Web-based Twitter client Brizzly has three major developments to report: a new free iPhone app, a new Brizzly Guide (which gives trending topics on Twitter their own hub pages as permanent resources for information on the top Twitter discussion items over time), and the acquisition of WikiRank.

The Brizzly Guide is a user-editable area that fleshes out the backstory and adds contextual information to Twitter trends. Loading up the Guide shows the top 10 current trending topics at the left, and either a description of that topic or a prompt to be the first to explain the trend.

Taking cues from wiki-style user-editable sites like Wikipedia, the Brizzly Guide encourages users to curate the landing pages that will act as resources for current and past Twitter trends over time.

The free Brizzly iPhone app is available now in the App Store, featuring multiple account support, lists, photo uploads, saved searches syncing, classic-style retweet functionality, and support for the new Brizzly Guide with user-editable trends and news topics.

Further evidence of Brizzly’s adoption of wiki-style philosophy comes with the announcement of the company’s acquisition of Wikirank, an app that visualizes Wikipedia data and will soon, presumably, help visualize Brizzly data and build out a more robust Brizzly Guide. Wikirank displays popular and trending pages in a clean and easy-to-use interface. CEO Jason Shellen said of the acquisition, “We will be integrating Wikirank technology into the Brizzly Guide over the coming months,” so we should expect to see more from the Twitter client surrounding trending and data visualization in the near future.

Are you a Brizzly user? What do you currently use to monitor Twitter trends?

This year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) festival is rapidly approaching. Beginning with the Interactive Media events on March 12th, Austin, Texas will be the place to connect with the brightest in tech and media and get the scoop on some exciting new ventures.

Whether you plan to physically attend or not, social media will be critical to how people connect and share ideas at this world-class event. If you want to keep in touch with all the goings-on, look no further than these tools that you can use on the web, your mobile device, and your favorite social networks.

For Those Headed to Austin

While in-person networking is the goal of many, social media will be key in bringing interested parties together across this vast festival that this year is spread across four separate campuses. If you’ll be in attendance, check out these resources for staying connected.

The Official SXSW First-Timers Guide

If you’re brand new to SXSW and feeling a bit overwhelmed at the scope, the first-timers guide has a wealth of resources to assist the uninitiated. These include links to online registration (if you still need to sign up), hotel booking, scheduling tools, maps, and this informative video.

my.SXSW and QR Coded Badges

The official social network of the festival is my.SXSW, and you are automatically invited to join upon registering. This closed network, just for attendees, allows users to build personalized conference schedules, join exclusive groups, and connect with others at the festival.

The addition of QR codes on registered badges gives attendees with smartphones an added way to solidify in-person connections. Simply scan a new friend’s personalized QR code and you’ll automatically be following him or her within the my.SXSW network.

For additional ways to utilize the my.SXSW network, check out the info on their tools page.

SXSW2010 Event Calendar on sched.org

Sched.org is an interactive calendar with social media integration that makes it ideal for festivals like SXSW. An “unofficial” but highly useful calendar has been created for SXSW that will give you an overview of each day’s events, talks and panels.

Sign in with Facebook Connect or Twitter and start compiling a list of the events you’ll be attending. By clicking on a particular event, you can also see who else is attending, and view real-time updates about the event from other attendees on social networks. With a bit of effort, this tool could become your go-to social dashboard and connection builder for the entire festival.

SitBy.Us

Social media aficionados will be converging on Austin from all over the U.S. and the world. It’s likely that some of your Twitter friends will be in attendance while you’re there.

Don’t let an opportunity for an in-person meeting slip by. SitBy.Us is a useful tool that lets you see which panels your Twitter friends will be attending, and even where in each room they will sit.

By logging in with your Twitter account (via OAuth), SitBy.Us provides a mobile-optimized web interface that allows you to plan and coordinate panel attendance with people you’re looking to connect with in person (and perhaps even avoid those you don’t!).

SXSW Badges for Foursquare

Foursquare has created 16 new SXSW-specific badges for those location-based networkers who are Austin bound. What’s more, if you do unlock a badge, you can track down a Foursquare team member at the festival and claim a temporary tattoo with the mark of honor.

Cliqset’s SXSW Map

Cliqset.com has created a real-time map that aggregates all of the geo-tagged activity in the festival area of Austin. Pulling in data from the major location-based social networks (Brightkite, Flickr, Foursquare, Gowalla, Qik, and Twitter), the map will give you a bird’s eye view of who is at SXSW, where they are, and what they’re doing.

Click a pinpoint on the map to expand the user’s status update. It should be interesting to see the map fill up with notes come festival time this Friday.

Disclosure: Cliqset is a Mashable sponsor

Mashable’s Austin Real-Time

Looking to connect with like-minded festival goers or other attendees from your hometown? Check out Mashable’s own Austin Real-Time Network. Sign in with your Twitter, Facebook, or Cliqset ID and browse or search for other festival patrons by common interest or location. By adding yourself to the network, you can also share what you’re doing and where you are via your favorite social networks.

For Those Who Will Watch from Afar

If you’re not able to make it to Austin this year, don’t fret. The magic of social media and the web can bring the festival within reach. While you may not be able to hob-knob with your favorite tech and music geeks in the warm Austin sun, you can still get your SXSW fix with these resources.

The Official SXSW Twitter and Facebook Accounts

Being the socially-savvy team that they are, the crew behind the festival does a good job keeping their fans and followers in the know. If you want to keep an eye on developments in Austin, be sure to add these official channels to your social feeds.

SXSW Videos

Though not officially connected to the festival, SXSW Videos is a user-generated destination for footage from the event.

Powered by Viddler, the site lets you browse videos that come out of SXSW (in various categories, including Interviews, Shows, Bands, etc.) as well as upload your own if you’re in attendance.

The content can be a bit of a grab-bag, but if you’re looking for some first-hand video accounts of what’s happening on the ground, check in there every once in a while.

SXSW Blogs

Searching for other ways to live vicariously through the SXSW attendees? Dedicated blogs are a good way to stay in the loop.

The Unofficial SXSW Insider’s Guide is a blog/community built with Ning where festival attendees (and interested parties who couldn’t make it) can blog, upload photos, and discuss events.

You can browse the site blog-style to see what people are up to, or connect with individual members to get a more social scoop.

SXSW Baby is another unofficial blog that will be covering the events throughout the festival.

Currently, they have quite a few tips for those who are enroute to Austin. But if you’ll be checking in from home, stay tuned for further updates as the festival kicks off this Friday.

Mashable’s SXSWi Channel

Of course you can always stay up to date on the latest news coming from Austin with Mashable’s own channel, dedicated to the Interactive Media portion of the festival. Members of our team will be on the ground in Austin to get you the social media and tech scoops that are sure to break in the days ahead.

