Bloggers Blog now has a Google+ page. Google+ is a relatively new social network from Google. Google recently started incorporating results from Google+ into a new personalized search feature called "Search Plus Your World." Search Engine Land has a good article about the new personalized search feature here.
You follow Bloggers Blog on Google+ by clicking on the Google+ button below and adding us to one of your circles.
Reddit has announced it will black out its regular content on January 18th from 8am to 8pm to protest the PIPA/SOPA legislation. Reddit has created a little Braveheart inspired figure to lead the charge.
There is widespread concern - including from Internet inventors, founders and engineers (see here) - that bills like SOPA could be used as a means of Internet censorship.
Reddit says it will display a simple message about how PIPA/SOPA legislation is wrong for the Internet.
Instead of the normal glorious, user-curated chaos of reddit, we will be displaying a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action. We will showcase the live video stream of the House hearing where Internet entrepreneurs and technical experts (including reddit co-founder Alexis "kn0thing" Ohanian) will be testifying. We will also spotlight community initiatives like meetups to visit Congressional offices, campaigns to contact companies supporting PIPA/SOPA, and other tactics.
Reddit says there is new hope the legislation can be defeated. The delay of the bill last month is certainly helping knowledge of the bill's dangers spread online. Reddit says, "There are powerful forces trying to censor the Internet, and a few months ago many people thought this legislation would surely pass. However, there’s a new hope that we can defeat this dangerous legislation."
Tim Tebow and the Bronco's overtime playoff win helped set a new sports Tweet per second record. The Bronco's overrated quarterback Tim Tebow completed an 80-yard pass on the first play of overtime to win the game. The play generated 9420 tweets per second - the second highest number in Twitter history according to a tweet by Twitter.
Here are the top eleven TPS events:
25,088 TPS: Castle in the Sky anime movie airs in Japan (12-9-11)
9,420 TPS: Tim Tebow overtime touchdown pass in playoff game (1-8-12)
8,868 TPS: Beyonce/MTV VMAs (8-28-11)
7.671 TPS: Troy Davis executed (9-20-11-)
7,196 TPS: Japan Beats US in Women's World Cup (7-17-11)
7,166 TPS: Brazil eliminated from Copa America (7-17-11)
7,064 TPS: Steve Jobs resigns (8-25-11)
6,939 TPS: New Year's Eve 2011 (12-31-10)
6,436 TPS: BET Awards Viewer's Choice Award Mixup (6-27-11)
6,303 TPS: Barcelona defeated Manchester (5-28-11)
Reddit really cranked in December, 2011. The link-sharing social media site announced it served 2.07 billion pageviews last month. It also had nearly 35 million unique visitors.
Reddit's traffic has doubled in less than a year. Reddit says it plans to improve infrastructure in 2012 and help make it easier for users to discover new subreddits.
There are redditors who feel reddit is getting too big, and even if we don't always reach the same conclusions, we see the same trends and patterns you do. We have some improvements coming that will help redditors discover new subreddits, help new users better understand the way reddit works, and provide better tools to support the moderators of both big and small subreddits. We're also going to keep improving the infrastructure so that the site will be faster and more stable even as growth continues.
Mashable says Reddit may have benefited from a decline in traffic at Digg.
PostSecret was one of the early successful blogs. It dominated the Bloggies in 2006. The blog also found success through books and exhibits. The blog remains popular today and continues to post postcards submitted by users. However, the blog has had to shut down its iPhone app because of abusive posts by a small number of obnoxious users.
PostSecret's Frank Warren writes that the number of abusive and profane posts overwhelmed the volunteer moderators.
99% of the secrets created were in the spirit of PostSecret. Unfortunately, the scale of secrets was so large that even 1% of bad content was overwhelming for our dedicated team of volunteer moderators who worked 24 hours a day 7 days a week removing content that was not just pornographic but also gruesome and at times threatening.
Bad content caused users to complain to me, Apple and the FBI. I was contacted by law enforcement about bad content on the App. Threats were made against users, moderators and my family. (Two specific threats were made that I am unable to talk about). As much as we tried, we were unable to maintain a bully-free environment. Weeks ago I had to remove the App from my daughter's phone.
Facebook, Blogger and Twitter were the top social network and blogging sites in 2011 according to a new Nielsen report. The data runs from January through October, 2011. Facebook had by far the largest average number of unique visitors per month. Blogger continues to have huge monthly visits. Google+ will no doubt have a much higher rank in 2012.
