Kikin is the newest browser plugin for Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer that adds some rich social media context to your web browsing experience as you search and surf the World Wide Web.

As the pioneer of user-centricity, Kikin is surely putting a change on how people are finding and using the information that they need in the internet.

There are different search engines available these days that are cramming more relevant information to the top of their search results. The thing is that they are getting their data from networks and places that are not consistent. Kikin can add to that lacking consistency.

All you have to do is to choose the sites that you want Kikin to hunt for in your searches when you search for a topic so that you can get them at the top of your results page. Let’s say you prefer to get data from Wikipedia or Bing or Hulu – then these sites would be at the top of your results page. This way you steer clear from web sites that have nothing to do with what you really want.

If you get connected to your Facebook or Twitter account you can see comments that would be related to the topic that you are searching for as well either from your friends or from other public comments in the site. When you view a video clip on YouTube or when you look at a movie on Amazon.com then a Kikin bar will show up at the top of the page that can show you the recent searches for that item and feedback from Facebook, Twitter or other options. You do not have to worry about this bar since you can easily close it as well.

For media searches like music, movies and TV shows, Kikin has a menu that is very easy to navigate and has a nice context. You will find this to be more convenient compared to going through the individual sites.

One more thing that you will love about Kikin is that you are able to share content that you find in your web browsing easily on your Twitter, Facebook or e-mail account.

With FirstFollower.com any Twitter can now identify who their first followers are. The site allows its users to see not only their own first follower but the first followers of other twitter users as well. The program is designed by Victor Babichev, a Russian developer.

The site is very easy to use. All you have to do is enter the desired Twitter handle. Take note that you should eliminate the” @ “sign and that you should capitalize if it is needed since the site is case sensitive. After that, click on the “wanna know” button. After this, you will be given the name of your first follower along with a pre-generated message from Twitter that states their praise of allegiance to you as a user.

lightweight Twitter app is just a small sample of the kinds of social graph analysis that can be made possible by Twitter’s open user data. However, given the fact that Twitter has change the way they listed their followers in the beginning of this year, there are some doubts as to whether the program is indeed accurate.

Think about it – who was the first person to follow you on Twitter and are you following them too? Chances are, you probably would not exactly remember who first took notice of your existence in the micro blogging site and followed you first in the world of Twitter and it would not hurt to find out. Sometimes the results can be pretty interesting and fun. Take for example

Twitter recently launched their support for another language – Italian. Considered as the language of romance, around 70 million speaks the language and has entered the Twitterverse’s dictionary.

This development only goes to show that the Twitter translation project is going well and is developing rapidly. Last October, Twitter asked users to help translate the site – something that Facebook has been doing as well. Since then, Twitter was able to launch the Spanish, French and Japanese versions of the site making the Italian version the fifth language to be supported by Twitter.

The popular micro-blogging site was said that they were aiming to complete the “FIGS” (French, Italian, German, Spanish) languages first. So for now, only the German language remains to be accomplished. Considering that Twitter is crowd sourcing most of the work when it comes to translating the site, the rate of their accomplishment has impressed a lot of people.

Twitter spokesperson Jenna Sampson said that “We’re excited because today with the launch of the Italian version of our site becomes even more a platform for global communication. As always, we wish to thank all the translators who have participated in the project and who have shown us their skills.”

Now that Twitter is turning into a more rich and diverse site they now have viewpoints in a global level. This greatly helps the network information to grow continuously in every crevice and nook of the planet. As more events will be shared, there will be a higher level of awareness affecting the millions of users by use of their tweets.

Twitter has cited out some Italian users who are now tweeting in Italian such as the famous Italian singer Laura Pausini and the famous Italian journalist Beppe Severgnini. The launch was made in Italy where a pizza party was held.

If you are interested in using Twitter in Italian, all you have to do is to get in to your settings and select the language Italian from the drop down menu.

Twitter, one of the biggest Social Media sites in the World Wide Web has launched a new feature a few weeks ago called Twitter Lists. This feature has got users of the micro blogging excited allowing them to make lists of Twitter users that other users can follow.

