Facebook in real life?
http://www.bitrebels.com/social/facebook-in-real-life/

YouTube microwave
http://itvt.com/story/6214/microwave-oven-plays-youtube-videos-while-heating-food

Minneapolis using social media to share storm warnings
http://www.examiner.com/x-5611-Minneapolis-Tech-Culture-Examiner~y2009m12d10-City-of-Minneapolis-utilizes-social-media-to-announce-snow-emergencies

Google Earth technology to show deforestation
http://earth2tech.com/2009/12/10/copenhagen-google-launches-forest-monitoring-tool/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Possible UFO?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hrWjkn_DHs

As part of listening to the real time web we often stumble upon some entertaining tidbits. We found some interesting nuggets over this past week that range from a primate’s photos on her Facebook fan page to a well-known actor recycling a fund-raising idea. In case you missed these, here’s our top 5 most interesting social media stories of the week:

Nonga, an Orangutang’s Facebook Fan Page. She has a raisin-dispenser that dubs as a camera that uploads her photos directly to her Fan Page.

Fiesta Movement agents and their Twitter friends gathered at the Palladium in West Hollywood Tuesday night and set a new Guinness World Record for the “most attendees at a tweetup” Coverage here.

Sean Kingston: “Follow Me (Twitter Song)”. Sing Kingston tries to gain Twitter followers through song…it’s actually pretty good. Audio here.

Ben Stiller attempts to raise funds for schools in Haiti with StillerStrong. Not sure if he’s serious, but our headbands are en route to the Filtrbox office!

Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal could shake the up social media in a big way in terms of the way we watch “television” programs. Here’s the Hulu video clip of Conan O’brien’s humerous reaction to the purchase.

For the month of November, the Filtrbox team is participating in “Movember” also known as “No Shave November.” We are growing out our facial hair for the entire month of November to show our support for those with prostate cancer and raise money for a good cause. Instead of shaving that out-of-control beard or trimming up that dapper mustache, join us by putting the money you would have spent on razors and shaving cream and donate it to help those with prostate cancer.

What is Movember?
“Movember” originated in Adelaide, Australia by a group of men who were looking for a new way to raise money for men’s health issues, such as prostate cancer and depression. Movemeber has become a worldwide phenomenon, raising moola for men’s health issues.

The ‘Stachers
During our last round Brad Jordan was the triumphant mustache champion who outgrew the competition.

This year, the Filtrbox mustravaganza has some fresh competitors. The newcomers are Mike Fraietta, who joined Filtrbox last spring, as well as Dan Bergeron and Jared Schaffer, both joining Filtrbox in September. They are competing against Patrick Cameron, Ari Newman, and Ryan Tyer for one of two championships - the most money raised and the best ’stache. Reigning champ Brad gave the field a two week head start as he tended to the newest member of his family. He is back in the mix and may have already surpassed a few of the competitors.

Check out the competitors dailybooth pages to get the latest updates:
Ari, Brad, Ryan, Dan, Jared, Mike and Patrick.

If you are so inclined you can get in on the fun by joining our team or by donating to the cause here.

Exciting news, Filtrbox just keeps getting better! We’ve improved the service by adding several important content sources, better article classification, source metrics on relevant articles and a new summary view that helps you spot trends more quickly.

Filtrbox G2 now monitors public Facebook Groups/Fan Pages, over a million forums (threaded conversation pages), YouTube, Flickr and more. This expanded source coverage will ensure you never miss a conversation regardless of where it starts. All of the relevant conversations are visible in your dashboard providing a single consolidated view for monitoring, alerting and engagement.

The system now classifies mentions into 7 content types to make it easy to see where the conversations are happening and search just the sources that are important to you. We have also added domain traffic data for relevant articles to help you gauge the distribution of each post.

The 7 content types are:

* News - mainstream news and editorial outlets.
* Blogs - weblogs, blogs, the blogosphere, etc. Filtrbox monitors over 25 million of them.
* Social - sometimes known as microblogs. This includes Facebook public data, Twitter, and FriendFeed.
* Forums - online groups and forums. These are sites that provide threaded discussion groups and are extremely popular with online communities and organized groups. We now monitor over a million of them!
* Comments - All mentions found in blog comments are put into this category, and tend to have COMMENT in the title to clearly identify them.
* Video - Filtrbox now monitors YouTube, and classifies mentions and comments that match Filtrs from known online video sites.
* Images - Flickr and other popular online image sites.

Here is a brief video overview of the new dashboard:

 

A quick update from Las Vegas - We are at BlogWorldExpo this week joining in the fun. Yesterday, Filtrbox was the title sponsor of a great inagural Social Media for Executives session. Some great discussions and tons of advice were live-blogged by @agarahn. Check out the #execsocmed hashtag to check it out.

