[Updated at 1:05 p.m.] Mariner Energy, owner of the production platform, said in a press release that no hydrocarbon spill has been reported after an initial flyover of the incident.

"Mariner has notified and is working with regulatory authorities in response to this incident," the statement said. "The cause is not known, and an investigation will be undertaken. During the last week of August 2010, production from this facility averaged approximately 9.2 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and 1,400 barrels of oil and condensate."

The company also said no injuries have been reported.

[Updated at 12:48 p.m.] David Reed, a paramedic on board the Rowan Gorilla II oil rig located 14 miles from the platform that exploded told submitted an iReport saying he saw all thirteen workers rescued from the water.

“We were up here in the radio room and all of sudden we saw a whole bunch of smoke coming from the platform," Reed said. "Shortly after all the radios started lighting up like a Christmas tree. They called any helicopters in the area, any boats in the area to respond, they were saying there were people in the water. There were multiple people in the water.”

See Reed's iReport of what he witnessed

WWL: Coast Guard reporting production platform incident

WDSU: Production platform explodes in Gulf

iReport: Did you see the explosion? Share images

[Updated at 12:32 p.m.] White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the federal government has "assets ready" to respond to any environmental problems resulting from the explosion of an oil platform off the coast of Louisiana.

[Updated at 12:31 p.m.] All thirteen people aboard a production platform that exploded in the Gulf are accounted for and safely on a commercial vessel according to initial information, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement.

"We continue to gather information as we respond with full force, and have oil spill response assets ready for immediate deployment should we receive any reports of pollution," the statement said.

[Updated at 11:53 a.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough tells CNN that 12 people from the production platform are in water immersion suits as they await rescue.

Colclough told CNN there are reports the production platform, which is for both oil and natural gas, is still on fire.

"We don't know what caused the rig to catch on fire," he told CNN, noting the incident is under investigation.

Asked about concerns regarding oil leaks or pollution, Colclough said "there are reports the rig was not actively producing any product, so we don't know if there's any risk of pollution."

Mariner Energy is a leading independent oil and gas exploration and production company in the Gulf of Mexico. About 85 percent of the company's production comes from offshore assets, with a growing share of that coming from deepwater developments.

The explosion comes nearly five months after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people and causing oil to gush into
the Gulf of Mexico, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

[Updated at 11:43 a.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough tells CNN that all 13 workers involved in the production platform explosion are accounted for, but one person is injured.

Coast Guard Choppers are on the way to the site 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay.

[Posted at 11:33 a.m.] An oil production platform has exploded 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana, with 12 people overboard and one missing, the Coast Guard said Thursday morning.

Rescue attempts are under way for at least 12 people, Coast Guard spokesman John Edwards told CNN. 13 people were on board the production platform total, Edwards said, noting 12 have been accounted for, but one person was missing.

The accident took place 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana on the Vermilion Oil production platform 380, which is owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy.

The Coast Guard has multiple helicopters, an airplane and several Coast Guard cutters en route. It's unknown if there are any injuries.

Infographics at their best are more than just pictures — they can provide new understandings, succinct summaries, or just plain old fun.

In that respect, reading newspaper archives isn’t the only way to get a deeper understanding of current events. Infographics can help us get a better grasp on what’s going on.

Check out these 10 visualizations to learn more about the news with a quick look.

Last month alone, Google acquired social-search service Angstro, visual shopping search engine like.com, and social currency company Jambool. Google has been on an acquisition binge for some time, and it’s getting tricky to keep track of its appetite.

This graphic shows a timeline of Google’s activity in three categories: “Building Revenue Streams,” “Cutting Competition,” or “A Little of Both.”

The campaign for gay marriage has passed a multitude of milestones over the last decade. Unfortunately for those trying to keep track of them, the victories and setbacks vary drastically by state. Decisions are reversed and in some cases overturned by higher courts, which makes progress hard to track.

This map from the LA Times shows the status of gay marriage in each state by month. Click on a state for its most recent ruling or watch the country change from being legally similar in its treatment of same-sex couples in 2000 to sharply divided in 2010.

The frequency and fatality of IEDs (homemade bombs) in Afghanistan was highlighted when WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 secret documents about the Afghan war. Anti-war activists published this illustrative video that includes all of the incidents reported in these leaked documents.

On April 20, an explosion on a BP drilling rig started what has become the largest accidental oil spill in history. Despite numerous strategies that were deployed to plug the leak, it wasn’t capped until July 15.

This video graphic by New Orleans online newspaper NOLA wraps timeline, graphic, and cumulative damage data into one easy-to-digest piece of media.

The CIA World Factbook has always been a great resource for putting news stories into the context of their geographic location. But now it’s also easy to get the information at a glance.

