href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/google-fiber-pitches/&service=bit.ly">width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/google-fiber-pitches/" align="right"/> class='feedflare' href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/google-fiber-pitches/&title=Google Fiber Sparks Online Competition Between Cities Nationwide&srcTitle=Mashable&srcUrl=http://mashable.com">src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/gbuzz-feed.png" align="right" />

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/google-fiber.jpg" class="alignright" alt="Google Fiber Image">It seems like every city in America wants Google Fiber. And who can blame them? Ever since Google announced its plan last month to bring href="http://mashable.com/2010/02/10/google-isp/">ultra-high speed Internet connections (as in, up to 100x faster than what most of the country has today) to between 50,000 and 500,000 people, cities across the U.S. have been clamoring to curry the favor of the search giant.

First there was Topeka, KS, which href="http://mashable.com/2010/03/03/google-kansas/">renamed itself by proclamation to Google, KS. Then Duluth, MN upped the ante by promising (comedically, we hope) to href="http://mashable.com/2010/03/03/duluth-google-topeka/">name all the town’s first-born children after Google. Then Greenville, SC entered the fray with their all-out “href="http://mashable.com/2010/03/09/google-fiber-greenville-sc/">We Are Feeling Lucky” social media campaign that included a landing page, YouTube channel, Facebook events, and Twitter hashtag.

But will any of these efforts be enough?

href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/social-media-guide-sxsw-2010/&service=bit.ly">width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/social-media-guide-sxsw-2010/" align="right"/> class='feedflare' href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/social-media-guide-sxsw-2010/&title=SXSW 2010: The Complete Social Media Guide&srcTitle=Mashable&srcUrl=http://mashable.com">src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/gbuzz-feed.png" align="right" />

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/SXSW-header.jpg" class="alignright" alt="sxsw logo">This year’s href="http://mashable.com/sxswi/">South By Southwest (SXSW) festival is rapidly approaching. Beginning with the Interactive Media events on March 12th, Austin, Texas will be the place to connect with the brightest in tech and media and get the scoop on some exciting new ventures.

Whether you plan to physically attend or not, social media will be critical to how people connect and share ideas at this world-class event. If you want to keep in touch with all the goings-on, look no further than these tools that you can use on the web, your mobile device, and your favorite social networks.

For Those Headed to Austin/>

---

While in-person networking is the goal of many, social media will be key in bringing interested parties together across this vast festival that this year is spread across four separate campuses. If you’ll be in attendance, check out these resources for staying connected.

href="http://sxsw.com/first_time" target="_blank">The Official SXSW First-Timers Guide/>

---

If you’re brand new to SXSW and feeling a bit overwhelmed at the scope, the first-timers guide has a wealth of resources to assist the uninitiated. These include links to online registration (if you still need to sign up), hotel booking, scheduling tools, maps, and this informative video.

href="http://my.sxsw.com" target="_blank">my.SXSW and href="http://sxsw.com/qrcodes" target="_blank">QR Coded Badges/>

---

The official social network of the festival is my.SXSW, and you are automatically invited to join upon registering. This closed network, just for attendees, allows users to build personalized conference schedules, join exclusive groups, and connect with others at the festival.

The addition of QR codes on registered badges gives attendees with smartphones an added way to solidify in-person connections. Simply scan a new friend’s personalized QR code and you’ll automatically be following him or her within the my.SXSW network.

For additional ways to utilize the my.SXSW network, check out the info on their href="http://my.sxsw.com/tools" target="_blank">tools page.

href="http://sxsw2010.sched.org/" target="_blank">SXSW2010 Event Calendar on sched.org/>

---

Sched.org is an interactive calendar with social media integration that makes it ideal for festivals like SXSW. An “unofficial” but highly useful calendar has been created for SXSW that will give you an overview of each day’s events, talks and panels.

Sign in with href="http://mashable.com/social-media/facebook">Facebook Connect or href="http://mashable.com/social-media/twitter">Twitter and start compiling a list of the events you’ll be attending. By clicking on a particular event, you can also see who else is attending, and view real-time updates about the event from other attendees on social networks. With a bit of effort, this tool could become your go-to social dashboard and connection builder for the entire festival.

href="http://www.sitby.us" target="_blank">SitBy.Us/>

---

Social media aficionados will be converging on Austin from all over the U.S. and the world. It’s likely that some of your Twitter friends will be in attendance while you’re there.

