Social Media NZ Weekly Wrap-Up 8/11/2010

Hope everyone enjoyed a safe and memorable Guy Fawkes weekend. We saw two big discussions on our site this week, one of which was the hotly-debated Greenpeace campaign against Fonterra's use of palm oil in their by-products. Greenpeace is known for their hardline messages and protests, and it's admirable that they're prepared to expose these big corporates and their unethical actions. Social media platforms have enabled organisations to easily spread their message but is the hardline attitude of Greenpeace too much? Should the messages they broadcast be focused more on empowering and educating rather then using techniques of fear?The second top discussion was around Facebook's mobile event and their slew of announcements. Facebook released 5 features: 1) Single sign-on, 2) Facebook deals 3) Facebook Places open API 4) revamped mobile design for the iPhone platform 5) Facebook Places available on Android.* The Baseball World Series may be over, but one thing that impressed me was their social experiment to keep the the game experience alive well after the game is finished. The MLB introduced 'TagORamic', a feature which allows you to tag yourself in a high resolution picture taken after each of the playoff games.* We recently attended the Breakfast Club at AUT, which focused on creative leaders. Suzi Shaw Lyons from IBM New Zealand took us through a global survey about what it means to be a "creative CEO".* Foursquare took another step in assuring businesses and venue creators that they are implementing security measures to catch out those 'lazy' (off-site) check-ins from Foursquare users.* In New Zealand, we are moving slowly exposing the masses to smartphones, with Vodafone and 2Degrees both releasing sub-$400 Android handsets.* Ajay Murthy this week looked at how online video is being consumed in Asia, in this week's latest 'Eye on Asia' postNews you may have missed this week:* Twitter launched in-stream ads to their users through Hoosuite, a 3rd party Twitter client.* Google embraced the hackers, inviting hackers from around the world to find security flaws in their web applications and will pay out based on how serious the flaw is.* Skyfire will finally bring flash to the iPhone via a web browser.* Skype released their new update for the Mac this week, bringing a number of new features including group calling.* After the mixed reaction to Myspace's redesign, it seems that News Corp may pull the plug on the popular social networking site.Video of the Week: An Action Video filmed on the Nokia N8 Camera