Recently in socialmedian Category

Since being acquired by XING in December 2008, the socialmedian team has been busy working on a number of very important strategic product initiatives which will be launched over the course of this spring.  In the coming months we'll be launching a series of new features both on socialmedian and on XING.

We're rolling out the first such initiative today:  Facebook Connect on socialmedian.


As of today, Facebook Connect is a preferred way for people to login and participate on socialmedian. 



Users can now sign-up for socialmedian using their Facebook account with just one-click. 



Once connected, users can then instantly and easily share news from socialmedian with their Facebook network.  In embracing Facebook Connect, essentially we are handing the user identity, profile and social graph over to Facebook.  We'll focus on being the best social network-filtered news service in the world, leveraging the power of Facebook to help make that happen.

The way it works is as follows:

• If you already have a socialmedian account, log out of socialmedian and sign-in again using Facebook Connect.  Once you are logged in, you can then merge your existing account.
  
  
• To create a new account, just sign up for socialmedian using Facebook Connect.
  
  
• Once connected, you can easily share content from socialmedian to Facebook.  You can automatically (or manually) share with Facebook whenever you find an interesting news clip on socialmedian, write a comment, or like/dislike a story.
  
  
  Your shared content from socialmedian will appear in your Facebook contact's News Feed.  Each share from socialmedian will be clearly designated with the blue s|m icon so your friends know when you are sharing news with them.  In the example below (image of my Facebook News Feed) you can see that several of my friends have recently shared news from socialmedian to Facebook.
  
  
  

socialmedian now has an easy friend finder so you can easily find and subscribe to your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and Hotmail friends who are already on socialmedian.

You probably have already won!  There's a good chance that several of your contacts are already using socialmedian.

When you connect socialmedian and Facebook socialmedian will also enable you to automatically follow your Facebook friends if they should ever join socialmedian in the future.

What to connect with your Twitter buddies?  Just enter your Twitter ID (no password required) ...

File under "you asked for it, you've got it:"  socialmedian today is launching simple one-click filters.  This was one of our most frequent recent user request.

socialmedian users can now filter their "my networks" and "my newsmakers" tabs by the following criteria with just one click on an icon:

• Filter out stories I've already read (remove my clips) -- YAY!!!
  
• Show me the most popular stories of today, or of this week.
  
• Filter out all 3rd party services from the current view (e.g. Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Google Reader, etc.)
• You can also combine filters (e.g. show me the most popular stories of today that I have not clipped and not including Twitter stories).

The image here shows how the filter icons appear right under the tabs in the header.


We'll be launching more filters soon.  Suggestions?  Feedback?

Thanks!

We launched a new feature today on socialmedian, "News Flash" -- it will be fun to see where this one goes and how it develops based on user feedback.

Disclosure:  We're pretty darn excited about this one!

The foundation for the News Flash feature came from user requests to make it more meaningful to be a Newsmaker on socialmedian.  Newmakers wanted better ways to alert their followers to hot stories and breaking news.  We also had several users ask us if they could create flashy alternative headlines for hot stories, similar to say how Matt Drudge does on the DrudgeReport.

socialmedian is all about getting the news, filtered by your network.  News Flash makes that even more possible.

socialmedian's new News Flash feature enables any user to create a News Flash on a story and broadcast it to their network.  When creating a News Flash, you can create a new headline for the story.


In the example here you see I'm writing a News Flash with the headline "Clamp The Show On The Other Foot: Put The SEC on Trial"

I've also selected to send this News Flash to my followers on Twitter.

The News Flash is then broadcasted via the news socialmedian News Flash Ticker on the top of user's homepages, as seen here.


The Ticker is updated every few seconds with the latest News Flashes from socialmedian users.  That's a quick and easy way for any user to get on the socialmedian front page!

Here's how it looks like from the unlogged-in socialmedian front page:


And, my new flashy headline for this story is seen by my followers:

I am thrilled to announce that socialmedian is being acquired by XING of Hamburg, Germany.

This is great news for socialmedian's members as XING is committed to growing and developing socialmedian both as a standalone service as well launching integrated socialmedian services on XING, one of the leading online business networks in the world.

The entire socialmedian team will be joining XING as part of the acquisition.  I will be relocating to Hamburg, where I will lead up a major new initiative for XING, the XING Application Platform.  In this new role, in addition to strengthening and enhancing the socialmedian service, I will also be responsible for managing global partnerships for application developers and content providers to connect with the XING network.

This is an awesome development for socialmedian. 

socialmedian delivers the news, filtered by your network.  XING is one of the leading global online networks and is rapidly growing around the world with nearly 7 million members, up from 4.8 million in 2007.  Together, socialmedian & XING will connect people with the people, information, and resources they need to get their jobs done, follow their interests, and pursue their passions.

More details immediately below. 

• Here's a link to the official press release
• Here's a link to XING's blog post by XING CEO Lars Hinrichs announcing the deal.

XING AG purchases socialmedian Inc.

• Transaction enables a  technological jump on integrating business news into Europe's leading business network
• Socialmedian CEO Jason Goldberg joins XING in Hamburg, Germany in the newly created position of Vice President XING Applications Platform
• The company will launch integrated products in 2009
  

Hamburg / New York, December 19, 2008. The publicly listed XING AG (O1BC / ISIN DE000XNG888) announces today it has purchased New York-based socialmedian Inc., a leading innovator in the social news industry. The socialmedian solution enables people to get the news filtered by their social networks.  Socialmedian debuted in 2008 and has rapidly grown a highly engaged user-base.  Socialmedian is thus a natural fit with XING, a leading global online social network for professionals. Socialmedian's founder and CEO, Jason Goldberg, will join XING in Hamburg, Germany in the newly created position of Vice President XING Applications Platform.