More SXSW resources from Mashable:

- 3 Things to Do Before MashBash SXSWi This Sunday Night

- Coming to SXSW? Add Yourself to Austin Realtime!

The Facebook platform game FarmVille now supports the Facebook Credits virtual currency.

The popular online game uses two units of in-game currency: Farm Cash and Farm Coins. Previously, you could buy them with a credit card or PayPal. Now the game offers Facebook Credits as an option.

Facebook Credits are the number-one option, actually. They’re the default payment choice, featured at the top of the list pictured here.

We recently learned that Facebook takes 30% of developers’ Facebook Credits revenue — the same percentage that Apple takes from its iPhone and iPod touch App Store sales. Analysts have speculated that Facebook might surpass $1 billion in revenue this year, and the social network’s virtual currency could be a vital part of growth beyond that.

This new option in FarmVille is arguably bigger for Facebook Credits than it is for the game. FarmVille has more than 80 million users, making it bigger than Twitter. Exposure to an audience that large is an important milestone for the Facebook Credits project, which has been a slowly expanding experiment up until now.

When it comes to competition, CNN President Jon Klein fears Facebook. The man at the top of the news network believes that the social network is more of a threat to his business than other broadcast media organizations.

In a recent question-and-answer session with BusinessWeek, Klein specifically states, “We want to be the most trusted source,” and, “I’m more worried about the 500 million or so people on Facebook versus the 2 million on Fox.”

The intriguing statements come just weeks after Hitwise released data showing that Facebook’s new role is becoming that of a news site. As a news portal and discovery engine, Facebook has the power to make or break a story, a power that clearly threatens the rank and file of the old media elite.

Where we discover news is no doubt changing, but that’s not all bad news for CNN. We tend to think that the power wielded by newsies on Facebook could prove to be an advantage for CNN should the network really cater to the social networking crowd.

For example, in recent months we’ve seen the ratings of award shows skyrocket; part of the ratings bump correlates with web denizens experiencing the televised broadcast with their friends, family and followers online. It would seem logical then that TV and online can coexist in a mutually beneficial relationship.

As for CNN’s immediate future, Klein’s comments also indicate distinct strategies for web and broadcast. Moving forward the company plans to continue with video content on CNN.com and ramp up affiliate deals with the likes of HBO and Time Inc.

So where do you get your news: CNN or Facebook?

Disclosure: Mashable has a content syndication partnership with CNN.

[img credt: Pragmagrapher]

The Internet is in the running for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has confirmed. Championed by Wired magazine in Italy, the nomination has been backed by OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte.

Italian Wired suggests that the Internet should receive the highly regarded prize for helping to advance “dialogue, debate and consensus.”

The nomination from Wired has been dismissed by some as a publicity stunt — and the support of long-time Wired columnist and investor Nicholas Negroponte is hardly surprising. Although currently seeing some success with the One Laptop Per Child program, Negroponte’s past projects have included such dubious endeavors as as Swatch Internet Time.

The award is to be given to the person (or organization) who has “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” The creators of the World Wide Web — Tim Berners-Lee, Larry Roberts and Vint Cerf — have been nominated, too.

The final nominations will be now be considered by the Committee with the winner due to be announced on October 8, while the awards ceremony will take place in December.

Do you think the Internet should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? Or should it go to a person or organization? Is Wired’s campaign just a PR stunt? Have your say in the comments below.

Today Get Satisfaction is bringing its popular social CRM tool inside Facebook Pages with Social Engagement Hub. The new app, created by Involver using the Get Satisfaction API, gives brands and businesses the ability to integrate the entire support experience into Facebook.

That means the Ask A Question, Share an Idea, Report a Problem and Give Praise functionalities are all present and commingling with the service’s intelligent question database so both customers and brand representatives have the ability to collectively tackle queries.

The Social Engagement Hub lives in its own tab inside the Facebook Page and can be fully customized, branded, and tweaked for a specific purpose or campaign. The most impressive part, though, is that all activity inside the hub is centralized on the Get SatisfactionGet Satisfaction platform, so no conversation is lost inside the FacebookFacebook experience and each one can be distributed across multiple environments (which allows for repurposing).

The application is currently being tested by a handful of brands (check out POM’s support tab), but the company is rolling it out to all interested businesses. The Social Engagement Hub is targeted to bigger brands, but coming this spring Get Satisfaction will roll a slightly scaled down version — minus customization — for small and medium business that will cost $99 per month in addition to the current paid plan.

We’ve seen many, many iterations of the popular tower defense games over the years, but this one has a special meaning for all you Twitter fans out there.

Based on a tried and true concept, Tweet Defense is an iPhone game that lets you fight zombies with various tower defense units, but with a social twist: it grabs your various TwitterTwitter stats – number of followers, friends and tweets – and calculates bonuses to your defense based on them. It’s like an infinite time sink which connects two enormous time wasters – Twitter and tower defense. In other words, it’s beautiful.

Get Tweet Defense for $0.99 from the App Store.

We had a chance to step into MySpace HQ for a chat with new Co-Presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones, who preside over the News Corp.-owned social network from a shared desk in Beverly Hills. The joint office speaks to how closely Hirschhorn and Jones are working together to create a unified vision of the future for the lately struggling MySpace, whose former CEO Owen Van Natta exited the company after only nine months in the hot seat.

Hirschhorn describes MySpaceMySpace as a site that “lacked focus” as he and Jones were getting up to speed and learning about the business. He sees the pair’s role as instilling that much-needed focus as well as driving a re-imagination of the site from both a user interface perspective and in the development of new products. All of what we saw today on the near future of MySpace’s roadmap — into approximately fall of this year — is in service of the networks’ new overarching goal of promoting user discovery and self-expression.

MySpace Strategy

As Hirschhorn (pictured, right) describes it, MySpace’s trajectory moving forward is about the “pillars of broadcasting, discovery, self-expression, and making content a part of all those experiences.” He spoke to quality, usability and engineering as major focal points: “We want as many people here to be people who build, and who create, and who have top-notch engineering talent.”

Jones relates that metrics have become a core mantra for the company as well: “If someone’s inside the company, we want to give them complete transparency in regards to what they’re working on it, why they’re working on it, why it’s important, and if what they did actually came to a good effect.” The company has effectively retooled the way the business works to make data a huge driver, including implementing very specific new product rollouts, user testing and full-circle evaluation of how changes affect user behavior.

