Open up your mind and say, ahh...

The FBI wants to step up their monitoring of social media. Earlier this month the bureau posted a Request for Information (RFI) from potential vendors for a powerful, custom-designed social media monitoring app. However, the most worrying thing isn’t that the FBI wants to scrape social media data from terrorists’ Twitter feeds, it’s that they don’t already have a dashboard with these capabilities.

In the RFI, the FBI described their dream software suite in terms that would chill most privacy activists. Various departments at the bureau (cybercrime, anti-terrorism, etc.) would be able to create specific social media and search engine alerts that would be keyed to a Google Maps-style geospatial map. The map (and other stand-alone features within the suite) would also contain information on weather, traffic, domestic terrorist intelligence, and foreign terrorist intelligence. Using the software suite, agents could instantly create spot reports. Agents would also be able to conduct real-time monitoring of public messages/posts on social networks including Twitter, Facebook, and, adorably, MySpace.

The end result is something out of the television show 24. In the proposal, the FBI talks repeatedly about the need to monitor open source intelligence–a fancy buzzterm for publicly available information such as Twitter posts, newspaper articles, television broadcasts, and television programs. Analysis of content from foreign publications and broadcast networks has been a mainstay of U.S. intelligence agencies; apparently, it is something of interest to the FBI too.

Meanwhile, the fact that the FBI has requested information from vendors about building this software does not mean that it’s a done deal. RFIs are preliminary steps that alert government contractors to potential projects; it will be some time before this software (if approved) makes its way onto FBI computers.

Data scraping has been a favorite tool of the FBI for quite some time. According to civil rights groups such as the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the bureau has routinely made large bulk purchases of consumer spending data and demographic information datamined from the Internet. These purchases are intended to get around provisions largely prohibiting the FBI from spying or intelligence-gathering on domestic targets without warrants or due suspicion. In 2007, it was revealed that the FBI even data mined Middle Eastern grocery store sales records; the FBI would not disclose if any arrests occurred due to their monitoring of ethnic food stores. The FBI also solicited bulk information from telephone companies. Apart from tracking down suspected terrorists, it’s believed the FBI mined bulk data in search of, among other crimes, credit card fraud and car theft.

The fact that the FBI is even searching for a social media monitoring dashboard, however, is puzzling. Most Americans are blissfully unaware of how nearly every activity on the Internet is monitored, analyzed, and repackaged for a host of companies whose market-driven spy apparatuses are scarier than anything the government has to offer. In the past 10 years, the market research and Internet marketing industries have commissioned plenty of sophisticated analysis software with Big Brother-ish capabilities. The puzzling coda is that market researchers and analysts, working for private corporations, snoop on Americans’ online activities far more effectively than the FBI themselves.

Image: Flickr users Aislinn Ritchie, Thumbnail: Flickr user Luca Argalia

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

While social media has been around for a while, there are still aspects of it that are very new, such as policy development. Such policies have to stand the test of time and evolve as the workplace — and the social media platforms and their usage — changes.

In August, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) released a report on the outcome of investigations into 14 cases involving the use of social media and employers’ social media policies. The NLRB is an independent agency in the U.S. government that protects employees’ rights to join together to improve wages and working conditions, with or without a union.

Here’s an overview of the report and some pointers on what your company should consider when it comes to social media policy development.

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Why Is This Report Important?

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Eric B. Meyer, a partner in the labor and employment group of the law firm Dilworth Paxson LLP, explains the report’s significance. “It provides a window into what the NLRB considers legal and illegal, not only with respect to employers who discipline employees based solely on social media content that employees publish, but also as to social media policies that employers implement.”

So the report isn’t exactly the law. But it is one of the first detailed explanations about how existing laws are applied to social media policies and practices at work. It gives specific examples of policies, statements and conduct that is and isn’t OK.

Heather Bussing, an independent employment attorney, outlines the advantage the NLRB report provides. “The law is statutes and published decisions by the courts. Agency decisions and regulations are also considered law as long as they’re consistent with the statutes and court decisions. An agency report explaining its thinking and how it has applied statutes and cases to specific situations is about as close to ‘the law’ as you can get. So having a bunch of examples issued lets us have a better picture of what will and won’t get us in trouble, and that is probably even more useful than the law.”

