Last year at SXSW a few of us had a little fun with a game we call B.S. Bingo. You take a bingo card and you add the most popular “lingo” that you might hear during an event like SXSW, specifically the Interactive portion. Below is the 2010 version, enjoy and remember it is all in fun. Big thanks to so many of you on Twitter/Buzz who helped populate this year’s SXSWi bingo card: Download the SXSWi Bingo Card.

When it comes to breakfast tacos, which are stuffed with fillings like eggs and bacon, Austin trumps all other American cities.

Radian6 has announced a new tool that has the potential to be a paradigm shift in how companies manage their social media monitoring programs. The Radian6 Engagement Console combines two of the best tools out there – Tweetdeck and Radian6 – in an Adobe Air-based desktop tool. In doing so, the console makes radical improvements to the workflow process for Radian6 users. We’ve been test-driving the console in our office for a little while now, and I’ve been very impressed by the utility – an..   show all text

As Director of Twitter's Trust and Safety team, a big part of my job is focused on the detection and prevention of spam and abuse. A couple weeks ago, Biz explained how Twitter users were being victimized by phishing scams spread primarily through links in Direct Messages. Basically, people click the link and bad things happen. My team can only detect these scams after malicious links have already been sent out. Today, we’re launching a new service to protect users that strikes a major blow ..   show all text

Social media is grand, and yes, it’s proving to be valuable for customer service in some scenarios. But it’s exposing a big disconnect: the companies embracing using things like Twitter or blogs aren’t necessarily taking those principles and applying them to their more traditional ideas of customer service and the operations that support it. Best Buy’s Twelpforce Yesterday, I had a small experience on that front with my local Best Buy store. I tried to call the store to find out if they had..   show all text

The social networking site plans to roll out features next month that will give its 400 million users the option of sharing their location with friends as part of their news feeds.

Foursquare, a location-based social network, is rolling out new tools that will give businesses more information about their customers and allow them to target special offers.

As some of you know, I have a close relative came down with cancer last year (he chooses to remain unnamed, but his cancer is now in remission). It turns out that my Cousin Paula (photo below) also came down with breast cancer last year, too (also in remission). That’s why I have decided to donate a little piece of my body to fundraise for cancer research with the Lance Armstrong Foundation. If I successfully raise $5,000 by midnight on Sunday, I will literally get the LIVESTRONG brand tat..   show all text

Ah, engagement. That sticky word that gets discussed an awful lot in context of social media conversations. But how, exactly, do you look at engagement and keep tabs on the factors that drive it? While no single metric alone is going to be a solid indicator of how engaged your community or customers are, there are a few things you can look at that help guide you toward the conversations and interactions to pay attention to for deeper analysis. Here’s our take on a few of the engagement metric..   show all text

Remember the Pantless Knights of “I’m on a Mac” fame? Well, they’re back today with a new vid titled “The New Dork,” a parody of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’s “Empire State of Mind” that pays tribute to social media adherents and hipsters alike. With shoutouts to Zuckerberg, Mashable, Valleywag, Gizmodo, LinkedIn, Twitter and tech nerds camped out in their mothers’ basements, this video is all about using your social media cache to attain new levels of irony-spun hipness. According to these tech..   show all text

BBC News has a very cool interactive chart up, showing how Internet had grown from 1998 to 2008 in various parts of the world. In 1998., the only countries with significant Internet usage were USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden. Of course, I remember using the Internet in Croatia every day back then, but it’s true: for most people, it was “this new thing” and it didn’t play a very important part of our everyday lives. Moving the slide..   show all text

Yes, I own a cattle ranch. I am out standing in my field. But I will not wear cowboy boots to SXSW. See, we have cattle, but no horses. We're ranchers, but not rodeo-ers. I don't even own a cowboy hat or cowboy boots. There are plenty of folks here-abouts who live and breathe being a cowboy. It's the most natural thing in the world to them. The guys who park their stock trailer outside the cafe, and wear their spurs everywhere they go. That's my brother in law, for example. I get that. Tha..   show all text

The iPad is breaking out in a very mainstream fashion: an ad for the Apple device just aired during the Oscars. The ad explains why Apple CEO Steve Jobs was spotted on the red carpet earlier. We’ve got a screenshot and we’ll post video as soon as it comes in (update: video added below). Apple iPad Commercial During the Oscars [img credit: TheFullM0nty] Steve Jobs on the Oscars Red Carpet [img credit: Wayne Sutton] Tags: Apple iPad, Commercial, ipad, jobs, Oscars, steve jobs, tre..   show all text

Blogging is such an opportunity. I’m sad to see people abandoning the chance to express, to connect, to build relationships. For me, the love of blogging (and what it means to me) is why I’ve been in the game so long. It’s how I’ve met most of my current friends. It’s how I’ve stayed sane when I was an employee, and how I center myself today as a creator. So today, I wanted to write about my love for blogging, and hopefully, you’ll pull from this some ideas or affirmations for what you’re doi..   show all text

It seems hundreds of Twitter accounts have started to Tweet out “weight loss” product spam today. Specifically, users who have had their accounts hijacked are Tweeting the message “I lost 20 lbs in 2 weeks!” and links to diet sites. Our source counts over 200 rogue tweets so far tonight. It’s not just new users getting caught out: famous tech pundit John C. Dvorak (@therealdvorak) got caught up in the attack, and was none too pleased. At this point we’re unsure of the cause: Access coul..   show all text

A new version of Foursquare for the iPhone is on the way and it will feature a revamped interface, a brand new user tab, and a new checkin history view. This version of the app – v1.6 – should be heading to the App Store soon. Nick Starr shared screenshots of it with us and we’ve included a few below so that you can see some of the new features. Looking at the images from Foursquare 1.6, the first thing you’ll notice is that the interface has been totally revamped. The colors, icons and me..   show all text

We've been dying to know more about Microsoft's Courier tablet / e-book device ever since we first caught wind of it last September, and while our entreaties to Mr. Ballmer went unanswered, we just learned some very interesting information from an extremely trusted source. We're told Courier will function as a "digital journal," and it's designed to be seriously portable: it's under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn't much bigger than a 5x7 photo when closed. That's a lot ..   show all text

18 Use Cases That Show Business How To Finally Put Customers First Social and CRM: How Companies Will Manage Their Social Relationships Over the last six months, I’ve been working closely with Ray Wang who is well known in the CRM space as an expert.  Coupled with my focus on social technologies we did a deep dive on how our worlds are colliding into the trend to Social CRM.  In our opening webinar when we announced our joining of the firm, we made it clear we’re looking at the holistic busi..   show all text

For the moment, the valuations we have for private companies like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are based mostly on what we know from venture capital investments. SharesPost, however, is a company that lets owners of shares in private companies sell them to prospective buyers, and they’ve just released an index detailing valuations of some of the most prominent companies in the social media space. Here’s what they report: Facebook: $11.5 billion Zynga: $2.6 billion Twitter: $1.4 billion..   show all text