But beyond instilling a level of discipline regarding the process of implementing user interface changes and building new products, at the end of the day Hirschhorn says MySpace is about “music that you love, the photos that you love, the video that you love, and the artistic stuff that goes on every day that says that you’re you. Those are the pillars of how we’re going to be building our product.”

Social Network or Destination?

We asked Hirschhorn and Jones whether they envisioned MySpace as needing to cultivate its roots as a social network versus crafting the site as more of a destination around premium content, and the answer essentially is both. “You need to be a platform where your audience has a voice,” even as culture constantly shifts and changes, said Hirschhorn. “I think a lot of people say ‘content portal’ — it isn’t just about putting up channels that broadcast this stuff one-to-many. It’s about putting up a platform that’s totally accessible to anyone that creates content, whether it’s big media or not.”

Jones (pictured, left) agrees that “going back to the roots of what made MySpace MySpace early on is important. “I think at some point it lost its way, and we’re basically just tying it back to that. I don’t think it’s a decision of content site or social network — people are doing things that are very social within MySpace, and they’re doing things that are social in other environments too. There’s a type of user, there’s a type of relationship that MySpace is really, really good at, there’s a type of environment around discovery that we’re really good at, and it’s about embellishing that.”

Hirschhorn acknowledges that MySpace is “centered around pop culture topics” that resonate with the primarily 14-34- year-old demographic (“and a very sweet spot in the 18-24 demographic”), “So while you could share your thoughts about the elections in Iraq it might not be the place that you do that — but you’ll certainly talk about what went on in The Hurt Locker and what dress Sandra Bullock wore, and that crazy lady who ran onto the stage during the Academy Awards. That is a part of the pop culture conversation that goes on every day, and also a place we feel we can win at.”

Twitter and Facebook: Competitors or Coopetition?

We asked if the co-presidents saw social networks like TwitterTwitter and FacebookFacebook as competitors, or whether they thought there was room enough in the market to allow a multiplicity of sites to flourish. Jones sees ample space for many social sites: “I think there’s room for all the players. I think at the end of the day there’s not going to be a direct overlap saying ‘this is the exact behavior on MySpace or FB or Twitter’ — there’s always going to be some crossover. I don’t think it’s a winner take all because I don’t think it’s a singular behavior we’re all trying to capture.”

Hirschhorn agrees: “The reality is there are people on there with accounts on both. When you’re as big as 100 million or 200 million users you seem to have a little bit of everybody.” He says that after seeing commonalities with Twitter and doing a simple integration deal allowing MySpace users to sync the two accounts, “All of a sudden we started to see people back on MySpace we hadn’t seen in a while.”

He sees a certain level of platform agnosticity as being a necessary attitude when operating online: “I think that if you want to maintain a presence online, you have to think cross-carrier or cross-network. When you and I were coming up, SMS didn’t take off until it was cross-carrier. To think that your audience is only going to be on one network is silly. It’s very important for us to be cross-networked, and to make sure that if you’re someone who is managing your presence on MySpace that you can also publish into Twitter, and you can go into Facebook, and if you’re creating a playlist and you want to distribute it into Facebook, that’s great.”

Future Roadmap: Profile Changes

We were shown a number of elements from the upcoming re-imagination of the user interface, primary among them being changes to profile pages. Users will still have control over customizing the look and feel of their profile (“They’ll actually have better tools,” says Jones), but there will be more unification to the underlying structure and framework behind profile organization in order to make a better, more cohesive experience for users in terms of site navigation.

Hirschhorn says that customization is obviously valuable but “has to work within a usable framework. And that is going to be a religion for us. It can’t be homogenized, it still has to be ‘let your flag fly,’ but there has to be a certain kind of structure to it. And that’s a very, very important point for us going forward.”

He acknowledges the dual blessing and curse of the original wide open profile customization: “Giving them that control had a real impact on the usability of MySpace. So the real mission we laid out to the staff was how do we give them the visual control but still maintain a certain kind of architecture in how you browse through the site.” The new profiles will bring a unity to the overall experience while still allowing the “crazy and fun” level of self-expression users came to know and enjoy about the site.

Publishing and The Stream

In the past, you couldn’t do things like publish videos or other types of content directly into the Stream, but the vision is to allow all types of content. Moreover, you’ll be able to filter the contents of your stream by type, so you can view only videos or see just the links, for example. The MySpace Share mechanism will handle incorporating content from all over the web directly into the Stream, both via buttons webmasters can incorporate within their sites and as a browser bookmarklet that allows sharing content just as easily even if the buttons aren’t specifically included.

Currently in testing now is a change to the former status update tool into an explicit publishing tool, allowing users to simply add videos, photos, links, and other types of content. Within the next month we should expect to see a new feature that allows cross-posting to sites like Twitter, Facebook and DiggDigg via a simple dropdown. “Why not? Publish once, go everywhere. If you increase publishing, you increase engagement,” said Hirschhorn of the upcoming feature.

Dashboard and Reputation

Back in October, MySpace launched an Artist Dashboard tool (pictured below) as part of the MySpace Music hub for musicians and bands. We’ll be seeing that tool become available for users as well, with the goal of providing a visually-rich view into the “ripple effect” of a user’s activity on MySpace. Imagine being able to get statistics back on what your most popular shares are, who is reacting to what you’re publishing and where they are, and all manner of metadata about what kind of user you are on the site and the effects of your activities there.

Closely related to that will be a system of achievements and badges that users can display on their profile to show off what type of users they are, whether it be someone with the most shared playlists or someone who spots trends early on and more. This creates a cycle of feedback and recognition to the user, as well as providing an additional layer of self-expression and identity driven by the data surrounding how that user is actually interacting with MySpace.

We were shown bright, friendly icons for potential badges that anyone who has used FoursquareFoursquare will recognize as familiar, and this particular part of the strategy certainly recalls mechanics like Xbox Live achievements or PS3 trophies as well. The idea is to add game-like elements that not only are fun but also give recognition back to the user in a playful visual style: “That’s what the future of MySpace is going to look like. It’s not going to be bland and data-oriented; it’s not going to look like chaos like it does today. It’s going to be fun and tactile,” said Hirschhorn.

Trends

Hand in hand with data visualizations in your Dashboard, another new featured area to look for in the near future is a way to identify trends. Here too we should expect to see bright and visually-engaging ways to find out where the hotbeds of activity are around MySpace, whether it be a hot conversation thread or new movie trailer or new album stream. Trends will be tracked in real-time and be based on what’s being most shared, most talked about, and generating the most activity around MySpace at any given time.