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Defining Media and Social Media

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One of the interesting aspects of the report is the mention of “employers’ social and general media policies.” Mark Neuberger, with Foley & Lardner LLP, a global law firm representing management in all aspects of labor and employment law, believes the report might suggest they are the same for the purposes of policy development. “The NLRB is concerned with protecting an employee’s right to engage in protected concerted activity, regardless of the medium in which that right is expressed. Before social media, Board case law dealt with expression in verbal speech, written speech and even symbolic speech — the use of inflatable rats being just one example of expressive speech.”

Bussing breaks down for us the definition of “protected concerted activity” and why we need to pay attention to it:

“Criticism of an employer’s practices about wages, hours and working conditions is protected no matter how it is expressed as long as it is ‘protected, concerted activity.’ ‘Protected’ is any statement about wages, hours or working conditions. ‘Concerted’ means the employee’s statements were ‘engaged in with or on the authority of other employees.’ So the statement has to be about working conditions — it can’t be a personal attack that is ‘so disloyal, reckless or maliciously untrue’ that it loses protected status. The statement also has to be directed to other employees or to the company on behalf of the employees — not just personal gripes, honking or wailing. But it doesn’t matter where or how the employee makes the statement if it is also ‘protected’ and ‘concerted.’”

And nowadays, that “where” includes Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others. Bussing notes, “The report focuses both on where, how and to whom the statements were made. It also explains the limits of the protections — offensive and critical statements that are personal attacks rather than criticism of the wages, hours or working conditions are generally not protected.”

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For Businesses With No Policy

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Even if you don’t have a defined social media policy, this report might still have an effect on your decisions. Meyer says, “Regardless of whether you have a policy, the NLRB takes the position that — except in very limited circumstances — you can’t discipline employees who discuss workplace responsibilities and performance together online, even if the online conversation includes swearing, sarcasm or insults.

On the bright side, Bussing adds, “At least you won’t get in trouble for your policy. But before you fire someone for being a complete jerk, think about whether the employee was being critical of wages, hours or working conditions and was communicating to or for other employees.”

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For Businesses With a Policy

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For organizations with a policy currently in place, Bussing suggests that you “make sure it does not try to control what the employees can say and cannot say about the company. If it does, you can be in trouble with the NLRB.” She also mentions this could be the sign of other issues within the organization.

Meyer adds, “The NLRB does not believe that employers can generally prohibit employees from discussing the company, its employees or competitors — even if the comments are disparaging.”

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Don’t Make Your Policy Too Broad

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Another noteworthy aspect of the report is that the NLRB stated in five cases that the company’s social media policy was found to be “too broad” and therefore, unlawful. Bussing explains what could be described as “too broad” when it comes to policy: “’Too broad’ is generally translated from legalese to English as: ‘It covers so many things that it’s impossible to understand what the heck it means.’” When a court or enforcement agency says a policy is ‘too broad,’ that means it’s invalid, unenforceable and basically worthless. So all those well-intended protections are down the drain. And it’s worse than having no policy at all, since you could have a National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) violation because of the policy.

A no-brainer example of a policy that violated the NLRA was the blogging policy that prohibited employees from “making disparaging remarks about the company or its supervisors” and from talking about the company “in any media without the company’s permission.”

But another policy that violated the NLRA was one that prohibited employees from saying anything on social media that would ‘violate, compromise or disregard the rights and reasonable expectations as to privacy or confidentiality of any person or entity.” While this was probably intended to protect trade secrets and confidential medical or financial information, a tweet complaining about your cubemate’s smelly burrito (or its foreseeable consequences) could violate this policy.”

Meyer suggests, “To avoid this problem, an employer should carefully tailor his social media policy to serve a legitimate business interest which, at the same time, is not intended to interfere with the employees’ right to form a union or engage in other protected concerted activity.”