The World Factbook Dashboard allows you to color code the countries of the world by population, population growth, infant mortality, agricultural GDP, industry GDP, services GDP, total GDP, GDP/inhabitant, or inflation. Clicking on a country zooms in for more information.

This map from The New York Times illustrates not only which areas suffered the highest unemployment rate after the recession, but also offers the option to filter data by metropolitan areas, areas with housing bubbles, rural areas, and manufacturing centers.

The Wall Street Journal updates this map constantly with violent conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to learn about the day-to-day details of the war or understand its scope, there’s no better visual resource.

Even if you read through every health care bill article, it could be hard to exactly pick out what the law would change about your insurance coverage and taxes. The Washington Post made it easy by providing this nifty tool. Input whether you have insurance coverage, your family size, your income, and your marital status, and it will tell you how health care reform will impact your life.

For the broader picture on healthcare reform, see this subway-style map from GOOD Magazine.

The government is still busy spending much of the $787 billion it allotted for the economic stimulus in February of last year. This infographic effectively illustrates how that huge chunk of change is being distributed.

This chilling interactive graphic from USA Today simply illustrates the deaths in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Information seekers can search deaths by personal factors like name, age, gender, race, or home town as well as by military service details, date, cause, or place.

CNN has a more elaborate version here.

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It’s the Holy Grail of interactive marketing: getting “social media influencers”—the ones with the voice and the reach, the ones to whom everyone else listens—to endorse and promote what you’re doing.

Recently, my company managed to inspire 60 such influencers to participate in our event, called The Influencer Project, and they even took it upon themselves to help spread the word.

People like Social Media Examiner’s own Michael Stelzner, Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, David Meerman Scott, and others all signed on. We were grateful beyond belief.

Some of the brightest minds in social media spoke at The Influencer Project.

Why’d they come on board? And how’d we do it?

It takes creativity to inspire others.

Many of us who are new to the social media space want influencers to “get behind” our brands, products and special events.

We think we can just reach out to them, and if we have a great thing going on, they’ll naturally want to endorse what we’re doing.

It’s an honest mistake, usually, but it does backfire—or at least, it won’t get you the results you’re looking for.

Of course, if you have deep reserves of cash, you may be able to afford paying handsomely for a big name to review your product—although, to be sure, that can get into very tricky ethical territory and is a delicate issue.

But for the rest of us—for those who don’t have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on “influencer outreach”—we have to be a little more creative.

In fact, we have to get rid of the very idea of “trying” to “get” a social media influencer to “back” our brand.

Instead, we need to create innovative ways to inspire not only well-known influencers, but also large numbers of participants, to join a project, a cause, an initiative. And that takes a different kind of thinking—one that I’ll explain below.

The thing is, no-one wants to be your salesperson—unless they are, of course, being paid to sell your products. But everyone—social media influencers included—wants to be part of something that’s bigger than them, that’s creative and that brings new ideas into the world.

So, without any further ado, here are my 5 creative ways for inspiring web celebrities to come on board with what you’re doing:

Don’t ask them to endorse a product or site. Instead, create a project—related to, but independent of, your brand—that they can get behind. Think about the “Yes We Can” video that will.i.am created for Barack Obama’s campaign.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsV2O4fCgjk

Regardless of your political leaning, there’s a lesson here. Yes, will.i.am’s a celebrity. And yes, Hollywood is known for bringing other celebrities on board political campaigns. But that’s not the fundamental point. The point is that there was a cause, an initiative, a project that people wanted to get behind, that inspired them to act—and they did.

This is what you need. You want to create something that many people will join. A cause, a vision.

Memetic means that it has a meme-like quality. Well, what’s a meme, you ask? In its simplest definition, a meme is an idea that spreads from person to person, one that’s so “catchy” that people almost can’t help but to spread it.

“Yes We Can” was a meme.

A meme is bigger than a brand. Just Do It is a meme. No Fear is a meme. The Red Bull Flugtag is a meme. It’s something that people can identify with, make their own and share with others. If you’re simply trying to strong-arm a social media influencer into singing your brand’s praises, good luck. But if you have a project that has memetic quality, then you’re on the right track.

A meme unto itself isn’t enough. Sure, you could get lots of YouTube video views by trying to replicate something like a funny hamster, but you won’t be enrolling people in a vision.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Kyi0WNg40

In other words, you won’t be providing extraordinary value—to the end user or to the influencer.

On the other hand, if your project provides overwhelming value and is memetic, then you’re not only sure to inspire people, you’ll also be making the world a better place.

It makes business sense, too. Simply trying to make a campaign “go viral” for the sake of going viral is far riskier than creating a project that offers tremendous benefit. In our case, we provided users with more than 60 helpful tips that they could use to increase their digital influence in 60 minutes. They heard from luminaries they respected.