SAY Media has acquired ReadWriteWeb, which is one of the leading technology blogs. SAY said in a press release that ReadWriteWeb's founder and editor Richard MacManus will continue to lead the blog at SAY, where it will anchor SAY's technology hub.
MacManus, said in a statement, "With SAY's technology and services we'll be able to scale ReadWriteWeb in ways previously unavailable to us. We'll now be able to expand our editorial scope into relevant areas of interest and redesign the site to create a more premium experience for both our readers and advertisers."
TechCrunch says ReadWriteWeb was sold for around $5 million.
Ashton Kutcher has decided to let Katalyst Media manage his Twitter feed following a backlash that resulted from his unresearched tweet in support of scandalized Penn State coach Joe Paterno.
A collection of over 8 million followers is not to be taken for granted. I feel responsible to deliver informed opinions and not spread gossip or rumors through my twitter feed. While I feel that running this feed myself gives me a closer relationship to my friends and fans I've come to realize that it has grown into more than a fun tool to communicate with people. While I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk, I'm going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst as a secondary editorial measure, to ensure the quality of its content. My sincere apologies to anyone who I offended. It was a mistake that will not happen again.
It has been about two and a half years since Aston Kutcher beat CNN to become the first Twitter account to a million users. Kutcher has sinced dropped to the tenth most followed according to Twitter Counter's chart. He will probably soon be passed by Selena Gomez and Oprah. He has fallen a ways since holding the number one spot, but he has managed to rank very high on Twitter and amass over eight million followers. Kutcher's fans are asking him to stay real on Twitter, but if he does decide to outsource his tweets he won't be the only celebrity doing so.
Google has launched pages for its Google+ social network. Search Engine Land describes the new feature here.
You can already make pages using the Create a Page tool. We added a page here. It is very easy to add pages. The pages will have to be updated manually. So far there is no way to pull it tweets or a feed, which would be a nice feature for Google to add.
Robert Scoble has made some good points here about the lack of features on Google+ Pages. However, it is early and Google probably has plans to add many of the features Scoble mentions, such as letting more than one person post to an account. In the meantime, if you operate multiple accounts, you should be careful which account you are posting to.
Louis C.K. explained to Conan why he hates Twitter. Louis C.K. is on Twitter, @louisck, but he hates it. He is refusing to following anyone, which makes some people really angry. Take a look:
Walmart has turned to Twitter to announce that it will first share its Black Friday deals on Facebook this year. It is a big deal for Facebook that Walmart will use its Facebook page to announce it deals. This will likely send lots of traffic to Facebook.
A lot of companies like announcing stuff on Facebook. Walmart could have easily just announced the deals on its own website and sent lots of traffic to its own website, but Facebook is very hot right now and has become a platform for announcements.
You can keep up with Black Friday news on Twitter by following @blackfriday.
First Lady Michelle Obama recently sent her very first tweet. Michelle Obama used her first official tweet to call on Americans to support our nation's military families. As part of their Joining Forces initiative, Mrs. Obama and Dr. Jill Biden teamed up with Major League Baseball at a game dedicated to veterans and military families. The tweet was sent from the @JoiningForces Twitter account. The video shows Michelle Obama using a laptop to deliver the tweet. Take a look:
Comment trolls are everywhere on the Internet, particularly on YouTube videos. SNL parodied these common web trolls with a show called, The Comments Section. The show interviews the people behind these stupid and annoying comments. The Comments Section also lets some of the people ridiculed by the trolls get revenge. Actress Melissa McCarthy plays one of the trolls. Take a look:
StumbleUpon has announced that is has reached the 20 million member milestone. They site can drive a lot of traffic with that many members. StumbleUpon says, "it's very exciting for us to reach such a milestone, all from the simple idea of 'click a button, find cool stuff.'"
StumbleUpon also shared an interesting infographic that shows its path to 20 million stumblers. StumbleUpon has doubled its user pase from 10 million to 20 million in the past year. You can see a larger version of the graphic here.
A political blog, named Laws-n-Sausages, has acquired an Albany newspaper. 10 WALB reports that the company behind the blog, Knighton Media, Inc., is acquiring The Albany Journal. Blogger Tom Knighton, is the ceo of Knighton Media.
Tom Knighton says being a journalist is always something he has wanted to do. He also told 10 News that the Albany Journal is not dying and it is doing very well. Knighton did not disclose how much he paid for The Albany Journal.
Reddit really cranked in December, 2011. The link-sharing social media site 
Google has launched pages for its Google+ social network. Search Engine Land describes the new feature 