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A Caution About Monitoring

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Speaking of unions, Neuberger offers an additional observation about monitoring activity. “First, under the NLRA, employers are prohibited from engaging in ‘surveillance’ or monitoring employees in exercise of their right to form and join a union.” If an employer monitors social networking sites to determine who the union sympathizers and organizers are, they have engaged in an unfair labor practice. “The second is that when employers discipline or discharge for violations of a computer usage or social media policy, they can expect the employee to claim discriminatory enforcement. The problem employers face in defending such claims is that misuse of the computers and Internet is so prevalent in all workplaces that the employee stands a good chance of showing the employer ‘knew or should have known’ that there were other, more egregious violations of policy that were overlooked by the company.”

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Conclusion

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The National Labor Relations Board report isn’t designed to scare anyone. In fact, just the opposite. It’s been released to offer insights into and guidance for workplace social media. This will help to develop policies and use social media in a responsible way as we move forward and social media goes more mainstream.

It also means that like many of the guidelines and policies we have around the workplace, we must clearly define our expectations, communicate with and train our employees and hold people accountable.

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More Small Business Resources From OPEN Forum:

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- 15 Keyboard Shortcuts To Enhance Your PC Productivity

- 5 Services For Building Websites On A Budget

- 10 Accessories To Boost Office Morale

- Top 5 Foursquare Mistakes Committed By Small Businesses

- How To Use Social Media For Recruiting

Inmates incarcerated in the state of California who update Facebook, or have third-parties do so on their behalf, will likely soon find their status-updating privileges revoked by Facebook.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is working with Facebook to ensure that Facebook accounts set up and monitored by prison inmates are terminated swiftly.

The CDCR will report accounts in violation to the Facebook Security Department for removal. Citizens are also encouraged to report inmate accounts by calling CDCR’s Office of Victim and Survivor Rights & Services at 1-877-256-6877.

“Access to social media allows inmates to circumvent our monitoring process and continue to engage in criminal activity,” CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate says. “This new cooperation between law enforcement and Facebook will help protect the community and potentially avoid future victims.”

The CDCR’s crack down is in response to “numerous incidents” involving inmates who have used Facebook to deliver threats or sexual advances to victims from prison.

The CDCR does stipulate that an inmate is allowed to have a Facebook profile, so long as it was created prior to incarceration and not updated or accessed while the prisoner is behind bars.

Image courtesy of Flickr, CACorrections

To download the full Pivot report, please click here…

We are entering the beginning of the end of the destination web as we have known it. Consumers increasingly spend time in social networks and less in their email inboxes and visiting traditional websites. As such, brands continue to race to social media sites in the hopes of connecting with consumers when their attention is focused on conversations relevant to those brands. Part of the challenge however, is earning the attention of consumers not just once, but also building a relationship with them over time.

Many brands are, of course, developing a presence within customer networks of relevance such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. While some are finding initial success, most are looking for ways to grow the size of their networks and and the depth and endurance of their engagement. In social media, a new wave of digital advertising services and products offer brands the ability to reach beyond their existing communities. Twitter’s Promoted Products suite, Facebooks contextual, friend-based banners and “Sponsored Stories” program, and YouTube’s Promoted Videos, for example, help brands extend their reach by tapping into the social and interest graphs of consumers. The hope is that businesses can attract attention, find relevance, and build more effective communities through a more engaging social advertising program.

The Pivot team set out to learn more about the state of social advertising and its opportunities by conducting an industry survey of 230 brand managers, executives, and marketing professionals.

Is Social Advertising the Cure for Banner Blindness?

Digital advertising, such as banners and keyword buys, has long provided businesses with products to generate opportunities for clickthroughs, but these products are proving ineffective in social networks. In a phenomenon dubbed “banner blindness,” consumers are learning to ignore many forms of digital advertising in favor of the desired content within their area of focus. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen demonstrated through heat maps where our eyes are focused on a website screen. As you can see, consumer attention zeroes in on text and not the banners around it.

On the social web, banner blindness is even more prevalent. In social networks, content populates the social streams of consumer profiles. If we apply the heat map model to social streams, we can visualize how attention may mirror the behavior in traditional web sites. Advertising blindness is a real threat within social networks, but at the same time, represents a new opportunity to rethink paid media. Therefore, social networks are creating products and services to offer brands the ability to earn the attention of the consumers they hope to reach.