Everyone won. There was no attempt to manipulate people to act on our behalf for a hollow goal. It was values-driven all the way around.

There are two things all of us have an increasingly short supply of: time and attention. Unless you’re Apple or Microsoft and you’re offering a blogger a sneak peek at your new product, asking someone to write a whole blog post about you—or, for example, do an hour-long webinar to your not-quite-robust-enough-yet list of subscribers—is going to make getting a “yes” a lot harder.

In our case, we only asked for 60 seconds of the speaker’s time. The proposition was often met with enthusiasm. “Sure, I’d love to do a 60-second interview!” It was fun, short and interesting. There’s no way we would have gotten 60 busy people to do full-hour interviews each right off the bat. So we made it radically easy for them to say “yes.”

But that’s only part of the picture: we also made it incredibly easy for the audience to say “yes.” For only an hour of their time, we were going to give them 60 tips from 60 experts. Not a bad deal. And that’s exactly what we heard from participants: it was completely manageable and reasonable to take one hour to learn from so many people.

So don’t just reduce the barriers for those you want to headline your campaign, also make it easy for your intended audience to participate.

When describing his company’s financial practices, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said that while his software-as-a-service platform may have been revolutionary, his bookkeeping methods were as traditional as they get.

Similarly, I believe that it’s important to let your creativity and imagination run wild, and to create something new—for example, to take a conventional idea (say, marketing conference) and challenge it (the shortest marketing conference ever). But I see far too many campaigns that feature weird, wild and avant-garde stuff without making it accessible to the end users.

The “60-in-60″ idea was new. But it wasn’t “43-in-68.” We didn’t ask them to speak for 10 seconds. We didn’t request that they sing, dance or rap. In other words, it all made sense—both to them and to the audience. “60 tips” is still an attractive value proposition, and participants felt that they truly benefited from the advice.

But the other side of completely inaccessible and avant-garde is utter banality. Think of the typical webinar, conference or jargon-ridden special report. Sure, those can be great as ongoing lead-generation sources, but not as a way to get noticed and build digital influence rapidly.

So even though I’d recommend erring on the side of accessibility, I still want to challenge and encourage you to come up with something innovative.

Hopefully, these tips have given your creative faculties some juice to explore what you can do to inspire social media influencers—and your target audience—to join your cause.

What do you think? Have you had success recruiting influencers? Put your comments in the box below.

As the fugitive businessman Asil Nadir flew back to Britain from his North Cyprus bolt-hole last week, Sean O'Neill, the crime editor of The Times, scooped Fleet Street by being the only print journalist on the plane. Yet those searching Google for the latest on the breaking story that morning would have found no sign of O'Neill's exclusive – only follow-up stories by rival news organisations such as The Guardian and ITN.

We would love for you to join us, so we’re giving away passes to BlogWorld. To enter, answer the following question — “What is the future of blogging?” — in the comments below. Readers with the best answers will win one of five “full access” tickets to BlogWorld, which includes MashBash. Winners are invited to attend this industry celebration where the online world comes together to meet, relax and make important business networking connections.

Date: Friday, October 15
Time: 8:00 p.m.-10 p.m.
Location:Haze at Aria. 3730 Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV.
Tickets: Must have BlogWorld Badge to enter.

• Simply click the “Like” button on our Facebook Page (below).
• Respond to the question: “What is the future of blogging?” by noon ET on Monday, September 6, in the comments section of this post.

Please use your real identity so that we may contact you via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook to let you know that you’ve won and how to redeem your prize.

BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas on October 15-16: “Join us at the World’s Largest New Media event and learn about Content Creation, Distribution and Monetization strategies, step-by-step techniques and bleeding-edge tools from the most successful Bloggers, Podcasters, Social Media Pro’s, Internet TV and Radio Content Generators and New Media Marketing Pro’s! From the premier educational sessions at the Social Media Business Summit and BlogWorld Conference, to the resource-rich New Media Expo, to Amazing Networking events…it’s One economical trip, One weekend, One Big Show you can’t afford to miss!”

More About: blogging, BLOGS, blogworld, contest, Events, las vegas, MashBash, new media expo, Tickets

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Think what you will about the ultra-widescreen, 21:9 format Philips is pushing, but you can’t deny that its cinema-proportioned Full HD LCD TV is gorgeous. Now, Philips plans to push it even further, with a 58-inch, 3D version of the device.

The device, called Philips 3D Cinema 21:9 Platinum, sports a direct lit LED screen with a 2560×1080 resolution, 400Hz picture processing, and Philips’s Ambilight technology, which illuminates the area behind the TV in order to reduce eye fatigue and produce an immersive viewing experience.