Don’t let an opportunity for an in-person meeting slip by. SitBy.Us is a useful tool that lets you see which panels your Twitter friends will be attending, and even where in each room they will sit.

By logging in with your Twitter account (via OAuth), SitBy.Us provides a mobile-optimized web interface that allows you to plan and coordinate panel attendance with people you’re looking to connect with in person (and perhaps even avoid those you don’t!).

href="http://foursquare.com/sxsw/" target="_blank">SXSW Badges for Foursquare/>

---

Foursquare has created 16 new SXSW-specific badges for those location-based networkers who are Austin bound. What’s more, if you do unlock a badge, you can track down a Foursquare team member at the festival and claim a temporary tattoo with the mark of honor.

Cliqset’s href="http://sxsw.cliqset.com/" target="_blank">SXSW Map/>

---

Cliqset.com has created a real-time map that aggregates all of the geo-tagged activity in the festival area of Austin. Pulling in data from the major location-based social networks (href="http://mashable.com/tag/brightkite">Brightkite, href="http://mashable.com/tag/flickr">Flickr, Foursquare, href="http://mashable.com/tag/gowalla">Gowalla, href="http://mashable.com/tag/qik">Qik, and Twitter), the map will give you a bird’s eye view of who is at SXSW, where they are, and what they’re doing.

Click a pinpoint on the map to expand the user’s status update. It should be interesting to see the map fill up with notes come festival time this Friday.

Disclosure: Cliqset is a Mashable sponsor

href="http://austin.mashable.com/">Mashable’s Austin Real-Time/>

---

Looking to connect with like-minded festival goers or other attendees from your hometown? Check out Mashable’s own href="http://austin.mashable.com/">Austin Real-Time Network. Sign in with your Twitter, Facebook, or Cliqset ID and browse or search for other festival patrons by common interest or location. By adding yourself to the network, you can also share what you’re doing and where you are via your favorite social networks.

For Those Who Will Watch from Afar/>

---

If you’re not able to make it to Austin this year, don’t fret. The magic of social media and the web can bring the festival within reach. While you may not be able to hob-knob with your favorite tech and music geeks in the warm Austin sun, you can still get your SXSW fix with these resources.

The Official SXSW href="http://twitter.com/sxsw" target="_blank">Twitter and href="http://www.facebook.com/SXSWFestival" target="_blank">Facebook Accounts/>

---

Being the socially-savvy team that they are, the crew behind the festival does a good job keeping their fans and followers in the know. If you want to keep an eye on developments in Austin, be sure to add these official channels to your social feeds.

href="http://sxswvideos.com/" target="_blank">SXSW Videos/>

---

Though not officially connected to the festival, SXSW Videos is a user-generated destination for footage from the event.

Powered by href="http://mashable.com/tag/viddler" target="_blank">Viddler, the site lets you browse videos that come out of SXSW (in various categories, including Interviews, Shows, Bands, etc.) as well as upload your own if you’re in attendance.

The content can be a bit of a grab-bag, but if you’re looking for some first-hand video accounts of what’s happening on the ground, check in there every once in a while.

SXSW Blogs/>

---

Searching for other ways to live vicariously through the SXSW attendees? Dedicated blogs are a good way to stay in the loop.

href="http://www.ningrvip.com/" target="_blank">The Unofficial SXSW Insider’s Guide is a blog/community built with href="http://mashable.com/tag/ning">Ning where festival attendees (and interested parties who couldn’t make it) can blog, upload photos, and discuss events.

You can browse the site blog-style to see what people are up to, or connect with individual members to get a more social scoop.

href="http://www.sxswbaby.com" target="_blank">SXSW Baby is another unofficial blog that will be covering the events throughout the festival.

Currently, they have quite a few tips for those who are enroute to Austin. But if you’ll be checking in from home, stay tuned for further updates as the festival kicks off this Friday.

