Mediaboss Marketing

NEW YORK - Okay, admit it. We're all crazy about our dogs.

We watch them on YouTube and post their pictures on Facebook.

But now it's time for dogs to have a social network of their own. At least that's what the brains behind a New York startup think.

Take, for example, a dog named Bandit.

"He had plenty of friends back in San Francisco," his owner Anthony McGee says. "But now it's time for him to meet new friends in New York."

So McGee used the startup site MatchPuppy.com to find puppy playdates, a clear indication that social networking has indeed gone to the dogs.

Site founder Michael Chiang says the original business plan was to help with 'puppy love,' connecting owners looking to breed their pets. But eventually the team decided "just friends" was okay too.

"We realized there was a bigger need in the market, to help dog owners kind of facilitate playdates online," Chiang says.

Matches are made by neighborhood, breed, and age. But some pet owners have the same kinds of concerns with it as with 'human' online matchmaking.

"I would be a little concerned, because I don't know the dog," said prospective puppy-dater Shameika Bloice.

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'Match Puppy': Social Networking Has Gone to the Dogs

04-05-2012 02:17 PlayUp offers live scores and stats for leagues including NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, College Football and Basketball. And if you're a fan of international sports, we have got you covered with all the best Soccer, Cricket, Rugby and much more! Cricket Umpire social game is also available here and former Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh would be giving his expert inputs in the social games. For more log onto-

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Tech and You: Social networking app - PlayUp - NewsX - Video

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science have developed a program they're calling Livehoods, which organizes "check-ins" from the popular social networking site Foursquare into a cultural database of local habits and trends.

Livehoods' organizers say the program provides an opportunity for city planners and others to track and aggregate the real-time cultural habits and diverse makeup of certain neighborhoods, from block to block, and to see how they change over time.

"A lot of people might look at this project and say at first, it's obvious," says Justin Cranshaw, a Ph.D. student at CMU and one of the project's leading researchers. "Maybe it's obvious to locals, but to people unfamiliar with that part of the city, this [provides] an accurate snapshot of what's really going on."

The program's algorithm examines the check-ins and identifies unique trends pertaining to that particular neighborhood. This information is then mapped to reveal an area's "Livehood," unique to each section of a city, displaying the most popular things to do and places to go. A user can browse the most frequented locations in a certain area, see what kinds of places they are -- restaurants, movie theaters, bars, etc. -- and learn where people with similar habits are hanging out across the city.

One wonders whether enough types of city-dwellers are logged onto Foursquare these days, but Cranshaw insists that the social-networking site has become more diverse. When Foursquare first started in 2009, it seemed primarily geared toward technologically savvy people in big cities who wanted to score the most check-ins at their local dive bar.

Though it still only reflects the cultural habits of those who own a smartphone and choose to use its service, the site has clearly expanded significantly. Today Foursquare boasts over 20 million users around the world, and it has racked up around 2 billion "check-ins" at various locations. Driving across the country last fall, it was even possible to check in at "the middle of nowhere" somewhere in North Carolina. There was a mayor and a badge and everything.

Cranshaw notes that over the years, computers have become more adept at map-making and providing detailed directions and reviews, but they're still "not that great at determining real cultural knowledge." Livehoods, he says, sorts the local "knowledge" of each community into browsable regions.

"In urban studies, researchers have always had to interview lots of people to get a sense of a community's character and, even then, they must extrapolate from only a small sample of the community," Raz Schwartz, a visiting scholar at the CMU School of Computer Science's Human-Computer Interaction Institute and another researcher on the project, said in a statement. "Now, by using Foursquare data, we're able to tap a large database that can be continually updated."

So far, Livehoods has maps for San Francisco, New York and Pittsburgh, and has analyzed millions of unique check-ins at various locations.

Cranshaw said that the project will not only help city developers and planners, but also business-owners looking to determine the best location to open a new store or restaurant.Certainly advertisers and other marketing agencies will be happy to gain access to the information as well.

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Livehoods Maps Neighborhoods For The Social-Networking Age

Facebook, the company that turned the social Web into acultural and business phenomenon, is worth as much as $95bn, accordingto the price range for its upcoming initial public offering of stock.

Facebook's IPO, expected in a couple of weeks, would be the biggest so far for an internet company. Facebook disclosed the price range of $28 to $35 pershare in a regulatory filing on Thursday.

At the high end, Facebook and its current shareholders could raise as muchas $13.58bn, far more than the $1.9bn raised in the 2004offering for current Internet IPO record-holder Google Inc.

The IPO valuedGoogle, now worth about $200bn, at $23bn.

Facebook Inc's IPO has been highly anticipated, not just because of howmuch money it will raise but because Facebook itself is so popular.

Theworld's largest online social network has more than 900 million users.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who turns 28 this month, has emerged as a wunderkindleader who has guided Facebook through unprecedented growth from its scrappystart as an online hangout for Harvard students.

Road show

Facebook's offering values the company at $76bn to $95bn,based on the expected number of Facebook shares following the IPO.

Facebook's next step is an "IPO road show," where executives talk topotential investors about why they should invest in the stock.

Read more:
Facebook pushes record-breaking IPO

Newswise DALLAS The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) House of Delegates adopted new policy guidelines on the appropriate use of social media and social networking sites by physicians during the FSMBs 2012 Annual Meeting in Fort Worth, Texas, on April 28.

Developed by the FSMBs Special Committee on Ethics and Professionalism, the "Model Policy Guidelines for the Appropriate Use of Social Media and Social Networking in Medical Practice" provide recommendations for state medical boards to consider in educating their licensees on the proper use of social media and social networking websites.

Digital media has enormous potential for doctors and patients, allowing us more opportunities to share information and establish meaningful professional relationships, said FSMB President and CEO Humayun Chaudhry, DO. However, physicians also need to be aware of how to maintain the same professional and ethical standards in their online activity as they do in the rest of their practice. Failing to do so can hurt patients and physicians careers.

Violations of online professionalism are prevalent among physicians, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars at Yale in collaboration with the FSMB, found that 92 percent of state medical boards in the United States have received reports of violations of online professionalism.

Developed by the FSMB to encourage physicians who use social media to protect themselves from unintended consequences, the new model guidelines include these recommendations:

Physicians should only have online interaction with patients when discussing the patients medical treatment within the physician-patient relationship and these interactions should never occur on personal social networking or social media websites.

Patient privacy and confidentiality must be protected at all times, especially on social media and social networking websites. Although physicians may discuss their experiences in non-clinical settings, they should never provide any information that could be used to identify patients.

Physicians should be aware that any information they post on a social networking site may be disseminated to a larger audience, and that what they say may be taken out of context or remain publicly available online in perpetuity.

The "Model Policy Guidelines for the Appropriate Use of Social Media and Social Networking in Medical Practice" is available on the FSMB website at http://www.fsmb.org.

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New FSMB Policy Addresses Appropriate Use of Social Media by Physicians