For social advertising, the new opportunity for engagement lies in and around the new attention dashboard—the social stream.

Facebook offers managed brand and self-service models. Its Ads and Sponsored Stories sell against interests and people connected to consumers as well as what consumers say or reveal about themselves. Businesses can buy Ads against keywords (interests), languages, geographies, and reach. Additionally, Sponsored Stories turns Page updates, Places check-ins, Likes, and application activity by consumers into advertisements.

Twitter sells Promoted Products that appear within the line of sight of consumers, mostly in close proximity to the social stream. However, that will soon change as Promoted Products are expected to be placed within the social stream itself in mid-2011.

Twitter’s monetization strategy lies more in the ability to reach interest graphs rather than social graphs. The difference is that in a social graph, it’s all about who you know. On the contrary, interest graphs are based on what people share or what they say.

Twitter’s advertising products are designed to reach the right people, in real-time, at the point of attention and intention (P.A.I.). This means that if you search for keywords, you may see a relevant Promoted vehicle in the results. Soon, when you Tweet a relevant keyword or follow a particular business, an ad may show up within the social stream. With Twitter’s Promoted Accounts and Trends products, paid inventory is located just to the right of the stream, but still within immediate view and located strategically to areas where consumer attention also focuses.

Twitter is expected to also introduce self-service products for smaller businesses later in 2011.

As reported, YouTube is the Web’s second largest search engine. YouTube’s Promoted Videos help brands attract customers, viewers and subscribers by displaying video ads against relevant search results and related video content on YouTube. This self-service model complements managed brand services on You Tube that continue to offer traditional digital advertising units such as banners.

Truth in Social Advertising

The Trends in Social Advertising survey was conducted by the Pivot team to measure the interest in and utilization of social advertising. An invitation to the online survey was extended to marketers and agency professionals via email, blogs,Twitter and Facebook. Responses were received between May 18th and May 26th, 2011.

Optimism is rife regarding social advertising. Of those businesses that responded, 60% anticipate that social advertising will be very valuable to them. Another 32% view social advertising as valuable, regardless of the level of satisfaction with past efforts.

Of the respondents in the 2011 Pivot social advertising survey, 85% were either currently experimenting with social advertising or planned to do so within the next 12 months.

Businesses appear to find social advertising successful or worthy of investment. 54% are satisfied or very satisfied with their experiences within social advertising to date.

The Pivot study learned that the major social platforms dominate social advertising plans. 93%, 78%, and 61% of those surveyed have already deployed campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube respectively. Within the next 12 months, businesses will explore social advertising programs beyond these networks to include Foursquare (26%), LinkedIn (21%) and YouTube (20%.) Despite its popularity in media and on Wall Street, brands aren’t ready to advertise on Zynga. Only 2% use Zynga, with 49% stating they’ve no plans to so. However, 13% of respondents do plan to advertise on Zynga within the next 12 months.

For brands to experiment in social advertising, they must find the available products make sense to them. Facebook ranks at the top for the services it offers, with 31% and 38% of surveyed professionals stating that Facebook’s paid program offerings are excellent and good respectively. YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare do not fair as well, however. Marketing professionals, executives and brand managers state that social advertising products on these services are mostly just good and fair as opposed to excellent.

The perceived or realized advantages of social advertising are broadly shared among survey respondents. 54% strongly agree and another 37% agree that social advertising is gaining momentum. 51% strongly believe and 39% agree that social advertising can enhance the investment in other forms of marketing. Intelligence is the name of the game in social media and 37% and 35% strongly agree and agree respectively that social advertising provides more information about prospects and customers than any other form of marketing.

Objectives for social advertising appeared all over the map in the survey, as brands evaluate various outcomes. At 17%, a brand using social advertising to support product introductions or other announcements is the current most common outcome. 13% are seeking to engage existing customers. Tied at 12%, deploying social ads to increase the size of the community or drive traffic to outside destinations. 11% of respondents designed social ads to build brand awareness.

