozilla (v3.6).

View the Demo

The sample markup used in creating the NetVibes icon.

<div id=”netvibes”> <div class=”netvibes s128 fl”> <span>+</span> </div> <div class=”netvibes s64 fl”> <span>+</span> </div> <div class=”netvibes s32 fl”> <span>+</span> </div> </div>

The CSS used to style the icon

.netvibes { background: rgba(104,219,33,1); background : -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(rgba(104,219,33,1)), to(rgba(19,130,16,1))); background : -moz-linear-gradient(top, rgba(104,219,33,1), rgba(19,130,16,1)); color: #fff; text-align: center; border-color: #0c5f0c; border-style: solid; font-weight: bold; font-size: 178px; box-shadow: 0 0 4px rgba(0,0,0,0.4); -moz-box-shadow: 0 0 4px rgba(0,0,0,0.4); -webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 4px rgba(0,0,0,0.4);}#netvibes .s64 span{ font-size: 88px;}#netvibes .s32 span{ font-size: 42px;}.s128 { width: 128px; height: 128px; border-width: 3px; line-height: 128px; text-shadow: 0 -2px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5); border-radius: 10px; -moz-border-radius: 10px;}.s64 { width: 64px; height: 64px; border-width: 1px; line-height: 64px; text-shadow: 0 -1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5); border-radius: 5px; -moz-border-radius: 5px;}.s32 { width: 32px; height: 32px; border-width: 1px; line-height: 32px; text-shadow: 0 -1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5); border-radius: 3px; -moz-border-radius: 3px;}

I also created linkedin, urkot, delicious, flickr and google. Check the demo and tell me what you want to add.

View the Demo

I am using the new CSS properties like border-radius, text-shadow, box-shadow and gradients in creating the icons.

A great tutorial about CSS3 gradients and the benefit of using it, are well explained by Chris Coyier in this post (Speed up with CSS3 Gradients).

When I wrote that location would be this year’s Twitter at SXSW, I also meant that Twitter’s geolocation would be this year’s Twitter at SXSW. The service has just turned on geolocation on its website today for the first time.

While Twitter’s geolocation feature has been live through its API since last November, there was no sign of integration into the main twitter.com site until now. As you can see in the screenshot above, for tweets tagged with location, right next to the source of the tweet there is a location placemarker. when you hover over it, it turns blue, and clicking on it brings up a little Google map showing the location that tweet was sent from.

You can see these maps as overlays both on individual tweet pages, and on tweets in your main stream. In some cases, depending on how Twitter geolocation API is being used, it looks like place names are even passed through to Twitter. For example, here’s a tweet sent from Foursquare that also says where the tweet is being sent from.

The timing of this move by Twitter is significant. Earlier today, the New York Times reported that Facebook would unveil its answer to location next month at its f8 conference. Twitter’s first-ever Chirp conference takes place just one week before f8. Google, meanwhile, is in the game with Latitude and to some extent Buzz (but could have been in it a lot more). and of course, every app and their mother appears to be launching with some sort of location functionality at the SXSW in Austin, Texas, which begins on Friday. many of those apps use Twitter’s geolocation API to pass the data back to Twitter, so it makes sense that this would be a good time to turn the functionality on for the website.

Update: It looks like Twitter has just turned off the location functionality after having it on for a bit. Look for it to come back shortly — certainly some time before SXSW.

[thanks Chad]