Those trends will also be able to be broken down very atomically by various indices like region and demographics, so you might be able to drill down very specifically into data points like “what is the most popular album among teenagers in New Jersey,” for example. This level of detail is another example of how data-driven some of the new features will be as well as how much of that internal data will be open and transparent to users, but ideally in a way that’s more visually attractive and accessible as opposed to your typically dry charts and graphs: “I want something more visual. I want it to be visually cool,” said Hirschhorn.

Liking and Interest Maps

In addition to friending (a bi-directional relationship) and following or subscribing, a new “Liking” mechanism will emerge in the future as one part of a system that will start to understand more about you. This hints at a still nascent element that will likely play a much larger role in MySpace’s strategy moving forward, which is about learning specifically what you like and changing your experience over time to be more customized.

Hirschhorn said of the Liking mechanism that it “starts to build preferences that ultimately are going to build up who you are in our database so we can deliver you better experiences. They don’t change your user experience overtly in front of you but they’re going to behind the scenes. That will be both passive and active. That’s a discipline I don’t think we’ve had here, but it breeds engagement and action on the site.”

In the long-term, the goal is to build up “interest maps” based on what users have liked and gravitated towards in the past, although the eventual personalization engine will also have to be wide enough to allow for new things and new experiences. “Discovery has to be wider than what you think you want,” and won’t be just about matching a stated set of preferences but also about allowing for serendipity and for new types of content to be exposed to you based on elements including what your social network is actively interested in.

More Features, and When Will We See Them?

Other new features we were shown included a big visual and thematic update to the Calendar application, which will gain the ability to sort and filter by type of event like concerts, movies, etc. The calendar will be culture-based and have a strong local component, so users can drill down in a visually accessible way to pop culture and entertainment-oriented events nearby.

Apps and games will also see significant development in the coming months, with the goal of increasing audience usage from the current 20-30% participation to something more like 50%. Mobile development will also be hugely important, with iPhone and AndroidAndroid (app pictured, right) being the biggest platforms, although currently mobile usage is “overwhelmingly” not smartphone users yet. “The iPhone is gaining very quickly,” though, says Hirschhorn.

We should also expect to see a better introduction to MySpace for new users, who will get recommendations in terms of friend and content suggestions upon creating an account on the site. This will give new users a place to start from even if they don’t yet have any friends.

Topic pages will be another new feature that will pull in content from around MySpace but also from Twitter, YouTubeYouTube and all over the web where it’s happening surrounding a particular topic, movie, celebrity, or other entity people are talking about online. This starts to organize existing content around user interest specifically as opposed to relegating content discovery to specific content hubs in music, movies, etc.

Lastly and perhaps more importantly: When will we be seeing all of these new plans come to fruition? The answer is incrementally, as features become ready — as opposed to saving everything up for one big launch. “I don’t think the world wants to wait for a redesign and also, those days are over. One hundred million people use this every day, and you can’t just freak out and pull the tablecloth off,” said Hirschhorn of the decision to roll out incremental updates, changes, and new MySpace features.

In other words, if you’re curious about how all the above is actually going to be implemented, you likely won’t have to wait too long. From what we saw today, there’s a lot on the plate for MySpace in the coming months, and we should expect to see a lot of changes coming soon. Will it be enough to restore the social network to its former glory, and put MySpace back on a path of growth and leadership in the social networking space? Only time will tell, but if Co-Presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones are able to successfully execute the vision they’ve laid out, it’s perhaps reasonable once again to be optimistic about the future of MySpace.

Spam and phishing have been ongoing problems at Twitter for some time, and tonight the company announced that it is stepping up its efforts to stop them with some new features, described as being able to “detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links.”

In a blog post, TwitterTwitter writes that the protection works by “routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service … even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.”

How exactly they do that, we’re not sure, but Twitter notes that you’ll start seeing short links using its own “twt.tl” URL shortener in direct messages and email notifications. As users who have been victimized by phishing scams (and those annoyed by the constant barrage of dodgy DMs) can likely attest, it’s a feature whose time has most certainly come.

Mollie Vandor is the Product Manager for Ranker.com and Media Director for Girls in Tech LA. You can find her on Twitter and on her blog, where she writes about the web, the world and what it’s like to be a geek chic chick.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes — lately, it seems like there’s a new natural disaster wreaking havoc on poor planet Earth every week. From our television sets to our TwitterTwitter streams, it’s impossible to ignore the devastation these disasters leave behind. And, no matter where you’re watching from, it’s hard not to feel just a little bit helpless in the face of such colossal catastrophes.

But when it comes to natural disasters, modern technology is making it easier than ever to take control by creating your own emergency response system — no high pitched beeping required. There are tons of tools to help you create emergency preparedness plans, keep in touch during a disaster, and get your life back after one strikes. Nothing will keep you safer or saner during a natural disaster than having a good plan in advance.

Create a Plan

According to FEMA, the best way to avoid significant damage during a disaster is to prepare an emergency response plan in advance. The FEMA website is a great place to get that process started. In fact, they offer an easy checklist of items you should consider when putting together your plan: Escape routes, family communications, utility shut-off and safety, insurance and vital records, special needs, caring for animals, and safety skills. It seems like a lot, but fortunately, there are plenty of resources to help make all that planning much easier.

Figuring out your escape route is probably the top priority when it comes to emergency preparedness. And, making sure that your loved ones know where to go and how to meet up could help keep your family together when everything else is falling apart. That’s where Google’s MyMaps service comes in handy. MyMaps lets you plan a route using landmarks, lines, and shapes, and lets you easily share that route or access it on your mobile browser. Of course, the most reliable option in a disaster is still the lo-fi hard copy of that escape route. MyMaps lets you print perfect copies so you can laminate them and stick them everywhere from the fridge door to the kids’ backpacks.

And while you’re throwing things in those backpacks, also think about including an ID card, in case your child is separated from their caretaker during a disaster. You can easily order ID cards online at places like Life360, a site that offers multiple mobile and web-based emergency planning services, including ID cards for your kids and a messaging system that contacts your entire network of family and friends during a disaster.

Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of emergency preparedness apps. From the ICE app for iPhone and AndroidAndroid, which stores your emergency contacts and medical information, to the self-explanatory Emergency Preparedness Checklist (iPhone), there are plenty of quick, easy and mobile options to help you get a jump on your emergency planning.

Plus, if you share my proclivity for destroying any home improvement project you come within five feet of, there’s also an easy online guide to help you shut off your utilities, from the Washington state Department of Health. And, the only technical knowledge required is the ability to print the super-simple instructions and tape them up near your door.

Keep In Touch

One of the scariest parts of any emergency is not being able to reach the people you love — and knowing that the people you love might not be able to reach you. And, of course, you want to stay abreast of all the breaking news about whatever it is that’s going on. Fortunately, one of the best advantages of our constantly-connected world is that there are multiple channels for communication. When one channel goes down during a disaster, you might still be able to get through on another one.