"XING is a uniquely active and innovative platform in business networking, offering real value for its members on a global scale. Combining XING with socialmedian's next generation social news technology offers great potential to deliver highly engaging content and services to business professionals worldwide," said Jason Goldberg. In the new role of VP XING Applications Platform, Goldberg will be responsible for managing global partnerships for application developers and content providers to connect with the XING network.   

Success in business depends on access to the right information at the right time. The rise of the Internet has increased both the speed of information and the sheer volume of data. In addition to traditional media companies, social media such as blogs, tweets, videos and other user-generated websites now provide daily news, leading to a veritable flood of information. Time-strapped professionals are left to parse through numerous news sources for relevant information and sort, organize, and share stories on their own. socialmedian does this for you, gathering information from about 19,000 sources, including social services such as Digg, Delicious, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Google Reader, FriendFeed, the international blogosphere, and industry and online media sources, and then filtering your news through your social networking contacts. Thus enabling people to get the news they need to know for their jobs, their interests, and their passions through the people in their networks.

Over 6.5 million business professionals, managers, and experts use XING to keep track of information and updates in their professional network. Working with socialmedian, XING plans to launch several new innovations, including offering XING members custom filtered news.  "We want to offer our members the greatest value in their networks, and this includes having the relevant news at their fingertips. Now we have the technology necessary to do so. We're also excited to have someone like Jason working with us to develop the XING ecosystem of partnerships with leading companies around the world," said Lars Hinrichs, CEO and founder of XING AG.

XING will continue to grow and enhance socialmedian as a standalone service. There will be no interruption for socialmedian users.

About socialmedian:
Socialmedian delivers the news, filtered by your network. socialmedian's mission is to help people discover the news and information they need to succeed at their jobs, pursue their passions and stay informed about the world around them.  Since launching in August, socialmedian users have created more than 2500 topical news networks, ranging from iPhone to campaign 2008 to the global financial crisis, aggregating newsfeeds and user feeds from more than 19.000 sources with 800 new stories added every minute. The NY-based company was founded by former Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg and is currently backed by Washingtonpost. Newsweek Interactive and leading angel investors including Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Reed Hundt, former FCC Chairman and Allen Morgan of the Mayfield Fund. For more information, please visit www.socialmedian.com.

About XING
XING is the leading network for business contacts in Europe. Far more than a directory of business contacts, XING makes your professional network an active part of your life, enabling members to discover professional people, opportunities and privileges through its unique discovery capability and advanced contact management tools. With the successful IPO of XING as the first Web 2.0 company to go public, XING AG has had a long-term impact on the social networking trend amongst professionals. By focusing on the target group 'business people worldwide', the company is able to offer tailored features, thereby making networking and contact management simpler. Besides Headquarters in Hamburg, XING AG is also represented with offices in Barcelona, Istanbul and Beijing.
XING. Powering Relationships.

 

One of socialmedian's users (and a top Newsmaker), Sarah Crisman, created this video on what she loves about socialmedian. 




Thanks Sarah, and we love you too!

There's a new friend hanging out in the socialmedian tabs today and his name is "sm Today" -- you should check him out!



sm Today presents a headlines view of the stories that are moving with the highest velocity on socialmedian at this very moment.

Are you active on socialmedian? If so, you just might see yourself on sm Today. We're also using sm Today to feature the people on socialmedian who are directing other people to top news stories.

sm Today also presents the top 10 most popular topics as well as what some of our most popular newsmakers are doing.



As seen above, sm Today is also the new un-logged-in homepage at http://www.socialmedian.com so if you are active on socialmedian don't be surprised to see yourself on the homepage!

Leading silicon valley blogger extraordinaire Louis Gray has just come out with his list of the top 10 new web services of 2008 ... and he's named socialmedian #2!

Holy cow.  (yes, I just wrote "holy cow" -- how very Palinesque of me)

Follow the discussion on socialmedian about this exciting development.

Yours truly proud, humbled and flattered,

  -the socialmedian team

We added another site to the socialmedian family today, seesmic.  socialmedian users can now automatically have their seesmic videos shared with their networks and followers on socialmedian.


Seesmic provides anyone with an innovative way to communicate and connect online through video conversation. Some have described it as a sort of video twitter -- people post short video messages to each other and in response to blog posts and discussions.

For our first implementation of seesmic, socialmedian users will be able to auto-feed their seesmic videos to their socialmedian page, and in doing so automatically share their seesmic videos with their socialmedian networks and followers.

To connect your seesmic feed:

1.  Go to "Add Something" at the top of any socialmedian page

2.  Click on "Site"

3.  Then click on the seesmic icon.  Enter your seesmic username and you're good to go.  It's that easy.

One of the most popular topics on socialmedian right now is the Obama Transition to Power.  What will an Obama White House look like?  Who will get which jobs?  What will his initial priorities be?  Where will his kids go to school?

One of the most popular user requests on socialmedian is for widgets -- the ability to take a piece of socialmedian and add dynamic content to your own website or blog.

Today we're excited to launch the socialmedian  Obama Transition To Power Widget

This widget provides a live feed of news stories and user activities related to Obama's transition to power.

Click here to grab this widget and put it on your own site.  You can resize the widget to fit your website or blog and customize various settings on the widget.  An example of a smaller version of the widget is in the right-hand sidebar on this blog.