At the bottom half of the objectives, there was an interesting three-way draw at 9% between selling products, gaining feedback and intelligence, and generating leads. At the bottom with 4%, businesses tested social ads for shifting sentiment and generating video views.

When asked how frequently they integrate social media functionality into their advertising campaigns, 38% stated always, 34% did so frequently, and another 21% responded sometimes.

Social advertising is mostly integrated into campaign planning, with 70% stating that their social advertising planning is done at the same time as the rest of the campaign. Planning social advertising before or after the broader campaigns were planned each had 12% response.

Among the group planning to experiment within the next 12 months, Pivot asked which methods they consider “social advertising.” An astounding 83% considered blogging and Tweeting on behalf of a company, product, or brand a form of social ads. Paid placements through social network advertising inventory followed with 69%.

Responses also included:

Viral videos: 67%
Contests: 64%
Promoted Tweets, Trends: 63%
Social media optimization (SMO) 62%
Tweet/Like to Win: 55%
Paid Tweets and Posts: 49%
Advocacy/Ambassador programs: 43%
Influence programs: 38%

Among those businesses currently conducting social advertising, a whopping 67% that engage bloggers and influencers to blog and Tweets on behalf of the company plan to increase this activity. 42% that are seeing success with SMO view it as an opportunity to increase the reach of the brand. 30% will boost investments in viral video creation. 27% that currently advertise in social networks will up their spending and 21% that use Twitter Promoted products specifically plan to expand experimentation. On the contrary, 30% of businesses surveyed do not use Twitter’s Promoted products and do not plan to do so. 41% also do not pay for Tweets and posts and will not invest in this strategy in the coming future. However, 12% do pay for Tweets and posts and will increase their spending on this front while 11% use employ this activity now and will keep it the same.

We were surprised at the low level of advocacy/ambassador programs across the board. While 20% run these programs and plan to escalate these activities, only another 10% are managing these initiatives and will keep them as is. But, 8% plan to decrease the investment, 13% do not plan to use, and 10% aren’t aware of these programs or they do not apply. On the bright side, 25% do not use them today, but they do plan to host advocacy/ambassador programs.

If you’ve run a branded social network address in a traditional advertisement, you’re not alone: 70% of respondents use traditional media to drive engagement in social advertising.

Companies see social advertising as a way to encourage user involvement. 58% seek users to become involved with the brand. Another 16% hope consumers will endorse products or the company within their social streams.

Each network boasts its own culture, defined by how people communicate, discover, and share. As as result, what works in Facebook will differ from what works in Twitter, and what’s effective in YouTube may prove ineffective in Facebook. Social advertising will perform as designed within each platform, forcing an elimination of a “one size fits all” strategy. To that end, 56% are customizing their campaigns significantly for each platform. 19% claim to only customize social advertising campaigns for the major platforms and another 17% only slightly customize the program based on the network.

In social media, engagement doesn’t operate with an on/off switch. Consumers are always-on and expect the same from those with whom they connect. 75% of businesses agree, claiming that social advertising is an ongoing program.

As we hear so often these days, the beginning of the end of social media 1.0 is upon us. Experimentation must now give way to measurable business impact. At the top of the list, of course, is ROI. For social advertisers, the greatest obstacle they face is demonstrating ROI, with 42% and 44% claiming it is either a significant or occasional obstacle. Securing budget is next on the list with 34% and 53% reporting it as a notable or periodic challenge. Getting executive sign-off follows, although securing budgets and getting approval could be tied to those social advertising campaigns that can demonstrate business impact.

Measurement is key to proving the effectiveness of any campaign. Demonstrating ROI, securing budget, and earning executive sign-off represent three of the top challenges in adopting social advertising, making measurement an essential element for expansion and scale. Most frequently, survey respondents use social media analytics tools to measure social advertising effectiveness. The list of measurement tools breaks out as follows:

Social Media Analytics: 63%
Monitoring: 43%
Web analytics: 30%

It’s also interesting to note that 16% are not measuring social advertising efforts currently.