And if you think you’ll never use all that horizontal screen estate due to the lack of titles available in 21:9 format, you can watch regular TV programming on one side while browsing Philips’s Net TV on the other.

The price tag, of course, is too high for most consumers. At around €4000 ($5,100), there are plenty of high-end TV sets to be found on the market, but this TV is truly unique. For those who want to enjoy their movies as they were meant to be seen on the big screen, and in three dimensions, there are currently no better options out there.

The Philips 3D Cinema 21:9 Platinum is slated to launch in the UK later this month. No date has been set for a U.S. release.

More About: 21:9, 3D, aspect ratio, full HD, LCD, Philips, tv

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In a statement, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said, “After nearly a decade-long partnership in search, we’re looking forward to expanding our global relationship to mobile search and YouTube. All aspects of our partnership will be improved by this deal.”

The extension of the deal wasn’t a given by any means; the $1 billion investment Google made in AOL back in 2005 proved to be disastrous financially. Further, Microsoft has been aggressively making deals to grow marketshare for Bing, most notably with Yahoo, which now sees Bing powering Yahoo search and its related advertising.

With the renewed AOL deal, Google locks up about 2.3% of the search market according to the most recent numbers from comScore. Google currently has 65.8% of the market, while Microsoft has 27.1% between Bing and Yahoo.

Beyond web search, today’s deal also broadens Google’s reach on mobile and gets additional premium content onto YouTube –- both of which are currently high priorities for the company, as CEO Eric Schmidt noted in his statement on the deal. “It’s particularly exciting to see our relationship expand into video and mobile. These areas are now at the heart of users’ online experiences and at the core of both of our businesses,” he said.

More About: aol, Google, Search

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Ever since it became stable enough to use on a day-to-day basis on a Mac last year, Google Chrome has been my browser of choice. Other browsers have been adding some nice features — but Chrome keeps adding them faster. And today on its second birthday, that rate of change isn’t slowing down.

Google has officially rolled out Chrome 6 as the latest stable version of the browser today. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone using the dev or beta builds of the browser, but it’s nonetheless an important mark as it means it’s stable enough for mass consumption.

Remember that it was just two years ago when Google surprised the world by announcing a new browser (a little early) via a comic. The next day, we got the first shots of what the browser would look like — and it was released as a beta for Windows users. It actually looks pretty much the same today, but it’s now much, much faster (and when it launched it was already faster than most browsers out there).

Google says that Chrome today is a full three times faster when it comes to JavaScript performance versus Chrome circa 2008. The rapid speed increases have also undoubtedly pushed rival browsers to become faster, so we’ve all benefited.

Arguably more important to me is that despite adding all the new features – and extensions — Chrome still seems lightweight today. I fondly remember the good old days of 2004 when I first started using Firefox as my main browser and thinking how fresh and lightweight it felt compared to the atrocity that was IE. Firefox, sadly, got bloated over the years. So far, Chrome hasn’t put on the same weight. Here’s hoping it never does.

As I said, Chrome is also showing no signs of slowing down from a development standpoint. The browser is already in the process of morphing into version 7 as well. Chromium, the open source browser that Chrome is based on, has been hit version 7 a couple weeks ago — and the dev build of Chrome just went 7 as well. Google has said they hope to iterate every six weeks going forward.

These next few months are going to be arguably the most interesting times for the browser yet. The Chrome Web Store will soon open, bringing tightly integrated web-based apps into the browser. And then, of course, Chrome OS is due before the end of the year.

Happy birthday Chrome.

Chrome then:

Chrome now:

With another long hot American summer coming to a close, many students are scrambling to get back into “learning mode” before school starts. One of the simplest ways to ease that transition is with podcasts. Whether your passion is American History or Algebra, there’s probably an educational podcast out there for you.

While these programs probably won’t mirror your lesson plan, they will explore topics covered in class. Below is a sampling of some of the exceptional podcasts that both teach and entertain. Best of all – they’re free. Read on for your “2010 Downloading Curriculum.”

Radiolab investigates some of world’s most intriguing scientific questions in a unique conversational format. Recent episodes have examined the importance of words in human development and time. First time listeners will probably notice that the show also just sounds different.

Before becoming a radio producer, Jab Abumrad, one of Radiolab’s creators, was as an experimental musician. Abumrad’s passion for ProTools is apparent in the show’s textured soundscape, which is layered with a variety of sound effects and quick edits. Perhaps the show’s only downside is its frequency. There are only a handful of episodes every season because one Radiolab episode requires months to produce.

Outlet: WNYC, New York City’s Public Radio Station
Time: An Hour
Frequency: 5-6 every season

Additional Listening: The Naked Scientists Podcast

In Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, Carlin, a veteran journalist turned podcaster, dissects the textbook version of events. In shows that often run over an hour, the host passionately retells some of history’s best stories.