Mashable’s href="http://mashable.com/sxswi/" >SXSWi Channel/>

---

Of course you can always stay up to date on the latest news coming from Austin with Mashable’s own href="http://mashable.com/sxswi/">channel, dedicated to the Interactive Media portion of the festival. Members of our team will be on the ground in Austin to get you the social media and tech scoops that are sure to break in the days ahead.

FarmVille’s growth in new users has at last netted it a significant number of new daily active users (DAU), pushing it back over the 30 million amark and doubling the total DAU of the next-closest app, Facebook for iPhone. The Zynga game leads this week’s AppData list of top gainers on Facebook by DAU.

Besides FarmVille, the list this week is occupied by a number of newer games, some of which we’ll talk about over on Inside Social Gaming. We’ve also registered a definitive gain for Slide FunSpace, which picked up over a half-million new DAU:

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	FarmVille	30,806,872	+2,103,410	+6.83
2.	Social City	1,239,331	+1,239,240	+99.99
3.	Slide FunSpace	1,791,231	+636,786	+35.55
4.	Static FBML	5,745,491	+467,665	+8.14
5.	Restaurant City	3,670,846	+358,434	+9.76
6.	Birthday Album	367,764	+350,046	+95.18
7.	Pet Society	4,304,155	+310,402	+7.21
8.	Farmville exclusive	288,097	+287,258	+99.71
9.	Bubble Island	504,192	+259,995	+51.57
10.	Friends Emotions [Emociones de Amigos]	511,414	+234,448	+45.84
11.	iHeart	1,869,150	+203,801	+10.90
12.	Mobile	7,099,193	+198,300	+2.79
13.	YoVille	2,132,214	+191,937	+9.00
14.	Tiki Resort	427,563	+178,463	+41.74
15.	Jeux Gratuits	166,892	+165,108	+98.93
16.	Happy Aquarium	4,693,053	+155,957	+3.32
17.	Texas HoldEm Poker	6,305,568	+128,394	+2.04
18.	Zoo Paradise	122,571	+117,895	+96.19
19.	Tarjetitas	220,909	+116,784	+52.87
20.	Blingee Book	218,873	+106,603	+48.71

FunSpace recently shot from about 4.5 million to more than 25 million monthly active users (MAU), the apparent result of a new strategy by Slide. But the media sharing app’s DAU has lagged behind.

Even now, it’s not entirely clear whether all 1.79 million of Slide’s daily users are indeed coming on a regular basis, or if the continuing growth in new users is padding the numbers slightly.

Static FBML, the Facebook-built app for customizing Pages, has fallen to number four from its last-week gain of four million DAU. Following it, after EA’s Restaurant City, is Birthday Album, an app from the fairly new developer 2pad. It’s the dev’s second attempt after Photo Books, a photo printing app that has gained plenty of MAU but almost no daily users.

Farmville exclusive is doing well, but probably not for long; it’s just the latest parasite to pop up around FarmVille. And rounding out the top 10, there’s Friends Emotions [Emociones de Amigos]. This app, by a dev listed as aa, is a friend quiz. We expect several of these to do well in coming weeks, following the banning of Friend Quiz and Friend FAQ, which had 30 million MAU combined.

href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/farmville-facebook-credits/&service=bit.ly">width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/farmville-facebook-credits/" align="right"/> class='feedflare' href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/farmville-facebook-credits/&title=FarmVille Adds Facebook Credits Payment Option&srcTitle=Mashable&srcUrl=http://mashable.com">src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/gbuzz-feed.png" align="right" />

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/farmville260.jpg" alt="" title="farmville260" width="260" height="190" class="alignright size-full wp-image-224751" />The Facebook platform game href="http://mashable.com/tag/farmville/">FarmVille now href="http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/03/10/facebook-credits-now-the-first-payment-option-in-farmville-facebooks-biggest-app/" target="_blank">supports the Facebook Credits virtual currency.

The popular online game uses two units of in-game currency: Farm Cash and Farm Coins. Previously, you could buy them with a credit card or PayPal. Now the game offers Facebook Credits as an option.

Facebook Credits are the number-one option, actually. They’re the default payment choice, featured at the top of the list pictured here.