The first thing to do is make sure you have a backup plan for keeping all your gadgets in good working order during a disaster. Now might be a good time to invest in a solar charger for your iPhone or BlackberryBlackBerry Rocks!, for example — not to mention a hand-cranked emergency radio, flashlight and flares. Or, you could just hit up the Red Cross Store for a gadget that does all of the above, and charges your MP3 player too. If you’d rather just upgrade your existing gadgets, check out the Emergency Radio app, which turns your iPhone into a supercharged scanner for police, fire, NOAA and other emergency radio frequencies.

Even without any extra apps, your 3G-enabled phone will likely help you stay connected in case of an emergency. Even though phone lines may be down or jammed, the 3G network won’t necessarily be out as well. This is how Twitter status updates helped locate a missing person during the recent Chile earthquake. So, having an app for Twitter, Instant Messenger, or even FacebookFacebook on your mobile device might help you keep in touch with loved ones who can’t get through to you via more traditional means of communication. And, a quick status update telling everyone where you are and how you’re doing could help give loved ones peace of mind in the middle of the chaos that comes with a catastrophe.

Speaking of peace of mind, FEMA will actually e-mail you disaster updates in real-time, so you can stay up to date on the latest breaking disaster news. Most college campuses have similar services, so students — and their parents — can receive regular text messages and e-mails during an emergency. The FCC actually maintains a pretty good list of these services. And, of course, you should always know the right resources for specific information about the particular types of catastrophes that are common to your neck of the woods. For example, during the recent Hawaii tsunami warnings, residents could receive up-to-the-minute reports from a variety of sources, including NOAA.

So, bookmark your local emergency services sites, or add them to an RSS feed or special start page. Create a Twitter list of the people you trust for breaking news about your area, or set up an old fashioned phone tree using e-mail over 3G as a backup in case the phone lines go down. No matter what you decide to do, make sure you have plans in place for staying in touch across multiple means of communication. You never know what will work and what won’t if a disaster really does strike.

Get Your Life Back

Once the immediate threat of a natural disaster has passed, you may find yourself facing an awful lot of cleanup, not to mention plenty of paperwork, as you try to recover your assets. This is why it’s important to catalog your stuff before that happens. This will make the process of an insurance claim much easier.

The first step in setting up a cataloging system is to get yourself organized. There are plenty of apps for that, and options for Blackberry users as well. Once you’re organized, you can start scanning all of your important possessions and papers into a web-based app, which will store them in the cloud. So, no matter what you lose in a disaster, you won’t lose your records too.

Use Home Inventory for iPhone or Star Home Inventory for Blackberry to track all of your stuff from the comfort of your mobile device. If you have a Mac, you can also use DeliciousMonster to scan all of your books, movies and more into your computer by their bar codes. Or, just hook up a standard barcode scanner directly to your laptop. Publish your stuff to the web to make sure your data is safe in case your desktop is destroyed. And, to really be on the safe side, create a Google DocsGoogle Docs account, and back up your important insurance papers directly from your desktop.

The Last Word

Despite how far modern technology has come, we still haven’t figured out a perfect way to prevent natural disasters. Preparation is still the best defense. Proper planning means that if a disaster does strike, you’ll know what to do, where to go, and how to recover — which is some pretty powerful stuff indeed, even in the face of the forces of nature.

More social media resources from Mashable:

- 5 Ways to Use Twitter to Avoid a Backchannel Disaster
- How Companies Are Using Your Social Media Data
- The Science of Building Trust With Social Media
- How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement
- 3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology

Image courtesy of iStockphotoiStockphoto, BradenGunem

New location-based social search tool FourWhere shows Foursquare tips and comments using Google Maps so you can search and discover what everyone is saying about nearby places.

Users simply input a location or address into FourWhere, right-click (control click) on the map and select display preferences. The map can display all comments nearby, all venues in the vicinity and/or remove venues without tips.

It’s a simple app with a powerful purpose. For those of us preparing to journey out to Austin for SXSW, FourWhere’s release couldn’t have come at a better time. A search around the downtown area yields comments with insightful information about restaurants and bars. Essentially the application offers a map-based search experience for socialites looking to plan a fun night out.

FourWhere currently only pulls in data from Foursquare, but Sysomos, the company behind the app, has plans to integrate more social data in the future.

Facebook’s move into location has seemed inevitable for some time, and it now appears that the company will officially reveal its plans at next month’s Facebook developer conference –- f8.

According to The New York Times, the social network will incorporate location in two ways: (1) its own features for sharing location and (2) APIs to let other apps — like Foursquare and Gowalla –- offer location services to Facebook users.

Presumably, FacebookFacebook will make sure to address privacy issues with its location features — for example, perhaps with settings that allow you to share your location only with a select group of friends. The Times’ report doesn’t detail the specifics of such features, though it notes that the social network updated its privacy policy late last year in preparation for a location launch.

Facebook will be rolling out its location features to an enormous user base — there are now more than 400 million users of the social network in total, 100 million of which access the site via mobile regularly. The company also has its own native apps for all of the major mobile platforms. All of this gives Facebook’s location features an enormous edge over the competition.

The Times’ report suggests that the competition isn’t the likes of FoursquareFoursquare and GowallaGowalla, however, but rather GoogleGoogle and its huge base of local small business advertisers. Of course, the startups aren’t ignoring this opportunity either — earlier today, Foursquare shared details of upcoming features it plans to release to help local businesses utilize checkin data.

With Facebook entering the space, though, the other players will need to look to create value in ways beyond checkins and knowing where your friends are located at any given point in time. That’s why Foursquare seems to be so focused on partnerships and gaming, while Gowalla is making moves (as recently as last night) in virtual goods.

In any event, location remains the huge trend so far in 2010, and literally each day seems to bring new indications of which way it will all play out.

Launching in beta today, Go Tribal tackles the other side of the equation from formal event services like Meetup or Plancast by helping members organize informal group plans. By identifying when users are free and available to hang out, Go Tribal hopes to eliminate some of the hassle involved in coordinating friends for spontaneous group activities.

Targeted primarily towards women, Go Tribal’s goal is to facilitate meaningful offline interaction via simple technology that lets users see which of their friends is “down to hang out” at any given time. Members can set status indicators for upcoming dates, allowing peer groups to identify the best times to arrange informal get-togethers. Once a group has agreed upon a physical meetup, members can coordinate on the specifics of time and place, plus use existing social networks like FacebookFacebook and TwitterTwitter to further socialize the event and send out more invites.