Hardcore History has become one of the most downloaded podcasts on iTunes, and Carlin’s widespread appeal can also be attributed to his insight. One podcast asked, “Could widespread child abuse in earlier eras explain some of history’s brutality?” Another show was based off the question, “Does the toughness of peoples play any role in history?” Don’t let the name fool you; all material is appropriate for younger listeners.

Outlet: Dan Carlin
Time: 1 – 1 1/2 hours
Frequency: 5-6 every year

Additional Listening: Stuff You Missed in History Class

Planet Money is NPR’s podcast on global economics and business. Initially created by veteran public radio reporters Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson to explain the recent financial crisis, the show quickly became one of the most popular and praised podcasts available.

Planet Money’s success lies in how it tackles complex subjects with great storytelling. A financial instrument like a Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) may sound impossibly boring, but Planet Money routinely makes these types of things the heart of a thrilling narrative. The team continues to explore the financial collapse, but they’ve expanded their scope to include all aspects of the global economy.

Outlet: NPR
Time: 15-30 minutes
Frequency: Twice a week

Additional Listening: Freakanomics Radio

Disclosure: The author interned at NPR.

For those of us who couldn’t make it through Wuthering Heights, Cliff Notes Cramcast would have been a lifesaver. This free podcast reviews some of the stuff you need to know for the big test and does it in three to four minutes. Of course, these podcasts can’t cover every detail. To do that, you would — you know — need to read the book.

Outlet: Cliff Notes
Time: 15-30 minutes
Frequency: Twice a week

Additional Listening: Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips

The Internet is full of podcasts that cater to students learning foreign languages. For those interested in the major European languages, Radio Lingua is a good bet. Another reliable hub is Open University, which in addition to the European languages also has a set of Mandarin podcasts. These outlets are mainly for beginners or students who need a quick review. Both are rated highly on iTunes by users.

Outlets: Radio Lingua and Open University
Time: 15-30 minutes
Frequency: Lesson plan

Additional Listening: Other reliable podcasts include Discover Spanish and Learn French.

For those of us who struggle to calculate a 15% tip, The Math Dude’s podcast is a must-listen. Every week, affable nerd Jason Marshall explains basic concepts like how to calculate the area of an object or how to add faster. When Marshall isn’t podcasting, he researches “infrared light emitted by starburst galaxies and quasars” at Caltech, which just means his left-brain knows what’s up.

Outlet: Quick and Dirty Tips
Time: About 7 minutes
Frequency: Weekly

Additional Listening: Mathgrad.

Every Sunday, comedians Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver recap the week’s events in The Bugle, a satirical podcast that is easily one of the funniest listens on the Internet. Think an audio version of The Daily Show, where Oliver is also a regular. The Bugle’s focus tends to be on the biggest international news, but the duo’s separate locations – Zaltzman in London and Oliver in New York City – ensure a focus on the English-speaking world’s antics. Although the pair has a leftward slant, there are no sacred cows. The Bugle even takes aim at itself in its tagline: “An audio newspaper for a visual world.”

Outlet: The Times (UK)
Time: 30 minutes
Frequency: Weekly

Additional Listening: NPR News, BBC World Service

- 10 iPhone Apps to Get You Back to School
- Why Online Education Needs to Get Social
- 5 Innovative Tech Camps for Kids and Teens
- 5 Organizations Helping Women Get Ahead in Tech
- 5 Fun Ways to Help Your Kids Learn Math Online

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mattjeacock

More About: back to school, cliff notes cramcast, current events, dan carlin, economics, education, english, foreign language, history, itunes, math, planet money, podcast, podcasts, radio lingua, radiolab, Science, the bugle, the math dude

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One of the challenges of running a social commerce site these days is that there is just too much demand, from both local merchants wanting to give out deals and consumers who want to try them. There are only 365 days in a year, and the daily deal format limits each city to 365 deals a year.

Sites like GroupOn and LivingSocial are hitting those limits. GroupOn is expanding its inventory by “personalizing” deals, essentially showing different deals to different people. LivingSocial is handling the issue by going hyperlocal. It will now start offering deals by neighborhood and city districts.

LivingSocial will start bringing daily deals to the hood out in Washington, D.C. and New York City. In Washington, D.C., there will be deals for The District, Montgomery County and Northern Virginia (not exactly neighborhoods, but why get bogged down in details). In New York City, you can sign up for deals Uptown (soul food), Midtown (cupcakes), Downtown (facials) and in Brooklyn (dance lessons). Again, these aren’t really neighborhoods—Brooklyn on its own is bigger than most cities in America—but they do break up the city into more manageable zones and open up the site to more deals.

