In wake of the recent disaster in Haiti, it’s become evident what a powerful resource social media sites can be in rallying the humanitarian spirit inherent in us all.  Organizations like The American Red Cross and Partner In Health have raised money through the efforts of Facebook Causes.  Similarly, Oxfam America’s Facebook Fan Page has already raised over $33,000.  Fugees singer Wyclef Jean, who is originally from Haiti, utilized his Twitter account to raise relief efforts for his country.  He also created a multi-faceted online effort with his website, Yele Haiti.

There’s no doubt how amazing it has been to see how humanitarian spirit has become infectious through the use of a plethora of social networking sites. Still, as Ben Parr wrote on CNN’s Tech blog today, social media is undoubtedly a resourceful tool, but it is the efforts of the people, themselves, that truly make a difference in situations like these.

What kind of relief efforts have you seen on social media sites?
[Sources: PC Mag]

“Knowledge is power” is an adage that has been instilled in us since birth. But, is there such a thing as too much knowledge?  Back when times were simpler, televisions only had thirteen channels, local calls required a mere seven digits and only mind-readers were privy to the innermost thoughts of others.  You could never have access to too much knowledge. In the age of tweets, knowledge is an abundant commodity.  Free-flowing tweets on Twitter, blog posts, podcasts, social bookmarking and Facebook updates have led to a deluge of useful and useless knowledge merged together into an enormous ever-evolving amorphous lump of information. Read more >>

Just yesterday I wrote a post about Skittles attempt at using social media layered under their minimal site navigation ala Modernista. Interesting thing happens when you click the link for Modernista’s site: it retains our site in the background. Go ahead…try it.

Is it because we are opening in a new window? Who knows. Design flaw? You decide. If it was my site or that of my clients’, I wouldn’t be happy.

Last week we explored how search trends recorded by Google may be a good predictor of our next US President. And Google’s trends were correct: Barack Obama was the winner.

Taken from the “I saw it on the news at 5:00 this morning over coffee” category, Google’s user’s search habits are being used as a predictor of flu outbreaks. Google touts the following on their Outbreak page…

We’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.

People are increasingly jumping on the web with symptoms before contacting their doctor. So what’s up with this aching, runny nose, stuffy head feeling I have coming on? Let’s check Google and see…to the tune of 75% of Internet users polled between October and December of 2007 according to the Pew Internet Project.

With trends, it’s all about timing. A rise in search terms indicates an increased interest. A fall would indicate decreasing interest. There wouldn’t be mass numbers of people searching for flu-related terms in the middle of summer, for instance, as that’s not a typical time for the flu. Watching trends on a regular basis will help you to see where the rises are and prepare accordingly.

Trends are a huge factor in seasonal topics. If your business is trend-oriented, you should keep an eye on what Google’s data shows.

Paging Doctor Google…it hurts when I do this…

Talk about a 180. Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco; he and his company are tired, battered and bruised. But his message is now - suddenly, and amazingly - clear: Yahoo wants to be bought by Microsoft.

His exact words?

“To this day, I have to say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo. I don’t think that is a bad idea at all…at the right price, whatever the price is, we are willing to sell the company. We were ready to negotiate, we wanted to negotiate a deal, and we felt that we weren’t that far apart. But at the end of the day, they withdrew and they since have been very clear about not wanting to buy the company.”  

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