We spoke with Founder and CEO Shruti Challa about the service, which will be open to the first 10,000 signups in the U.S. for now. She said the inspiration for Go Tribal arose naturally out of the young founding team (which also includes Chris Baclig, Eric Ma and Amara Humphry), who upon recent graduation from Stanford discovered a lack of tools for maintaining existing friendships in the physical world.

“Technology seemed to be getting further away from creating and sustaining relationships in real life. Facebook and Twitter seemed distant, and we wanted to use technology to help create a physical connection,” Challa said of the new startup.

Future plans for Go Tribal include integrating more contextual local search and information tools to help members decide where to spend their group time once they settle on a date and time to get together. The startup also plans to eventually work more closely with businesses to help groups influence decisions when they’re actually being made — imagine a coalesced social group with some bargaining power to “shop around” for potential deals and experiences that clubs or venues might be willing to offer in exchange for securing business from a large group.

With an interesting twist on local and informal group event organization and a smart road map ahead, Go Tribal is a social service to watch. If you have a chance to check out the service, let us know what you think. What features would you want to see in a service facilitating informal meetups?

The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.

FacebookFacebook; TwitterTwitter; LinkedInLinkedIn; YouTube; WordpressWordPress: these companies, built from the ground-up, are mainstays in social media. None of them were created by a large tech company, and all but one remains independent.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, when you think about it. Large tech companies have had limited to no success creating their own social media home runs. In an era where communication is increasingly taking place on these channels, the inability of these digital giants to build social networks is rather striking.

Two titans in particular are making social media headlines for different reasons: Yahoo has decided not to create it own social network, but is instead striking partnership deals with Facebook and Twitter. GoogleGoogle on the other hand, not only bought YouTube, but it is attempting to carve out its own piece of the social media pie with Google BuzzGoogle Buzz.

Partnership vs. in-house development; content vs. technology; Yahoo vs. Google: which company has the right social media strategy? What are the goals of both companies in the social realm? Do either have a chance against new and nimble startups like Facebook and Twitter?

Let’s take a look, shall we?

The Yahoo Strategy: Partner in Order to Drive Traffic

In 2006, Yahoo made a $1+ billion bid for Facebook. As we all know, Yahoo failed to close that deal and the story ever since has been the rise of Facebook and the slow decline of Yahoo, who was nearly acquired by Microsoft for over $40 billion in 2008.

Now with new leadership (led by CEO Carol Bartz), Yahoo is trying to make a turnaround and bring back some of the authority it once commanded. The Internet portal is turning to social media as a cornerstone of its growth strategy, but it isn’t focused on acquiring a Twitter or building its own social network, but on creating partnerships that integrate every facet of Yahoo into social networks, primarily Facebook and Twitter.

In September 2009, Yahoo announced that it would integrate Facebook Connect in its most popular web properties. The goal was to truly make Yahoo your portal to the web by not only delivering news, email, and finances, but also your social graph and the status updates of your friends. On the flip side, Yahoo would also benefit from the traffic bump that comes with sharing articles and content on Facebook’s news feed.

Yahoo has continued to push this partnership strategy in recent months. Two weeks ago, Yahoo partnered with Twitter to give users access to their Twitter feed from within Yahoo, update their status, and integrate Twitter content into the company’s search and media properties. A few days ago, Yahoo Mail hooked up with Facebook, the first integration between Facebook Connect and Yahoo.

Yahoo seems content in partnering with the major social services, rather than compete with them. Social media efforts like Yahoo Buzz, the tech giant’s answer to DiggDigg, which hasn’t made a dent in the social voting powerhouse, have likely left a bitter taste in the mouths of its executives. Yahoo is now focused on using social media to generate traffic, eyeballs, and engagement times.

The Google Strategy: Dominate

Google’s strategy goes in a completely different direction to Yahoo’s approach; its strategy is also all over the map.

Like Yahoo, Google doesn’t have a good record in social media. Google Friend Connectgoogle friend connect isn’t even close to Facebook Connect in terms of adoption, OrkutOrkut never made inroads in the U.S., Bloggerblogger has nowhere near the traction of WordPress, and other acquisitions such as Jaiku and Dodgeball haven’t panned out.

You’d have a very good argument if you said that Google’s only social media hit has been YouTubeYouTube, and that “only” cost the company $1.65 billion. Google has a lot more social properties than many people realize, but it’s a hodgepodge of acquisitions (Blogger, YouTube, PicasaPicasa) and internally-created services (Orkut, Google Knol, Friend Connect). The company’s batting average, though, has been pretty poor, especially by Google’s standards.

That was before Google Buzz, though. With the launch of its most advanced social product yet, Google’s strategy has finally begun to emerge, and it is a good one. If Google can stir up adoption for Buzz (which it has via GmailGmail), keep that engagement (this remains to be seen), and launch a standalone version of its social media tool, it can carve out a piece of the (very large) social media pie. Linking or integrating it to YouTube, Picasa, Orkut, Friend Connect, and its other social tools could provide a boost to those services as well.

There’s no reason to believe Google will succeed with Buzz, given Google’s social media track record. However, Buzz is the most complete product Google has put out yet and has some strong engagement numbers. It’s riskier than Yahoo’s strategy, but the payoff could be be titanic.

Google and Yahoo Are Very Different Companies

Yahoo’s strategy is focused around integrations with already-popular social services, while Google is focused around building and acquiring its own social media powerhouses. While Yahoo does acquire social media companies (e.g. FlickrFlickr) and Google has some strong partnerships (e.g. Twitter in Google Real-time search), that’s not the focus of their respective social strategies.

The reason their approaches to social media are so different has little to do with their leadership teams or the quality of their decision-making. No, it boils down to one simple truth: Google and Yahoo are very different companies.

I argue that Yahoo is, for the most part, a content company, while Google is focused on technology. There was a point where Yahoo was known for its tech innovations, but that mantle has long since passed to Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others.

I explored this phenomenon in my first Social Analyst column, Content vs. Technology: What MySpace and AOL Have in Common. MySpaceMySpace and AOL were also tech giants, but at some point lost their technology edge (MySpace lost to Facebook, AOL lost to DSL and Cable Internet) and thus began to focus on ramping up content creation and driving traffic to their web properties. Yahoo falls into the same camp.

Because of this key difference between Yahoo and Google, it’s no surprise that they are implementing different approaches. Google’s is focused on building technology that will drive adoption, revenue, and information through its doors. Yahoo’s focus is on bringing more eyeballs to this content and keeping them on Yahoo for longer periods of time.

Who Has the Right Social Media Strategy?

Now for the big question: is Google or Yahoo doing better at social media? Which one has the right social media strategy?