This is something, in fact, that Groupon does as well in a couple cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. In fact, it breaks down Washington, D.C. the exact same way: the District, Montgomery County and Northern Virginia.

It’s free and comes with a slew of touch interface bells and whistles built right in. The app is intended to allow for seamless navigation between tweets, photos, web pages, videos and other media and updates. It’s also usable even for those who don’t have Twitter accounts.

Twitter for iPad [iTunes link] has a few new UI touches that you haven’t seen elsewhere. These features are custom-designed for the larger screen and touch capabilities of the iPad. It also caters to what the iPad was made for: media consumption rather than creation. Twitter’s Leland Rechis, a mobile UX designer, writes on the Twitter blog that the iPad is “a device that really lets content shine.”

The main interface is a series of panes that can expand and retract based on the kind of content the user wants to access. “Tapping on a Tweet opens a pane to the right. Depending on the content in that Tweet, you’ll see a video or photo, or maybe a news story, or perhaps another Tweet. You can continue tapping on Tweets, opening new panes, and getting new content as long as you’d like,” wites Rechis.

Media viewing is optimized for the iPad, as well. Videos play in-line with other content and can be loaded while you’re browsing through your timeline. You can pinch a video to view it fullscreen, too.

Finally, Twitter has really done some interesting things with touchscreen capabilities in this app. When you pinch a tweet, you’ll see details about the author and have a list of actions you can take, including reply and retweet. A two-finger pull-down gesture will show the entire conversation around a tweet.

It’s a creative way to approach multitouch app building, and we look forward to playing with it ourselves. We’re also really looking forward to what apps may come to other tablets in the future.

The iTunes release is rolling out right now; if you can’t get the latest version of the app right now, wait a bit and try again. And of course, let us know what you think of Twitter for iPad in the comments.

More About: apple, ipad, twitter

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For many, Twitter has become the go to place to obtain real time information by people all over the world. If you like what you see and/or want to share it with others you can “retweet” it. 

For some in Silicon Valley, Asia remains an alluring black box. A promising world with pockets of hyper growth, obscured by a tangled web of unfamiliar languages, customs, regulations and native ecosystems. Although the walls are coming down fast, the road to Asia’s markets remains an intimidating one for many.

Enter Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups (a recently launched $30M super angel fund) and Geeks On A Plane, a program that takes tech entrepreneurs and investors to emerging markets. In its own small way, Geeks On A Plane is attempting to bridge that gap between the Valley and the rest of the world. Earlier this year, roughly 55 “Geeks” traveled to several key hot spots in Asia, including Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul and Beijing, to connect with the region’s top entrepreneurs, to mingle with Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and to sample local tech conferences like Shanghai World Expo and CHINICT.

“Asia is easily a third, possibly close to half of the world’s population, I think there’s a lot of innovation and a lot of growth that is happening in China, India, and Southeast Asia,” McClure says. “Some of the internet models that we’ve seen are starting to be transferred over there, and actually a lot of the internet business models are being copied over here…There’s actually an explosion of social networks happening in all those countries.”

Although McClure doesn’t consider himself an expert in doing business in Asia, through his trips and his new relationships, he says he now has a better understanding of the internal dynamics of Asia’s disparate markets and is acutely aware of common Western misconceptions. In particular, he says it was very eye opening to learn how advanced China actually is and how many have underestimated the region’s technological and economic progress.

“Well I think people tend to look at China as being a pretty big opportunity but they also tend to think about China as being a little bit behind and I think that’s just really the wrong impression. China has actually got more internet users than the US, they certainly have more mobile devices than the US…You know the top 10% of the Chinese population probably has more average spending power than the average US citizen…and they’re buying a lot of cars, they’re buying a lot of houses, they’re buying a lot of consumer products online.”

While not everyone can join a Geeks On A Plane Tour, Dave McClure is sharing a collection of mini-documentaries from his latest trip with TechCrunch TV. The videos were shot and produced by Ben Henretig, founder of Micro-Documentaries, a new startup that creates highly polished, short (hence micro) videos for clients. The first of four episodes is on their trip to Shanghai (second video from the top). You can also watch McClure’s interview with TechCrunch TV, where he discusses his new fund and expounds on his trip to Asia (first video).

by Joe Pulizzi

I’ve been a MENG (Marketing Executives Networking Group) member for almost a year now and have had the chance to talk with some very smart MENG members. 

From a discipline standpoint, I’ve found that there are two types of MENG members – marketing specialists (i.e., social media, search, direct marketing, etc.) and marketing generalists (“I’m a marketing expert”).

If you are a specialist, you can probably stop reading. If you are a generalist, I hope you become a specialist one day.

