Best Buy’s Risky Black Friday Twitter Campaign

Black Friday has a tendency to bring out the worst in some shoppers. Best Buy is betting that it won’t get caught on camera.
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News Byte

Chirpify’s “Action Tags” Bring In-Stream Buying to Brand Campaigns

Social commerce and marketing startup Chirpify on Thursday launched “action tags,” a way for consumers to purchase items via platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. So, for instance, on Twitter, a marketer using the new tool can tweet out ads with two hashtags: The action tag “#buy,” as well as a separate hashtag for the campaign (like, say, “#hotdogs”). From there, a consumer can make a purchase by tweeting a reply to the brand, with both hashtags included.

Hashtag Inventor Chris Messina Leaves Google to Join Small Startup NeonMob

Chris Messina, known for bringing the hashtag to social media, has left Google after more than three and a half years.

Google+ Gets a Bit More Pinteresting

Pinnnnnnnnnnteresting.

Michelle Obama Sends Her First Tweet

This week, First Lady Michelle Obama personally pressed the button to send out her first tweet, complete with a hashtag, a URL and her initials.

Twitter Loves TV, and the Feeling Is Mutual

Twitter’s pitch: Buy ads with us, and we’ll make your ads more valuable. Comedy Central gives it a shot with tonight’s “Comedy Awards”. And coming soonish, perhaps: embedded TV broadcasts on Twitter.com itself.

Twitter for the iPad Says Hello!

BoomTown does not plan to get into the endless so-and-so launches an Apple iPad app news cycle, because it is not really news, except to the more breathless fanboy tech bloggers. But Twitter’s intro of one tonight in the App Store is probably more important than most. “Twitter for iPad,” said the company, “makes it even easier for people to explore Tweets and discover new content and accounts on Twitter.” We’ll reserve judgement on that.

Voices

Tweets, Google Maps Help Solve Mystery of Portland Explosion

On Sunday night, a loud boom shook parts of Portland, Ore.–and drove residents onto Twitter and elsewhere on the Internet to figure out the cause. On Twitter, people used the hashtag #pdxboom to relay news about the noise. And in a sign of the potential for using social media in emergencies, one resident soon set up a Google map that residents could use to indicate how loud the sound was in their area.

Voices

Almost Famous: Chris Messina of Google

In this installment of “Almost Famous,” which we call “Need to Know,” focusing on less prominent but very important tech execs you need to know better, we did an interview with Chris Messina. He’s a recent get by Google who is all about opening the Web. He’s a designer by training, so be ready for all kinds of visual metaphors, like walled gardens, tearing down silos and keeping the Web from looking like Nascar.