This allows Twitter users to organize other users that they follow into groups or lists. Lists can be a stream of stories, breaking news, or tweets from the users who are behind the stories. The Twitter Lists can be public for the entire world to see and they can be private for personal use.

Basically, Twitter Lists have three aims: to organize your followers and the people you are following, to lists out recommendations for the Twitter users to follow and third is to make a list in order to measure the influence that they have.But a weakness was immediately spotted in the list and that is the fact that there is no way to describe what the list was all about. And now, Twitter is making improvements in their Twitter Lists feature starting out by applying the number one suggestion and request of Twitter users which is descriptions. Before, you can find that there is only a title indicated in the Twitter Lists.

Now, when you edit any list, you will find that you can place in a description which will allow you to describe your list in a hundred characters or less. All you have to do is to visit the list page, click “Edit” which can be found at the top right of the edit page, add a description then save.

Now that Twitter has a description field available you can now use short and snappy titles and be able to give a more effective description on what the list is all about.

Scott Stratten has really been on the pulse of Social Media for a while.  He’s a Twitaholic who goes through withdrawals if he hasn’t made a Tweet within the last 4 seconds.  Don’t believe me? Well it says so in his profile: http://Twitter.com/unmarketing

I “met” Scott online after discovering his viral marketing techniques using video.  He’s made over 60 videos and has over 60Million views.

With Scott’s love of Social Media and being a big time proponent of the REAL social aspect of it, he made a music video.

Now, Scott is a man of many talents but I didn’t expect one of them to be singing!

Alyssa Milano likes the song

One of Scott’s friends said  “by Twitter standards you basically just made out with @Alyssa_Milano”.

The video is on its way to making it big. As of the writing of this blog post, there are 41,314 views of the YouTube video.

Scott really captures what so many people are thinking and/or want to say. That is one of the reasons it’s growing in popularity. Although, stars like Alyssa Milano and Ashton Kutcher think it’s great too, and they tweet it to their followers too.

Personally I’ve watched it a few times and don’t know why.  Maybe it’s because I can’t get it out of my head, I don’t know but it’s worth the view.

Scott, Great Job. When will you be performing on the late night talk shows?

Sent to his 2Mil followers!

Using social media is the best way to promote your business brands. And with the explosive growth of social media, it is no wonder that a lot of companies are using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

A lot of marketers are now using social media and the numbers keep on growing. But these companies must understand how to employ effective methods and tactics in order to make the most of using a social media platform.

Remember that setting up an account is not enough. What is important is that there is participation and interaction among you and your audience. If none of this is happening then you are wasting your time. If you commit to making an account on a social networking site then you must be able to stay visible and active to your audience by doing regular updates. Keep them interested by constantly giving them useful information that is at the same time relevant to your brand.

Be humane. When people go to your account do not slap your company’s logo everywhere. Post a face to your profile, have a person’s name and have a good description. Make it more personal. Without doing so, people might think that you are becoming too self promotional. This could instantly make them lose interest because they will be thinking that you will just be pushing your products on them. It is ok to promote something but it should not be the main focus of your account.

You must be able to engage with your audience. Try to start conversations by posting articles, videos and links that is relevant to your business. You should also comment on other people’s sites or pages so that they can check your own site as well. Having a social networking account is also a great way to listen to your customers and potential clients. By interacting with them, you get to harness trust and loyalty from them as well.

Aside from making use of social networking sites, you can also set up a blog. It is actually a great place to start employing social marketing strategies and you can set up links going to your blog from your profiles. Your blog can be your home base wherein you can directly promote your products to entertain those audiences who are interested and want to know more about your business and the services you have to offer

Yesterday on the Oprah show, the one of the special guests was @ev, founder of Twitter. Check out the video to watch what happened.

This is Ashton Kutcher discussing Twitter with Oprah too.

