Mediaboss Marketing

Gone may be days of sitting next to a screaming baby or in front of a “kicker” on your flight. Airlines are now offering passengers the option of choosing their seatmates based on social networking profiles.

This month, Dutch airline KLM began its new social-seating program, Meet and Seat, which allows customers to upload personal information from their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and use the details to choose their seatmates on flights.

(MORE: Hipmunk’s Flight Search: Just as Hip on Android)

“For at least 10 years, there has been this question about serendipity and whether you could improve the chances of meeting someone interesting onboard,” Erik Varwijk, a managing director in charge of passenger business at KLM told the New York Times. “But the technology just wasn’t available.” Varwijk told the Times about 200 passengers have participated so far.

Passengers with confirmed reservations indicate what social information they want to share, and are presented with a seating chart highlighting other passengers with available profiles. Passengers can then select a spot next to someone they find interesting, and that person will receive a message with their new seatmate’s profile.

Analysts believe the new program will be a low-cost way for airlines to get to know their customers and will attract business travelers and backpackers looking to network, according to the Times.

As long as both parties are willing to chat, there is great opportunity for social-networking. However, as USA Today reports, you should remember that both the airline and other passengers will have access to your personal information. Although KLM prohibits users from infringing on others’ rights, there’s still the potential for your info to fall into dishonest hands.

Last year, Malaysia Airlines launched a broader version of the program, called MHBuddy. MHBuddy allows passengers to check-in using the airline’s Facebook page and see if any “friends” will be on their flight or in their destination city. The program has 3,000 monthly active users and also allows Facebook friends to sit together.

Currently, Meet and Seat is only offered for flights between Amsterdam and New York and flights between San Francisco and São Paulo, but KLM hopes to provide the program for all of its intercontinental flights by spring.

(MORE: Pin Crowd: What’s next for the hot site Pinterest?)

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Fly the Social Skies: More Networking at 10,000 Feet

According to a TV Guide user study, social networking discussion about television shows drives tune-in, loyalty and live viewing ratings. Due to social network impressions, 17% of respondents polled said they became a fan of a particular show, and 31% claimed they continued to watch a program. Twenty seven percent said that they watch more live programming to avoid internet spoilers, up from 20% in 2010. TV Guide queried from it’s over 24 million monthly users.

Some more detail on the analysis of the user-survey –

Those who claimed a social networking impression prompted them to begin watching a show cited reasons being that people had good things to say about it (76%), topics were interesting (64%) and 13% claimed that they just like to watch shows that others are watching. When asked about why they were continuing to watch a particular show, 77% said that social networking impressions helped maintain their interest, 66% cited topics and storylines again and 34% mentioned controversial moments.

The complete results of the survey conducted in February will be presented by TVGuide.com at Hill Holliday’s TVnext Summit in Boston on Monday. TV Guide has stated that their findings came from the survey of 3,041 users.

Somewhat on-topic – in France, one can’t even mention the words “Facebook” or “Twitter” in a TV show.

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Social Networking Drives TV Ratings

DETROIT, Feb. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Beta version of tagzuna was launched few months back and it was greeted with overwhelming response from it's user community. tagzuna team seems to be pretty confident about the new app taking over most of the social networking sites in no time.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120228/CG61065)

tagzuna is the worlds first tag based social networking platform. If you are thinking this as any other social networking site then hold your thoughts as you will go wrong, here is the main reason. tagzuna empowers it's users to follow tags based on their interest and choice. This gives tagzuna an edge over other social networking giants including facebook and twitter. Existing social networks provide only the option of following people due to which we are limited to our circle of friends/followers. So we would be receiving updates from people we follow irrespective of the posts being interesting to us or not. But what if we want to follow things that we like.

tagzuna makes it possible to follow things that we like. So we can follow tags that are interesting to us and receive all the public updates related to those tags. We can follow our interests along with the people we like to make social networking useful and entertaining. It redefines the way we have been thinking about social networking.

Best of all, we can micro blog, share URL's, upload images and videos. One simple thing that we have to do is tag the posts to reach out to millions of users. We also get the option to share posts with only our followers or create personal tags to share with specific group of people that we want, so that our little secrets are still maintained.

User can tag the post with relevant tags but if the tags doesn't exist, it's just type and create easy process to create new tags. Any entity in this world can be created as a tag by any registered user on the website. User can also add image and description to any of the public tags.

"We do like social networking, but we wanted something more than just social networking where users are empowered to choose what they like" say Krishna and Vasanth, Co-Founders of tagzuna.

You can sign up to experience an exciting new way of social networking at  http://www.tagzuna.com

For more exiting features of tagzuna see http://www.tagzuna.com/tagzuna_features

Media Contact:

Administrator @tagzuna tagzuna, LLC, 6183031830, admin@tagzuna.com

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

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tagzuna to Take Networking Beyond Social Networking

Erykah Badu, no stranger to bare skin-related controversy, has pissed off Malaysian authorities with a publicity photo. The Associated Press (via Entertainment Weekly) reports that after seeing this photo, wherein Badu's bare shoulders are tattooed with the word "Allah" in Arabic, a government committee for the Muslim-majority country decided Badu was unfit to play her scheduled show in Kuala Lumpur this week.

Malaysia's Information minister Rais Yatim said in a statement to the AP that the temporary Allah tats are "an insult to Islam and a very serious offense" and that the photos have "triggered public criticism that could jeopardize national security and cause a negative impact to the government's image."

Badu is no longer permitted to perform as planned in Malaysia, but is permitted to stay in the country as a tourist (she'd already flown over for the show), according to the AP.

A version of the same publicity photo without the offending Arabic word was used to promote the concert. (See above.)

Rocket Juice and the Moon: "Hey Shooter" [ft. Erykah Badu]:

Stream of "Hey Shooter [ft. Erykah Badu]" unavailable on this device.

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Erykah Badu Banned From Performing in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Muslim-majority Malaysia on Tuesday banned a planned concert by Erykah Badu after a photograph appeared showing the Grammy-winning singer with the Arabic word for Allah written on her body.

The American R&B singer was scheduled to perform Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur, but some Muslim groups said Badu was an unsuitable role model for young Malaysians after seeing a publicity photo of her with what appeared to be temporary tattoos of the word Allah on her bare shoulders.

A government committee that includes police and Islamic policy officials decided to forbid Badu's show because the body art was "an insult to Islam and a very serious offence," Information Minister Rais Yatim said in a statement.

The photo of Badu had "triggered public criticism that could jeopardize national security and cause a negative impact to the government's image," the statement added.

The 41-year-old, Dallas-born singer had already arrived in Malaysia. She can stay as a tourist but will not be allowed to perform, an Information Ministry official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public statements.

Razman Razali, managing director of the show's Malaysian organizer, Pineapple Concerts, said his company hopes the ban will be reversed.

Badu is "worried and dismayed," Razman told The Associated Press. She was slated to perform in an auditorium that can hold about 3,000 spectators.

It was the first concert by a Western performer to be banned in Malaysia in recent years. Several other stars, including Gwen Stefani and Avril Lavigne, were told to dress modestly while performing.

The photograph of Badu, which also appears on her official fan website, attracted attention after Malaysia's most widely read English-language daily, The Star, published it Monday.

On Tuesday, the newspaper apologized to Muslims for what it called an "oversight," saying it deeply regretted any offence sparked by the photo, which was "inadvertently published." The Home Ministry summoned The Star's editors to explain the photograph, which caused some Muslim activists to demand the newspaper's suspension.

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Malaysia bans Erykah Badu concert over photo of singer with body art of Arabic word for Allah