Why you ask?  Here are a few reasons.

1. A Marketing Generalist Search Does Not Exist
   Just think about Google for a second.  People go to Google when they are searching for something specific or have a specific problem.  Even this guy, who calls himself a marketing expert, really positions himself as an online marketing expert. This company has grown like crazy over the past few years because of their sole focus on web content strategy. So, when people search for you (consultant) or your company (marketing executive), what do you want them to type into Google?
2. What Can You Be the Best in the World At?
   When I work with companies on their content marketing strategies, I always ask this question, “What do you need to be the leading expert in to drive your business forward?” The answer to that question is telling for three reasons.  First, it identifies the areas that they feel they can be the expert in.  Second, it identifies the products or services they need to sell that drive the business.  And third, it should identify a customer challenge or their informational needs.The right answer to this question usually defines a niche and a buying group (i.e., 3D design engineering consulting for manufacturing executives). BINGO! Now there’s an area that you can be the expert in.  No company in their right mind would answer this question as engineering, so why should you say that you are a just a marketing expert.If you can’t identify an area that you can be the best in the world – or at least the possibility – you may be doing the wrong things. BTW, my expertise area is content marketing.
3. It’s Impossible to Differentiate
   We win business or customers because we’ve shown enough value that people are willing to pay for that value in the form of products and/or services.  Most likely, we’ve differentiated ourselves enough from the competition or internal resources to get this business.The marketing generalists I talk to comment a lot on integration and planning and blah blah blah.  Not that those aren’t important, but people don’t buy for that reason.  They buy because you are the expert that will solve their specific problems. How can you be interesting to your customers if you are talking about the same thing as someone else? You can’t.  That’s the exact reason why you don’t see a lot of marketing generalists succeed with their personal social media. It’s not defined enough, thus not interesting enough for the right kind of people.
4. People Buy Inspiration and Higher Purpose
   I’ve been blogging recently on the concept of higher purpose content marketing. The basic premise is that we (brands) create content that has nothing to do with what we sell (in the case of Southwest – plane rides), but what we stand for (everyone deserves to fly, no matter what). Without defining your specialist area, it’s almost impossible to inspire and it’s most definitely impossible to communicate a higher purpose that drives behavior.

So, if you happen to buy into this as a marketing executive, either personally or for your company, what should you do? My advice would be three things:

1. Create Your Own Category – Define a specialty area that’s all yours. Citrix GoToMeeting has done this with Work Shifting. I’ve tried to do that with content marketing. David Meerman Scott has done this with his New Rules of Marketing series. What category can you create?
2. Develop Consistent, Remarkable Content about Your New Category – You need to put your publisher’s hat on and develop the kind of information that positions you as the true expert over your new domain. Since creating a new category is not easy, this will take months of banging the content drum.
3. Spread the Word – People aren’t going to go looking for your new category. You need to spread the word.  Go out to the people – the blogs and forums where your customers are at – and start sharing this helpful information.  Be the giver.

As long as your new category clearly solves your customers’ problems, this can work. So, marketing generalist, what’s your specialty? Let us know in the comments…

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Photo is Technology Links a Deployed Surgeon with Stateside Specialists by MC4 Army.

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With the new app, Android users can speak a simple “check in to [insert place name]” command after tapping the home screen button. The command will prompt Vlingo to automatically pull up the location in question, and other nearby venues, on Foursquare, providing users with a fast alternative to touch-based Foursquare checkins.

Vlingo’s voice-activated Foursquare integration not only includes support for checkins, but also lets users post voice shouts and ask Vlingo, “Where are my friends?,” or “Who’s nearby?” to pull up a list of Foursquare friends who have checked in recently.

Vlingo for Android also supports voice-activated, speech-to-text status updates for Facebook and Twitter.

Unfortunately for those of us with iPhone and BlackBerry devices, our Android-toting friends have the advantage here, but hopefully not for long. Vlingo promises voice checkins for these devices in future releases.

More About: andriod, checkins, foursquare, vlingo

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TopRank Online Marketing is proud to be a founding sponsor of the first Minnesota Blogger Conference. Tickets for this event “sold out” within a few hours and there are over 100 people on the waiting list. Thanks to conference founders Melissa Berggren, Arik Hanson,  Suzi Magill and Katie Schutrop, it’s already one hot event.

The date is Saturday, Sept 11 (the day I fly to Hong Kong) and the location is at CoCo MSP in Saint Paul.  Topics to be presented range from “how to blog” to “how to get your blog published as a book” to “how to make money with a blog” to “blog analytics” to a “business blogging panel” that will include Adam Singer from TopRank Marketing.

If you’d like to attend this networking rich and information packed event, you can’t.  It’s sold out!