Conclusion

Social advertising is evolving and is forcing creative professionals to think outside of a box that may not, in fact, yet exist. In its research, Pivot did not find a magic bullet to replicable success. The guide for best practices in social advertising is being written as we go. Additionally, the culture of each social network behaves uniquely and requires a customized approach. This represents both a challenge and opportunity for brands as they must invest creativity, purpose, and value into each initiative to learn what consumers want or what they tune out.

Whether or not social advertising represents the cure for banner blindness remains to be proven. Based on the results of this report, brands will continue to experiment to find the best formula for attracting attention and driving desirable and measurable performance and outcomes. As revealed in the report, ROI is important for future funding. Additionally, overcoming advertising blindness is essential to success. Without designing metrics or outcomes into the campaign, it will be difficult for marketers to prove value to executives. Without designing personalization and relevance into social advertising programs, it will be difficult to prove value to consumers.

The future of advertising will be largely influenced by consumer behavior in social networks. Those brands that listen, measure, and evolve programs as a result, will push advertising forward—to the benefit of consumers and ultimately the brand.

The Pivot Conference is designed for brands and their agencies and will take place October 17th and 18th in New York. This year’s theme focuses on an important shift in marketing as brands respond to “The Rise of the Social Consumer.”

If you’d like to join us, you can register here. Please use SOLISVIP for a special 20% discount. Contact Mike Edelhart at medelhart@pivotcon.com to inquire about sponsorships.

It’s been a busy week here at Mashable HQ with the launch of Facebook Places. This round-up of resources from the past week or so comes jam-packed with tips and analysis, including a field guide to using (or disabling) Facebook’s new tool.

As always, there are some interesting entries across all of our coverage areas. In Social Media, check out five of the biggest emerging trends, some geeky web comics, and seven services for reserving your favorite username across the web.

Tech and Mobile offers 10 essential e-books for designers, some keyboard shortcuts for your iPhone , and an infographic on the rise of text messaging.

Business closes the round-up with a list of corporate blogs to learn from and great tips for aspiring copywriters and art directors.

Looking for even more social media resources? You can find this guide every weekend, where you can check out all of the lists-gone-by.

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Social Media

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• 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now
  Social media is no longer just about status updates. It’s connected to our location, shopping habits, entertainment preferences, and nearly everything we do.
• The WikiLeaks Debate: Journalists Weigh In
  For better or worse, WikiLeaks has had important ramifications for journalism. We spoke to four pros for their opinions on the age of Internet whistle blowing.
• A Closer Look at the Privacy Features of Facebook Places [PICS]
  In addition to talk of what the arrival of Facebook Places means for startups like Foursquare , the aftermath of last night’s launch has given rise to a number of questions about privacy.
• A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places
  If you’re ready to start playing, here’s what you’ll need to know about Places.
• HOW TO/NOT TO: Ask Someone Out Online
  We’ve reached that point, folks: the zenith of awkwardness whereby the cables of communication are so plentiful that we are wound in a web of our own making.
• 5 Useful Facebook Trend and Search Services
  Want to know what people are saying on Facebook right now? Search the open data of the world’s largest social network with these 5 handy web apps.
• 7 Services to Find and Reserve Your Name Across the Web
  If you choose a different username for every site you’re on, it can be hard to create a consistent identity across the web. These 7 services can help streamline the process.
• 5 Trends Affecting How We Connect Through Social Media
  Social media is constantly evolving, and the conventions we use to interact and connect change all the time. Here’s a look at where we’re headed.
• The Future of Public Relations and Social Media
  We interviewed 14 PR pros on the future of public relations and how they see social media changing the industry.
• Why Location-Based Social Media Needs to Get “Passive” Aggressive
  Dropping whatever you’re doing to check-in at a new location is just lame. Here’s why the automatic, or “passive” checkin is crucial for the next level of geosocial services.
• 15 Great Geeky Web Comic Strips [PICS]
  Want to dive into the world of web comics? Here are 15 fabulous online cartoon sites and series that are perfect for geeks.