If you’ve read this column carefully, you can probably guess that I’m not going to outright declare that one company is “right” or that one is “wrong.” What I want you to take away from this week’s column is simple: your long-term plan and company composition should determine your social strategy.

Yahoo is simply better at content than Google. Yahoo Finance is, in my opinion, simply a better product than Google’s version. Its array of hosted news content is bigger, and it owns properties such as OMG, which is doing well as a celebrity news hub.

Google doesn’t write its own news or acquire a newspaper for a simple reason: it’s just not their focus, and they wouldn’t be very good at it. Would it make any sense for Google to focus on using social media to drive traffic to its content? The answer is no.

On the flip side, Google’s technology prowess trumps Yahoo by large margins. Google can build better technical products (e.g., Search, Gmail, Buzz, AndroidAndroid, ChromeChrome) in a shorter amount of time than Yahoo can, and it can iterate faster than almost any large-scale public Internet company (its rapid privacy changes to Buzz is one good example).

These things are no longer Yahoo’s strength. So does it make sense for Yahoo to try to build a social network to rival Buzz, Facebook, or Twitter? Could it really keep up with any of them over the long haul? I severely doubt it.

So here is my conclusion: neither company’s direction is “wrong” because each one requires a different social strategy to succeed. Based on their strengths, Yahoo and Google are implementing the right strategies.

Now it’s just about executing them.

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Whether you’re looking for your first job, exploring a career change, or just setting yourself up for future success, social media sites have proven themselves as important platforms for facilitating connections, demonstrating passions and interests, and ultimately landing you the job you actually want.

We know it’s possible to land a job with social media know-how but the bigger question is how? In putting together this post we turned to those with the most knowledge on the subject matter: individuals who have secured jobs thanks to social media.

Because of these personal stories we were able to identify common trends and themes contributing to their real results. Keep reading to hear how job candidates are taking risks, discovering that their online presence has real value, and engineering their own success through social media.

Taking Risks

In our research on the subject one thing rang loud and clear — social media sites allow job seekers to take risks, and more often than not those risks are received well by potential employers.

Risks worth taking:

1. Put yourself out there:

The nature of social media is such that you could be conversing with important people in public channels at any given time. It may be intimidating to use Twitter or Facebook to communicate with an individual you don’t know, but taking the initial risk and putting yourself out there is the best way to show you’re serious about the position or opportunity you seek. If you can get past the initial fear of communicating with a complete stranger, you’ll have a much better chance of landing the job you want.

David Cohen took a risk and used Facebook IM to ping a contact — merely a friend of a friend — when he learned that the man in question had recently started his own Internet marketing agency. Prior to that small act of bravery, Cohen, a recent college graduate, had spent months looking for a job with no success. The social media maneuver, however, ended up making all the difference.

“I randomly hit up a guy on chat that I knew through some acquaintances who recently had broke off from his parent company to launch his own internet marketing business in early 2009,” said Cohen. “He basically told me to come on in and meet his partner and have a small interview … I am now the resident social media coordinator, blogger and general office helper for the small start-up company. This all happened because I took a risk and sent a Facebook IM to this man.”

2. Match application style to the position:

It’s definitely risky to take an unconventional approach to the typically staunch application process, but doing so might make you stand out from all the rest.

Scott James did just this when applying for a social media internship. He decided to try a somewhat unconventional approach to creating a cover letter and used Twitter-style status updates in his application email. James said that he “wanted to make myself stand out. Instead of a traditional cover letter, I figured, ‘Why not highlight my skills with a set of Twitter messages?’”

James’ unique style landed him the internship and he is now an in-house social media strategist at the company.

Social Savvy With a Touch of Serendipity

In reading through the many stories of those who managed to secure their current gig through social media, the biggest trend seemed to be that a chance tweet, Facebook post, or online connection made all the difference.

You could call these job seekers’ social media success stories serendipitous but the reality is that each of these individuals set themselves up for the chance happening with months, if not years, of intentional or unintentional online breadcrumbs that demonstrate their own unique savvy.

Here’s a sampling of people who were able to parlay their social media savvy into solid leads and careers after chance encounters.

Todd Armstrong stumbled on a new opportunity by paying close attention to Twitter and following up on a potential lead.

“Basically, I was “stuck” at my previous job in that there was no place to move up, and my job was morphing into something completely different than what I was hired for. So I was on the lookout. Submitted my resume to a few places, but never heard back from anyone. I had seen tweets from @nateritter for a couple of weeks that he was looking for a CakePHP developer. I knew PHP but not specifically the Cake framework. One day, while on the elliptical at work, I saw a tweet from him saying he needed a “PHP” dev. I DM’d him back saying something like “don’t you need a Cake person?”. To which he replied that he couldn’t find a Cake person so he expanded to just PHP. I said I was interested and met him later that week. Now I work with him and couldn’t be happier.”

Sue Spaight Moorhead inadvertently networked her way to her current position:

“I started on Twitter almost a year and a half ago, thinking it would just be a good way to get feeds of research, articles, etc. Then a friend who was on Twitter introduced me to the managing director of his agency, on Twitter. We had drinks. I interviewed. He offered me a job. It wasn’t quite right so I passed. But then that managing director introduced me to one of his friends, on Twitter. We had coffee, and became friends on both Twitter and IRL. That new friend-in-the-third-degree became a consultant for an agency. And when that agency’s President was looking for a new Director of Account Management and Digital, he asked the consultant for leads, and was referred to me. He contacted me via LinkedIn, not Twitter. ; ) We had lunch. I interviewed. And for the past six months I’ve been VP of Account Management/Digital Strategy at his agency. It’s been quite the chain reaction, and it continues today.”

Kasey Fleisher Hickey’s online penchant for discussing her food and music passions landed her a new gig:

“I got my job thanks to my food and music blog. A recruiter that was working with my company, Context Optional, happened to be a foodie that was familiar with my blog and was impressed with my social media know-how. Funny enough, a number of people at my company got their jobs through social media–our Community Manager, Lauren Friedman was also discovered through her blog, TheOffBeatReport, and Twitter.”

Social Engineering

When you don’t have time to wait for luck, engineering your own is the second best option. The job seekers we talked to found that social media enabled them to glean the information they needed about the position they were seeking or the individuals staffed at an organization in order to manufacture a bit of their own serendipity.

Kevin Thompson may no longer work at SuggestionBox, but the story of how he was able to use social media to engineer his way into a new opportunity is quite remarkable.

“I was living in El Centro with my soon-to-be wife, who had moved there to pursue a promotion, and her contract in El Centro was about to expire. As part of our preparation for the move back to San Diego, I began looking for a new position in web development. … I had begun to follow [on Twitter] a number of web professionals from the San Diego area.