However, what you can do is win a free pass from TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.

All you have to do is:

• Write a blog post explaining the most important thing you’ve learned from blogging yourself
• Or if you don’t blog yet, one thing you’d like to learn
• Why you should get to attend the MN Blogger Conference
• Use the MN Blogger Conference logo above in your post and also include a link to the page you’re reading right now: http://tprk.us/mnblog

All blog post entries must be published and we must be notified (mnblog at toprank dot org) by Friday 9/3 at noon Central.   Once received, all posts will be linked to from the bottom of this page and the TopRank Online Marketing staff will read the entries and decide the winner.  THE WINNER of a free pass to the sold-out MN Blogger Conference will be announced at 5pm on Friday.

So what are you waiting for? Get started now on a compelling, creative and persuasive blog post that explains why you should be the winner of a very rare MN Blogger Conference pass.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Win a Free Pass to MN Blogger Conference | http://www.toprankblog.com

Social media brings me closer to people with whom I ordinarily would seldom interact. Family, friends, colleagues. As my co-author Amber Naslund put it once “with social media, my relationships aren’t bound by geography or circumstance.” Exactly.

People always slam Twitter for people talking about “what they had for lunch” but the blending of the personal and professional is very attractive to me. I want to know what music you listen to, what you think is funny, why your cat is insane. When was the rule written that business had to be all-business? Life is so boring under those conditions.

I love that I can interact with clients and friends at any time, from nearly any place. The ability to make or consume social media from an array of mobile devices increases the convenience factor (and the pressure on my wi-fi router) immensely.

The reason I was originally a political campaign consultant (late 80s, early 90s), is the satisfying success metrics. You can’t get half elected. The day after an election, you’re either ebullient or morose. That’s what attracted me to online marketing initially, and why I made the jump to that career in the mid-90s. The tracking online (including social media) far outpaces what I had at my disposal when I was doing traditional marketing. The fuzzy numbers of TV, print, radio, outdoor and traditional PR drove me crazy. I like math and analysis and reality.

There’s literally never a dull moment in social media. Every day is different, and significant changes occur on a near weekly basis. Facebook’s gyrations alone are enough to keep you on your toes. I love change. I thrive on it. I simply cannot imagine working in an industry where status quo was the norm. I understand the appeal of certainly, it’s just not my preference.

I am compelled by the fact that the bottom line objective of social media is to add human elements to companies that have acted like inhuman, robotic cyborgs for the past 40 years. The anthropomorphization of business is an interesting, satisfying challenge because it runs directly counter to what most businesspeople have been taught, and their corresponding comfort zone. Social media is fun because it’s hard.

There are no right answers in social media, just answers that are more likely to be correct. It’s a benefit, not a drawback that (despite what others might proclaim) there is no social media playbook that can taken off the shelf and executed in rote fashion for all companies. You are free to make your own reality and script your own success.

Sure, we all talk about Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. But the rise of social media isn’t about technology and tools, it’s about power and people. Social media gives us some measure of control over our relationships that have been largely fractured by our always-on society.

Every church, ad club, Rotary, Kiwanis, Elk, Moose etc organization in the U.S. is faced with declining membership, because who has the time for a 2-hour lunch any longer? Even in a recession, our economic productivity continues to climb. How is that possible? Because we are working faster, longer, and more intensely, and the time for friends and family falls by the wayside. And socia media also gives us power over brands in ways we’ve never enjoyed. Social media is word-of-mouth on steroids, and our ability to praise or punish brands with a few keystrokes is satisfying.

I’m a gadget guy. I love it. My favorite part of our new home in Bloomington, Indiana is the in-ceiling speakers throughout that I can manipulate with a hand-held Logitech Squeezebox controller, so I can pick any song from my iTunes library and play it in any room in three clicks. A love for software and hardware and figuring out how new stuff can change behavior is a handy attribute in the social media business.

As we adopt social media to connect personally and with companies, businesses will need to respond. Business responded to the invention of the telephone, fax machine, FedEx, and email. But have businesses truly responded to the rise of social media? Largely, they have not.

That’s the premise of my new book with Amber Naslund, “The Now Revolution: 7 Moves to Transform Your Business with Speed, Smarts & Social Media.” It’s how companies need to change their culture, their people, their process, and their measuring sticks to succeed in real-time business.

I realize the gift you give me every day – the gift of your attention. I am incredibly fortunate to have readers and supporters that expose my work to a wider audience than most social media consultants enjoy. Your faith creates for me an opportunity to educate more and more marketers and the companies for which they work. I don’t take that opportunity lightly, and I hope I never take it for granted.

Why do you love social media?

(illustration by my friend Mark Smiciklas who writes a great blog with tons of cool info-graphics)