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Tech & Mobile

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• 12 Beginner Tutorials for Getting Started with Adobe Illustrator
  Illustrator is the industry-standard when it comes to vector art, but it can be incredibly intimidating to new users. Here are 12 tutorials to get you started.
• Top 5 Mobile Advertising Trends To Watch
  There’s no question that the mobile advertising market is expanding rapidly, but where’s the best value for your marketing dollars? These 5 trends may shed some light.
• 10 Useful iPhone Keyboard Shortcuts, Tips and Tricks
  Want to be faster and more productive with your iPhone’s virtual keyboard? Check out these handy hacks and features you may not even be aware of.
• HOW TO: Make Your Mobile Websites Act More Like Native Apps
  With all the different mobile platforms out there, it may be smarter to design one great mobile site that feels like a dedicated app on every device. These six frameworks can help.
• 10 Essential Free E-Books for Web Designers
  Looking to build your virtual reference shelf? Here are 10 of the best free e-books for designers, available as either PDFs or in HTML format, that will inspire and educate.
• The Rise of Text Messaging [INFOGRAPHIC]
  Did you know that 14-17 year-old girls in the U.S. send an average of 100 texts each day? Check out this infographic for more interesting SMS stats and facts.
• 10 Incredible iPhone Portrait Photographs
  These 10 gorgeous examples of mobile portraiture will change the way you think about cell phone pics.
• 10 Cool and Unusual Laptop Sleeves [PICS]
  Why not make a statement with your digital outerwear? We’ve found 10 unique laptop sleeves that will add some style and get people talking.
• 5 Open Data Apps That Are Improving Our Cities
  Here are five civic-minded apps based on the Open311 API that can help you help your city, one tweet at a time.

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Business

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• Why Social Media Monitoring Tools Are About to Get Smarter
  For a long time, social monitoring has been about tracking keywords. But recent advances have sparked an arms race in two fields: cluster analysis and semantic analysis.
• 5 Tips for Aspiring Copywriters and Art Directors
  We’ve interviewed some of the top creatives in the advertising industry to get their advice on how to break into the business.
• 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media
  If you’re wondering why you should invest in social media monitoring, consider these 5 advantages your business could glean from the process.
• 7 Steps to Measuring Your Brand’s Social Media Health
  Its not enough to have and execute a social media policy. You need to be able to gauge its success, measure it, and see that it remains healthy and vibrant.
• HOW TO: Make a Graceful Online Exit From Your Job
  When it comes time to kiss your cubicle goodbye, you can scamper away or you can tie up digital loose ends and depart with dignity.
• 15 Excellent Corporate Blogs to Learn From
  Although the act of blogging can be quite simple, forethought and planning must first go into the creation of a corporate blog in order to keep the processes running smoothly.

Twitter has just explained the causes of — and remedies for — its multiple and massive failures over the past week.

The high number of errors and generally poor performance were reminiscent of the Great Twitter Outages of the summer of 2009. Once again, this summer’s problem has been one of scale: Twitter is growing so much and so quickly that the engineering team has been challenged when trying to keep up with the sheer volume of data going through the service’s internal network.

What happened that caused this week’s Twitter issues, wrote engineer Jean-Paul Cozzatti, is that the engineering team made three critical mistakes:

• The team put two important, fast-growing, high-bandwith components on the same segment of Twitter’s internal network.
• The network wasn’t being monitored the way it should have been.
• The internal network was also temporarily misconfigured.

To ensure the same mistakes aren’t repeated, Cozzatti continued to outline what Twitter will be doing to fix the problem. He wrote that the company has doubled the capacity of its internal network, improved how it’s monitored and rebalanced its traffic.

“For much of 2009,” he wrote, “Twitter’s biggest challenge was coping with our unprecedented growth (a challenge we happily still face)… But as this week’s issues show, there is always room for improvement.

“Based on our experiences this week, we’re working with our hosting partner to deliver improvements on all three fronts. By bringing the monitoring of our internal network in line with the rest of the systems at Twitter, we’ll be able to grow our capacity well ahead of user growth.”

Did Twitter’s errors have any impact on your professional or personal life this week? And how do you think the service will hold up during the World Cup? As Twitter continues to grow in cultural importance and user adoption, will it ever be a truly reliable service in the way that other, larger tech companies have become?

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