We recently learned that Facebook takes 30% of developers’ href="http://mashable.com/2010/02/25/facebook-credits-share/">Facebook Credits revenue — the same percentage that href="http://mashable.com/category/apple">Apple takes from its href="http://mashable.com/mobile/iphone">iPhone and iPod touch App Store sales. Analysts have href="http://mashable.com/2010/03/02/facebook-could-surpass-1-billion-in-revenue-this-year/">speculated that Facebook might surpass $1 billion in revenue this year, and the social network’s virtual currency could be a vital part of growth beyond that.

This new option in FarmVille is arguably bigger for Facebook Credits than it is for the game. FarmVille has more than href="http://mashable.com/2010/02/20/farmville-80-million-users/">80 million users, making it href="http://mashable.com/2009/12/02/farmville-bigger-than-twitter/">bigger than Twitter. Exposure to an audience that large is an important milestone for the Facebook Credits project, which has been a slowly expanding experiment up until now.

Tags: href="http://mashable.com/tag/facebook/">facebook, href="http://mashable.com/tag/facebook-credits/">facebook credits, href="http://mashable.com/tag/facebook-platform/">facebook platform, href="http://mashable.com/tag/farmville/">farmville, href="http://mashable.com/tag/microtransactions/">microtransactions, href="http://mashable.com/tag/online-games/">online games, href="http://mashable.com/tag/virtual-currency/">virtual currency, href="http://mashable.com/tag/zynga/">Zynga

href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/cnn-facebook/&service=bit.ly">width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/cnn-facebook/" align="right"/> class='feedflare' href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/cnn-facebook/&title=CNN Sees Facebook As Major Competitor&srcTitle=Mashable&srcUrl=http://mashable.com">src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/gbuzz-feed.png" align="right" />

class="alignright size-full wp-image-224587" style="margin: 10px;" title="read news" src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/read-news.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="190" />When it comes to competition, CNN president Jon Klein fears Facebook. The man at the top of the news network believes that the social network is more of a threat to his business than other broadcast media organizations.

In a recent question-and-answer session with BusinessWeek, Klein specifically href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/mar/10/digital-media-television" target="_blank">states, “We want to be the most trusted source,” and, “I’m more worried about the 500 million or so people on Facebook versus the 2 million on Fox.”

The intriguing statements come just weeks after Hitwise released data showing that href="http://paidcontent.org/article/419-facebooks-new-role-news-site/" target="_blank">Facebook’s new role is becoming that of a news site. As a news portal and discovery engine, href="http://mashable.com/social-media/facebook/">Facebook has the power to make or break a story, a power that clearly threatens the rank and file of the old media elite.

Where we discover news is no doubt changing, but that’s not all bad news for CNN. We tend to think that the power wielded by newsies on Facebook could prove to be an advantage for CNN should the network really cater to the social networking crowd.

For example, in recent months we’ve seen the ratings of award shows href="http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/heading-into-the-oscars-award-show-viewing-is-up/" target="_blank">skyrocket; part of the ratings bump href="http://mashable.com/2010/02/01/grammy-awards-ratings/">correlates with web denizens experiencing the televised broadcast with their friends, family and followers online. It would seem logical then that TV and online can coexist in a mutually beneficial relationship.

As for CNN’s immediate future, Klein’s comments also indicate distinct strategies for web and broadcast. Moving forward the company plans to continue with video content on CNN.com and ramp up affiliate deals with the likes of HBO and Time Inc.

So where do you get your news: CNN or Facebook?

Disclosure: Mashable has a content syndication partnership with CNN.

[img credt: href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sveinhal/" target="_blank">Pragmagrapher]

WSJ is reporting that Facebook and Google have been sued by Wireless Ink Corp, a Long Island based company for patent infringement. Wireless Ink is accusing Facebook and Google´s mobile websites of infringing upon Wireless Ink´s patent that was sought in 2004 and finally granted to them in 2009.



Wireless Ink´s patent was for a process of "management of information content for enhanced accessibility over wireless communication networks." After acquiring the patent Wireless Ink has now taken both Facebook and Google to court  alleging that Facebook´s social network and Google´s Gmail and Buzz, alongwith the mobile sites of both companies are using their patented techniques.

