I can't say enough good things about this article in Mashable. While bloggers and publishers are trying to build their sites, the Social Web is quickly changing the whole game. Neilsen data shows that because of Social Media's impact on how we engage online, more and more people want to get their content in a news feed style or stream. Your content has to go everywhere, and this article helps you spread content in a smart way.

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Once you have identified your digital center, connect it to all your other social networks. Think of your digital center as the hub and the other networks as the spokes of a wheel. The idea is to create the content once. In today’s world of the siteless web, your customers are choosing their own digital centers, and chances are, they’re not the same as yours. You need spokes to make sure you’re reaching everyone you need to and, more importantly, everyone who wants information from you. And, since we’re all short on time, making this process automated and intelligent is key. Here’s how you can do this:

• Filter: The expectations on each social network are different. Understand your audiences on each and tailor your content accordingly. Twitter has a different vocabulary (hashtags, RT) than Facebook (). Your readers on Facebook may find it odd to see a hashtag in their stream.
• Control the flow: If you are creating multiple pieces of content per day, it is important to not send it out all at once. The half-life of a piece of content in social media is measured in hours. Things are flowing through your audience’s stream all day long. To keep their attention and increase the opportunity for them to see your content, regulate the flow, just like a dam. Hold some things back. Track the time of day you are seeing the most engagement and adjust your flow accordingly.
• Customize: With the amount of content your audience is seeing in a day, yours may go unnoticed as they scan their stream. The headline is now more than ever, the most important sentence you write. Add in some branding elements –- it doesn’t need to be over the top. Just let your audience know where it is coming from, especially if you are cross-posting.

I hope this article will stop all the people who import all their Twitter updates to their Facebook stream. Filter for the individual networks people!

One month after long-time Ning CEO Gina Bianchini was replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal, the company is making some major changes: It has just announced that it is killing off its free product, forcing existing free networks to either make the change to premium accounts or migrate their networks elsewhere.

Ning realized that free doesn't really work.

The comments are a great read. Better than the article.

When Twitter acquired Tweetie and made it their official iPhone app last week, dozens of lives and business plans were thrown into turmoil.

The third-party app developers and investors who had worked together to create startups around the Twitter platform were blindsided. Some lost an entire business model or were forced to rapidly reconsider their plans, all because Twitter wasn’t clear and transparent about its roadmap for developing features and acquiring companies.

Kara Swisher of All Things D moderated an investment panel today at Chirp, the Twitter developer conference. With her were two Twitter board members, Bijan Sabet and Peter Fenton, and investors Mike Hirschland and David Pakman. All were eager to address the issues presented to the VC and startup community by Twitter’s situation in particular and about the risks associated with building apps on another company’s platform in general.

Interesting how Twitter is the least transparent platform around.

foursquare.com Foursquare’s new statistics page will share information about users with business owners.

11:10 a.m. | Updated Corrected the name of the AJ Bombers restaurant.

Foursquare, a location-based social network, plans to distribute a new analytics tool and dashboard in the coming weeks that will give business owners access to a range of information and statistics about visitors to their establishments.

Tristan Walker, director of business development at Foursquare, said that the latest features were intended to help local merchants run their stores by giving them more information about their customers.

“We’re trying to give businesses more retention with current customers and the ability to add new customers with specials,” said Mr. Walker.

Businesses will be able to see a range of real-time data about Foursquare usage, including who has “checked in” to the place via Foursquare, when they arrived, the male-to-female customer ratio and which times of day are more active for certain customers. Business owners will also be able to offer instant promotions to try to engage new customers and keep current ones.

Remember this from two days ago-

http://worthingtonwire.com/why-location-based-apps-are-getting-traction

Location based apps are a goldmine of valuable information and a targeted distribution method.

Impressive.

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2. Decision Making and Problem Solving

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Using Google Wave to discuss a company challenge could be very beneficial — especially when all of the players aren’t located in the same place. That’s exactly why Troy Peterson, CEO of Nibi Software, used Wave to get the company’s development plan finalized.  He brought everyone together in a Wave and let the conversation flow. “The real-time document functionality allowed us to have ‘arguments’ and solve problems together that might otherwise have resulted in ‘back and forth’ threads that went on forever.”

Peterson did mention that adoption was an initial challenge. “Although several of my contacts immediately had Wave accounts, they weren’t necessarily the people I was collaborating with on projects.  It required some arm wrestling to get people on board.” But the results were worth it. “In the end, we have a succinct document that we have all agreed on and that we can compare short-term objectives against.”

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3. Project Management

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The same decision making philosophy applies when you have a project and need to collaborate not only with internal stakeholders, but an external supplier. Google Wave provides an opportunity for collaboration. Hopefully, consultants and/or contractors are able to tap into that dialogue by sharing their Wave account info with client companies.

Rachel Levy, Founder/CEO of the startup website WebinarListings, is using Google Wave with her developer. “We have the list of open items in the Wave, so we can discuss each one. I add an open item, and he can ask me a question about it, or mark it as done.” The main advantage to using this application was being able to track conversations.

This could also be a valuable way to manage the dreaded “scope creep.” You can lay out the entire project in a single Wave once the parameters are agreed upon. Then, you can work through each facet with each side tracking progress and those pesky project deviations. And everything gets documented along the way. New project requirements can even be moved to a new Wave for later consideration.

I am inspired to dive in and give many of these ideas a try.

Must find a clone. :)