The best thing about this is that Oprah has now introduced people to the Social Media Landscape that may not have been exposed to it.  Let’s welcome these new comers and help them traverse this land we love so much.

http://twitter.com/socialmedialand

Results indicate most marketers recombining current resources to get the most out of them and carefully spending new dollars on ROI-Driven new technologies and programs.

if we can’t prove it’s working we’ll slash it.

dependence on TV, FSI and other traditional measures.

it’s business as usual

it’s every man for himself

Culver City, CA (PRWEB) February 17, 2009 — A survey of the attendees of last week’s iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point, FL, showed that in these economic times, brand marketers are focusing less on innovation and more on results. There were more than 100 marketers in the room, which included such companies as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Coca-Cola, American Express, Kimberly-Clark and many other major brands, and 56% of the marketers polled said they plan to “heavy up” on more measurable, ROI-driven strategies, saying “if we can’t prove it’s working we’ll slash it.”

About 35 percent of the responders said that they’ve had cutbacks in their marketing strategies, but they’re planning to stay the course without altering their marketing mix significantly, and nine percent said they plan to revert to tactics they are most familiar with, slashing the new and least proven strategies, including digital.

Looking forward, brands said that in terms of customer usage and marketing dollars, the biggest winners in 2009 will be online video (29 percent of brands predicting this media channel as the winner), blogs and social media sites (28 percent), conventional online publishers (21 percent), email (10 percent), ad networks (9 percent) and distributed content (widgets, apps, RSS) in last place with three percent.

When asked about social media, 48 percent of brand marketers said they’re already moving dollars toward those channels, while 52 percent said they’re personally spending a lot of time on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others, but not moving any dollars there.

Significantly, 41 percent of marketers said the primary reason for their companies not spending more on digital forms of marketing and advertising is “dependence on TV, FSI and other traditional measures.” Corporate culture/political considerations, lack of metrics, lack of creative options and “inertia or fear” were the other reasons for holding back, with 21, 19, 11 and 8 percent respectively picking those options.

Another interesting revelation in the survey was brands’ views on collaboration between themselves and their marketing partners. Forty seven percent of marketers said collaboration has improved and 44 percent said there a lot of talk about collaboration but it’s “still business as usual”. Interestingly, the same question asked of the vendor and publisher side yielded 55 percent saying “it’s business as usual,” 25 percent seeing an improvement and 19 percent saying “it’s every man for himself” rather than “let’s work together.”

For more information and stats (including the breakdown in opinion between brand marketers and publishers/vendors) please visit http://www.imediaconnection.com/summits/surveys/.

About iMedia Communications:
Since 2001 iMedia Communications has built a reputation for creating industry events that bring together senior marketing executives from the world’s largest brands and leading interactive marketing agencies with service provider and publisher partners. The goal: to help build the growth of interactive marketing. These invitation-only summits have become must-attend events as online advertising budgets continue to grow at double-digit speed year-over-year. Based on current online advertising spending estimates from Advertising Age and other sources, iMedia estimates it is delivering access to companies spending more than 70% of the total online advertising market.

Robert Scoble is said to be in the know when it comes to Social Media.  He really knows the pulse of the Social Media industry in Scilicon Valley and beyond.  In this video, Scobleizer shows you how to be a bigger FriendFeed Monster than Guy Kawasaki.

This is what Scoble covers in the video:

1. Why friendfeed?
2. Get inbound content with the aggregator.
3. Get inbound content via friends.
4. How friend-of-a-friend feature brings more inbound content.
5. Using the everyone tab to get more inbound content.
6. Using rooms to find inbound content.
7. Using “best of” feature to find more inbound content.
8. Using the “me” and “home” pages.
9. Using lists to do friend management.
10. Creating media in friendfeed.
11. Sharing media found on the web.
12. Creating media with email.
13. Deciding between Twitter and friendfeed.
14. Your outbound content, likes.
15. Your outbound content, comments.
16. Your outbound content, send to Twitter.
17. Your outbound content, your stuff.
18. Your outbound content, using rooms.
19. Using search.
20 Using real-time features.

Check out what else Robert had to say here:
20 ways to being a bigger friendfeed monster than Guy Kawasaki