UPDATE:  24 hours later and I’m extremely pleased.  They did a great job with this app, and I’ve noticed an uptick in traffic.

I’m always on the lookout for ways to make my life easier.    No longer than 5 minutes had past after I posted about MySpace Twitter integration (including a note about how I use the RSS Facebook import feature to import my blog into Facebook Notes), did I see a post from one of my Facebook friends regarding NetworkedBlogs.

The last time I looked at bringing this blog into Facebook was about 6 months ago.  I looked at several 3rd party apps, Wordpress plugins, Facebook Connect…but none of them did what I wanted.

So I settled on the RSS import function of Facebook’s Notes application.  Which did just fine.  It’s a little slow on the import (maybe once an hour at best), and it never brought in any embedded content correctly (so if I ever just posted a video without an accompanying link, the post would just look blank).

Enter NetworkedBlogs.   They claim they’ll promote my blog to 400,000 users and solve my Facebook connect problem at the same time.  I have installed it and this is the first post I’m trying.  Let me know what you think.

Oh, and here’s an embedded video, just for S&G:

The folks at MySpace, always keen to jump at new emerging technologies, have finally opened up their platform to talk to Twitter.   Facebook did this about a year ago, about the same time I decided that MySpace was no longer useful.

So about a year ago I changed my status on MySpace to say “Find me on Facebook”.   I turned off all email notifications and said goodbye to that platform.

But now they’ve made it simple to link your Tweets to MySpace…perhaps injecting a digital amphetamine into MySpace’s arm.   I’ve hooked my Tweets up to WordPress (I use a plugin called Twitter Tools).   So, when I publish this message, a notification goes out to Twitter…and, theoretically, it should go to MySpace.

For Facebook, I use the RSS import function and import each blog entry as a Note.   I’ve found that linking Facebook status updates to my Tweets is a bit annoying because while my followers on Twitter are not always the same as my Friends on Facebook, enough of them overlap that I think they’d get tired of the redundant updates.

But MySpace….sure…bring it on!

Cybraphon is an emotional musical instrument robot comprised of 60 robotic components playing: a Farfisa wind organ, a Shruti box, a snare, a tom, a cymbal,  12 chimes, a dub plate and 10 other percussion items amplified through vintage gramophone horns.

Apparently Cybraphon has some sort of a rudimentary AI that processes emotions based on feedback from its online presence on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Cybraphon wants to be popular. Just by going to its website you will affect its mood and the kind of music it plays. Cybraphon regularly checks its MySpace page, worries about how many fans it has on Facebook, looks up its website stats and obsessively Googles itself to see what people are saying about it.

It’s so very cool but unfortunately I may have to travel back in time to destroy it before it destroys us all.

Cybraphon | Autonomous Emotional Robot Band.

Robot Band Plays Music, Obsesses About its Online Followers – Wired Magazine

Referring to MySpace as the “ghetto of the digital landscape,” Harvard Fellow and Microsoft Researcher, Danah Boyd, indicated that MySpace users are more likely to be “brown or black” and espouse a different set of ideals in conflict with those espoused by the teens she surveyed over four years.

She said that patterns in migration across social networking sites echoed those of a white exodus from cities in the past. Boyd also said that teens who use Facebook are more likely to condescend their MySpace-favoring peers.

MySpace now a “digital ghetto” | TransCosmic – the ongoing journey;.

This has been rumored for a while, but it looks like Facebook has started testing their new Paypal-like e-commerce system with some 3rd-party apps.

The payments platform could position Facebook to become a significant e-commerce player, not just challenging Ebay (and PayPal), but also Amazon and iTunes.

While technically still operating in the red, CEO Mark Zukerberg said they expect to be profitable this year. Presumably part of this proected revenue increase will be coming from the new payments system.

One can only assume this eventually work with Facebook Connect, as well as the iPhone app.

Of course, MySpace has their own in the works as well.

FT.com / Companies / Media – Facebook brings in payment system.

I’ve been asked this 3 times in the past month….How do I insert music notes or hearts into my Facebook or Twitter  status?

Even my mom knows how emoticons work, but these aren’t your average smiley face characters; you’re entering the strange world of ASCII SPECIAL CHARACTERS!

There are two ways…

1) Copy ASCII symbols from here (copy paste them directly)

♥ – heart
♫ – Two musical notes
♪ – One musical note
☺ – white smiley face
☻ – black smiley face
☼ – sunshine

2) Make them yourself!

This works for some people and not for others, but each of these characters can be typed on your keyboard using the ‘alt’ button.  If you’re on a laptop make sure you ‘Num Lock’ is on!

Next, hold down ‘alt’ (the one in the bottom left of your keyboard) and press type the following:

Hold ‘alt’ then type 1 -☺ (white smiley face symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 2 -☻(black smiley face symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 3 – ♥ (heart symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 4 – ♦ (diamond symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 5 – ♣ (clubs symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 6 – � (black diamond with question mark)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 7 – • (round bullet)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 8 – ◘ (block with white circle)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 9 – ○ (unfilled white circle)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 10 – ◙  (block with filled white circle)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 11 – ♂ (man symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 12 – ♀ (woman symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 13 – ♪  (One music note)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 14 – ♫ (Two music notes)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 15 – ☼ (sunburst)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 16 – ► (black triangle pointing right)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 17 – ◄ (black triangle pointing left)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 18 – ↕ (up and down arrows)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 19 – ‼ (bang bang, or two exclamation points…it’s one character)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 20 – ¶ (paragraph symbol)

Here’s the thing:  Facebook relationships are basically a 1:1 ratio.  You’re either Friends with someone or Not Friends.  There’s no real in-between.

Twitter has more relationship possibilities:

1) You can follow someone and they follow you back
2) You can follow someone and they don’t follow you back
3) They can follow you and you don’t follow them
4) No one follows either.

If you look closely at the latest Facebook update, you can see that they’ve realized the value in not treating all friends equal.  The improvements to the newsfeed are aimed at making it more Twitter-like.  Suddenly Facebook looks like your Twitter feed!

S0 why use Twitter?

That’s exactly what the folks at Facebook want you to think…why use Twitter?

I think the attraction to Twitter is simplicity.  It’s easy to wrap your mind around the concept.  You’re a fan of someone/something…you want to keep up with what’s going on…so you see their newsfeed.  It’s like getting your own custom CNN newscrawl.   It’s got the voyeuristic attaction that Facebook lacks (yet MySpace had).

But Facebook is certainly trying to compete…just how far will they go?   Joshua Porter at Bokardo thinks they’ll go all the way…

Relationship Symmetry in Social Networks: Why Facebook will go Fully Asymmetric – Bokardo.

Before we knew the cause of the salmonella poisoned peanut butter, the CDC and FDA knew something was amiss.    What’s the fastest way to spread the word?   Social Media!

The avenues employed by the agencies included blogs, texting, mobile versions of agency Web sites, online video from the FDA and CDC on YouTube, podcasts, XML files and RSS feeds including “CDC Emergency Preparedness and Response,” social network outreach on sites like MySpace, a variety of Twitter entities like @FDArecalls and @CDCemergency, virtual worlds, and widgets. The various channels carried both breaking news as well as education information on Salmonella.

So the next time you’re feeling guilty about the amount of time you’re spending on Facebook…just remember that you could be saving lives! 

Social Media Saves Lives: Salmonella Outbreak Pushes HHS, FDA, CDC to Get Social – ReadWriteWeb.