WebProWorld

Google has released an extension of its Hot Trends feature, which brings some of its components to the results page when a user searches for one of the "hot trends." Now when a user’s query matches one of the top 100 trends (or fastest-rising search terms), Google will show them a graph and further information about how popular the query is.

Pizza Hut, a brand that has been in social media-related news in the past when they sought a Twittering intern, has now launched a campaign combining social media marketing with philanthropy.

What is probably most ironic about the story that you are about to read is the fact that an journalistic icon, the Washington Post, is trying to maintain control of its staff while it can’t even keep an internal memo from going public. Having made that observation from the start you can see that this is not going to get any better for them. 

In August, online video reached a record high, with over 25 billion videos watched during the month, according to data from comScore. A pretty good chunk of these were watched via Google sites (hardly surprising, considering the enormous popularity of YouTube). Google sites accounted for over 10 billion videos watched in August.

YouTube’s done a decent job of winning over content creators and rights holders, and its Content ID system, which lets them identify and profit from user-uploaded clips, has been a big part of that.  Content ID may become an even more popular feature, too, now that a quirk has been ironed out.

Social media is causing organizations to rethink and evolve their marketing strategies, according to a new study by Alterian.
The research indicated that 60 percent of organizations think that personal one-to-one engagement with consumers requires a new way of creating content and on-demand services, while 60 percent also feel the existing strategies for understanding consumers needs can be improved significantly.

Yahoo’s first commercial from the big $100 million "Y!ou" campaign has hit the web. The clip has been posted at several video sites and social networks around the web, and has likely been embedded all over the place by now. The company says it will soon air on TV (via SIA).

Nielsen set out to prove that social media use put a significant dent into email use, assuming that the more time people spent on social networks, the less time they were likely to spend using email. It didn’t quite work out that way in the firm’s experiment however.

Nielsen explains its methodology:

The European Commission said today it wants to implement new rules for the makers of MP3 players that would require them to follow new volume standards.
The Commission pointed to a study that found listening to personal music players at a high volume over a long period can lead to permanent hearing damage and 5 to 10 percent of listeners risk permanent hearing loss. It’s estimated that up to 10 million people in the EU may be at risk.

The Washington Post has sent a memo to its editors/journalists outlining the publication’s social media policies. They don’t leave too many options for what is actually allowed to take place on social networks. This is an issue that never really seems to go away, and is brought up every time a publication’s social media policies are discovered.