Shhhh. Tomorrow we are giving away 100 Filtrbox t-shirts in 10 minutes at Blogworld. 10:30 am, right after the morning keynote, right in front of the bookstore. Tell your BWE friends! The shirts are great.

October threatens to be a seriously busy month for Filtrbox, and that’s a good thing! This week alone, Ari pulls double duty on Thursday October 8th, presenting another chapter in our webinar series and presenting on a panel at CSIA’s DEMOgala.

Our webinar, “Social Media: Energizing Your Brand on Wikipedia,” gives participants an opportunity to learn more about how Wikipedia works, and how companies can leverage it with their social media programs. We are very lucky to have Gutenberg Communications’ David King co-hosting with us. He and Ari will also be presenting the following webinar on October 22nd, “B2B Social Media: Strategies that Pack a Punch.” Our webinars are free and open to the public so please feel free to share them with any interested parties.

Colorado’s CSIA puts on its annual DEMOgala at the Convention Center this week, always a great event, and this year promises to no different. Ari is on a panel along with eCairn’s CEO, Dominique Lahaix, Red Door Interactive’s president, Reid Carr, and NewsGator’s general manager of Media and Data Services, Walked Fenton. “How Do you Value Customer Engagement or Build a Social ROI” is moderated by Perficient’s managing director of Global Offshore Services, Kevin Sheen. The panel will take a closer look at how companies interpret social media, what tools they use, best practices, and how to measure ROI.

BlogWorld takes place in Las Vegas mid-month, and the day before kickoff Dave Taylor and Doyle Albee present the Executive Social Media Briefing – with Filtrbox as title sponsor! It’s a one day conference aimed at truly helping executives understand the impact social media can have, internally and externally, as well as discussing best practices. Ari will be presenting on a panel with EMBARQ’s general manager for Customer Operations, Linda O’Neil, and Liz Ryan, a corporate consultant on workplace issues and author of Happy About Online Networking: The Virtual-ly Simple Way to Build Professional Relationships.

We hope you will join us for one of these great events! In the meantime, we are putting the finishing touches on a new release that will add support for several key content sources you have been asking for!

We have just updated our RESTful API and are inviting exisitng and new Filtrbox parnters to come help us bang on the API for a day. In exchange for having some fun and getting free food and drink, we are also giving away an iPod Touch to the best app/hack of the day.

Format is simple - we’ll provide a demo/overview to kick off the event and then give everyone the day to hack/play, ask questions, etc. We’ll provide lunch and then wrap up with a beer-fueled demo session at the end of the day. The crowd favorite app/hack wins an iPod Touch!

More info on the EventBrite page here. Hope you can join us!

Location: Downtown Boulder, CO, this Friday October 9th

We have some exciting news to share! Filtrbox and E SOURCE are working together to provide North American utilities with strategic social media guidance, supported by a robust monitoring, analysis and engagement platform. Utilities, like many other industries, are starting to embrace social media as a way to effectively communicate with their customers, via tools such as Twitter, YouTube, and corporate blogs.

Working with E SOURCE on this project has been great. We are glad to see the Utilities starting to better leverage social media. We think proactive social media listening and engagement will greatly benefit the companies that fully embrace it, especially in times of service problems or ongoing issues. E SOURCE is also leveraging our TwitterRank technology to assess who the most influential Utilities are on Twitter.

“Although social media is a relatively new space, utilities are learning that they can effectively leverage these evolving channels to better serve their customers, manage their brands, and increase satisfaction levels,” said Matthew Burks of E SOURCE. “An integrated social media strategy has strong potential benefits; however, even the first step of listening can provide invaluable insight into public opinion and critical brand and operational concerns. By teaming with Filtrbox, we give our utility clients the ability to monitor, analyze and, if appropriate, engage in relevant real-time online conversations.”

More about E SOURCE: They have been providing unbiased, objective energy business intelligence to over 300 utilities and large energy users for more than 20 years. Our research analysts and consultants are among the best minds in the business, delivering significant and timely research that equips our customers with the right information at the right time to make better, faster decisions. We predict and address trends, technologies, and problems related to energy efficiency, utility customer satisfaction, program design, marketing, customer management, and sustainability.

Link to press release on PitchEngine: Filtrbox and E SOURCE Join Forces to Bring Social Media Marketing Strategies to the Utility Industry

We just posted new jobs in sales and development on a number of job boards. Our business is growing and we are looking for some motivated, talented people to help us make it happen. Rather than repost everything already on our jobs page, just click here and check it out. If you know someone looking for a new gig and wants to work at a growing start-up, please feel free to forward along.

Andrew Hyde (@andrewhyde) of Startup Weekend and Techstars shows how to customize Filtrs to monitor individual Twitter accounts for specific topics. Check out the video.

Note: A Filtrbox G2 account is required for this hack. If you have a Basic account and want more power and more control, drop us a line and try G2 for 14 days for free!