HootSuite has reach the 1 million registered user mark, but I’m guessing they will be soon losing a lot of users who don’t opt in to their premium service. To celebrate the million milestone, Hootsuite decided to show off some information via an infographic.
Social media is now an integral part of modern society. There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries. Skloog has put together an amazing infographic which outlines the history of social media.
Click on the image to get the full view.
You thought that you had enough of icons already? Well, not yet. IconShock, a well-known design company, created a very complete set of 150 social media icons and they are all for free.
You can download directly from here (150mb).
This set contains not only the most important social media icons which you can use, but also provides nine different sizes (from 16 up to 512 pixels), four different formats (PNG, PSD, AI and ICO), three different states (normal, enabled and disabled); and a mobile version.
You were expecting something else?
Massive social networks like Twitter demands, for normal users and companies, not only using it but also maintain several accounts, publishing a lot of information and also brand monitoring. For that, SplitTweet is the tool.
SplitTweet is a simple and free web app which will provide you a single place to handle several Twitter accounts with all the necessary information of each: Replies, direct messages, favorites and the most important one brand mentions features, which experts in social media can use it to monitor the behavior and popularity of their brands.
SplitTweet also provides a simple dashboard where you can monitor all the important activity around your accounts. Another important feature of this web app is the possibility to automatically tweet the same in several accounts.
It also have a Desktop App for Mac.
A new set of free social media icons has been released by Noel Tock with a grunge theme and a very neat design. Check them out.
You can download the entire set from here.
The download is completely free and Noel is just asking for you not to forget about the attribution if you are using those in your blog or web site.
Features:
I just might become the “icon guy” from Crenk, but that’s OK, I’d rather be the icon guy instead of no guy, right? 
Social Media and Twitter icons are probably the most used in blogs and web sites, here we provide for all you two links for a very neat set of icons in an original black design.
The social media icons are provided by BlackSmith and you can find for Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube, digg, Reddit, Delicious, etc. Download the entire set from here.
And the black set for Twitter, provided by iconhive, is definitely my favorite ones; which are available for Windows and Mac. Download from here for the Windows version; and this link for Mac.
Dan Zarella is, as the blog says it, the social media scientist; and created a very interesting tool: “Most ReTweetable Words Finder” given a keyword, shows the most retweetable words.
The use is quite simple as well: enter a keyword and click analyze. The tool will return a list of words that were found to be related to that word and highly ReTweetable. It will also display the number of Tweets and ReTweets analyzed to generate the list. Here’s an example of “Microsoft” keyword:
We can find some words like “kinect”, “gaming”, “camera”, “ironruby” or even “fetish” (?).
The tool compares words found in ReTweets against non-ReTweet Tweets. Using the last 24hours, the tool analyzes up to 1500 Tweets and 1500 ReTweets per word.
If you are interested in retweeats, Dan created a report: “The Science of ReTweets”
Flowtown have put together another great infographic which shows the basic demographic backgrounds of each social media site. All sites are broken down by gender, income, education and age.
Two years ago I wrote an article on the major updates made to the Flock browser and the impact it would have on social search
Flock, the social browser, is not built on Chrome.
and browsing. Since then Flock, the social browser, has always been that fringe browser that a few people used but didn’t grab the audience it was hoping for. What did help Flock was the fact that it was built on the Firefox browser framework which made it easy to develop for since it was open source. The Flock browser allowed for many unique plug-ins very similar to Firefox, thus offering a seamless user interactive experience with the added bonus of social networking.
This week a huge announcement was made that Flock was leaving the Firefox backbone and moving to Chrome. Touted as a social browser there is definitely something to love about it, but does it really know where it wants to go? The interface has undergone a drastic overhaul moving away from the complex menus and tabs and moving more towards a simple interface with fully customizable group and friend options.
In a world where social platforms like Tweetdeck, Seesmic, and Hootsuite have been integrated into desktops and/or browsers, it feels like Flock is still running too many steps behind. Has Flock lost its luster? Perhaps, but there’s nothing wrong with reinventing yourself.
Most recently a site popped up that has Foursquare users questioning whether their use of the application is putting themselves and their home in jeopardy. Those unfamiliar with Foursquare, it’s a geo-locating application that pinpoints your location and notifies the Foursquare community and your social networks where you are. For example if you’re at the local grocery store, you can Foursquare it, users earn points that translate into badges depending on how often and where you check-in, and ultimately people are able to see the types of places you like to visit. On the other hand, it’s made cyber stalking that much easier.
A recent site called PleaseRobMe.com has highlighted the risk of sharing your locations for the most paranoid of the bunch. It stands to reason that anyone can know anything about you if they really wanted to, with or without Foursquare. Though the site appears to be a joke, the seriousness in which someone’s property could truly be in jeopardy is something that is not easily overlooked.
Illegal? Does this site incite people to do harm to another? Some say that if you choose to share your location you deserve what happens, but that seems a very narrow minded point of view.
So tell me, where do you stand? Do you use geo-locating services? Do sites like PleaseRobMe.com exist as a wake up call or as a way to incite theft?