Before long, I saw a tweet from Gema Torrones (@gemalynn) advertising a development position at SuggestionBox. I followed up with Gema on Twitter and asked a few questions about the position and the company, then proceeded to apply and send in my resume. Within 24 hours, I was contacted by Adam Levenson (@adamlevenson) by email to schedule a phone interview.

After the interview was scheduled, I, as I’m sure a number of web-savvy individuals would do, Googled my interviewee and I found that Adam was active on both Twitter and 12Seconds.tv. I caught up on some of Adam’s interests and activities, including a few tweets about loving waffles (random, I know, but it’s relevant). I also found a few videos from the SuggestionBox office that gave me a bit of insight into the personalities of other team members and the general atmosphere at the company. I followed Adam on Twitter and 12seconds.tv, and I remained active on both of those networks, expecting Adam to view my profiles to, in turn, learn a bit more about me.

I began to weave some of Adam’s interests into my activity streams including, among other mundane 12seconds.tv videos, a goofy video of me with a plate of waffles.

When the interview rolled around, I touted my experience and abilities (which alone qualified me for the position) and as the call progressed and became more casual, Adam mentioned that he liked my 12seconds.tv videos, and moreso, specifically named the waffle video.”

Have you used social media to land a job? Tell us more about your experience and tips you have for other job seekers in the comments.

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The Facebook page “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!” is giving new credence to the lyrics “Thank you for being a friend” today, as People has confirmed that the Golden Girls star will be appearing on Saturday Night Live in the near future.

When asked at Elton John’s Oscar-viewing party last night whether she would be appearing on Saturday Night Live, the actress answered in the affirmative. We’re not sure in what capacity the comedienne will be taking the SNL stage — whether as host or as part of the “Women of Comedy” special we reported on a few weeks ago, but we’re certain that her nearly 500,000 fans will be pleased to hear the good news.

The page was started by ardent fan David Mathews back on December 30, 2009, and has since garnered its share of media attention. White was launched back into the public eye after appearing in a popular Super Bowl Snickers commercial and in the romantic comedy The Proposal, also starring Oscar-winner Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. Twilighttwilight star Robert Pattinson even called her sexy – breaking the hearts of thousands of teen girls across the nation. It certainly has been a banner year for White so far.

So what’s next Mathews? “Betty White to Host the Oscars (please?)!” Why not? If you can dream it, you can do it, man

An ongoing festival in London is offering a unique way of keeping up with happenings: following a tweeting bike on Twitter.

The East Festival — boasting a “uniquely rich creative mix of East London” — will be documented in part by the “Twike”, a two-wheeled creation from Pete Fowler, who is no doubt tired of being described as the Super Furry Animal’s in-house artist.

The Twike for the East Festival has been fitted with a cell phone programmed to tweet out messages when it comes within range of key areas of the festival.

Fowler, and the Chance Collective, a London-based digital and social media creative agency behind the project, hopes it will encourage people to follow the bike online – as well as offline around the festival.

If you like the look of this tasty TwitterTwitter-themed mode of transport then you can check out the Flickr photo set, as well as see the overall progress of the Twike via a Google MapsGoogle Maps mash-up to be released at the end of the festival, or follow the overall festival news via @eastfestival.

It’s an innovative use of mobile tech and Twitter to offer a more interactive view of a live event – you can hit the video below for more visuals.

Would you follow the Twike? Have you seen a similar set-up to offer tweets from a live event? Let us know in the comments below.

Tumblr, one of the simplest blogging platforms around, is doing really well. Situated between WordPress, which requires a bit more effort to create and organize content, and Twitter, which requires almost no effort but also doesn’t offer many features, Tumblr is the perfect tool for users who want to have a blog with photos, videos and other content embedded, but simply haven’t got the time or the will to struggle with a complex blogging platform.

How is this working out for the company? Well, according to the neat infographic which it’s sent us (see below), its traffic and user base is growing fast, and it has recently hit some major milestones.

Compared to Twitter, Tumblr is still a small dot on the radar, but it’s definitely growing fast enough to make an impact. The Tumblr team isn’t slacking on the features, either; they recently added the option to add static pages to your blog, as well as dead simple, direct video uploads.

Last but not least, Tumblr plans to launch two revenue generating features next month. Details are scarce (all we know is they’ll be powered by the widget, pictured below), but with constant talk of Twitter’s revenue generating plans (which are still completely open to interpretation), it’ll be interesting to see how Tumblr plans to tackle the issue. Its success (or lack thereof) might pave the way for microblogging networks (although Tumblr arguably stands in the middle, between blogging and microblogging), an area traditionally devoid of revenue.

According to The New York Times, the United States Treasury Department will tomorrow give Internet services license to export consumer-aimed services like instant messaging and photo-sharing to countries with which trade has previously been restricted, including Iran, Cuba and Sudan.

The United States defines these nations as “closed societies” because their governments sometimes try to restrict the free flow of information between citizens, however in many cases trade is restricted by the United States in response to those actions. This new license would allow U.S.-based Internet companies like Yahoo to export certain services that can be described as “free mass-market software,” despite trade sanctions.

The U.S. State Department and members of Congress previously recommended this move to aid efforts to open up the societies in question. The value of exporting these tools has already been established.

Last year, the State Department asked Twitter to postpone its scheduled downtime so Iranian protesters could continue to use the service. Digital communication technologies like Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and SMS text messaging were used by Iranians to organize protests and to get information to the American and European media.

After Google threatened to leave China if the country doesn’t ease up its regulation and restrictions on the Internet, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech declaring the administration’s commitment to the free flow of information on the Internet. This is one example of that commitment.

We’re curious to know how our readers in the United States and elsewhere feel about this move. If you’re willing, share your thoughts in the comments, and participate in our poll: “Is the Internet a fundamental right?”

In a study conducted by the BBC World Service, four in five respondents said they believe web access is a fundamental right. Ninety percent described the Internet as “a great place to learn,” and 78% considered it a source of “greater freedom.” A bit more than half said that the Internet should not be regulated by government at all.

Twenty-seven thousand people form 26 countries were surveyed, and their responses varied by location. While a large number of people from the United States, Mexico, Nigeria and South Korea said the Internet shouldn’t be regulated, many residents of China, Pakistan and Turkey disagreed; only 16% of Chinese, 12% of Pakistani and 13% of Turkish respondents said the Internet shouldn’t be regulated.

We’re always curious where our readers stand, especially since this is a hot issue right now with the recent struggle between Google and China. Where do you fall on this issue? Take part in the poll below, and feel free to elaborate in the comments.

Is Internet access a fundamental right?online surveys