A spokesman from Facebook, while talking to WSJ, stated that, “This suit is without merit and we will fight it vigorously.” Google however, declined to comment on the grounds, that they haven’t reviewed the lawsuit as yet.

The lawsuit has reminded me of a similar battle between Judy´s Book a local business review site and Yahoo. Judy´s book claimed to invent the term "Social Search" and went ahead and got it patented. However, Yahoo started to use the same term of services on its own site. Judy´s Book lamented about this infringement by Yahoo on its patent, but decided not to file a suit against Yahoo as they thought that the final battle is won or lost in the consumer space and not in the court.

Judy´s Book was right, both Judy´s Book and Yahoo´s Search offerings - let alone its Social touch to Search is irrelevant now, and most of the reader of this blog might have never heard about either. Wireless Ink´s Patent can be viewed here.

The number of big social applications that use Facebook’s virtual currency, Credits, continues to rise. The latest is Zynga’s smash hit farming game, FarmVille, the largest application on Facebook with nearly 84 million users a month.

The integration is pretty straightforward, as you can see from the screenshot below. Credits is shown as the first of several payment options — others include direct credit card payments, PayPal, and a variety of other payment services, including prepaid cards and offers.

Zynga has previously been running Credits in some of its smaller Facebook apps, like role-playing game Pirates: Rule the Caribbean. Credits is now also appearing on some of its other big applications, like pet-caring title PetVille. However, it’s not on others, including Café World.

However, Zynga, like Playfish, Playdom and most other social gaming companies on Facebook, is not running Credits exclusively. But another big developer is: CrowdStar.

Clearly, many developers are reluctant to make Credits the exclusive way that companies monetize through virtual goods on Facebook. Facebook takes a 30% cut of all transactions on Credits, whereas third party payments companies typically take far less. Credits could play a meaningful role in Facebook’s revenue growth over the coming quarter – we recently reported that Facebook revenues were $600-$700 million in 2009, and could hit $1.1 billion in 2010.

However, the more users who use Credits, the more it will become the de facto way that they buy virtual currency on the site — which could bring in a lot more money for Facebook. The company is going out of its way to promote this, doing things like featuring games that use Credits within its suggested games list within its Games Dashboard. Fine-tuning apps to include Credits may also make the currency more valuable. CrowdStar’s Peter Relan has previously told us that “once you get over the hump, it’s great, and just as profitable.â€�

Also, rumors have circulated for months suggesting that Facebook wants to somehow make Credits the only virtual currency available on the site, but we have not been able to confirm anything along these lines.

While Facebook has been widely testing it with app developers since last year, we expect to see new announcements coming about it relatively soon. The company is potentially planning to launch a couple other big initiatives at its f8 developer conference in April, including location services and the  “Open Graph” API. It’s possible that Facebook will use the event to further promote Credits — moving it from a now-huge closed beta test to an open one, for example.

Note: The future of payments in Facebook apps and social games will be a central topic at our upcoming Inside Social Apps 2010 conference on April 20th, the day before f8, in San Francisco. For more details, click here.

Since the new Facebook home page launched a few weeks ago – making a few application bookmarks more prominent on the home page – one of the usability issues with the new design is that it’s been difficult for users to reorder bookmarks on their home page. Instead of allowing reordering, Facebook has only allowed bookmark deleting directly from the home page, making it harder for developers to tell users how to make their bookmark more prominent.

Now, Facebook says on its Developer Wiki that it is “actively building” bookmark reordering for the home page with an estimated launch date of “March.” We’ll let you know when Facebook rolls it out, as many developers will likely want to encourage users to move their app bookmarks up, directly under the Applications and Games dashboard links on the home page.

href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/social-engagement-hub/&service=bit.ly">width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/social-engagement-hub/" align="right"/> class='feedflare' href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/social-engagement-hub/&title=Get Satisfaction Brings Customer Support to Facebook Pages&srcTitle=Mashable&srcUrl=http://mashable.com">src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/gbuzz-feed.png" align="right" />

class="alignright size-full wp-image-224189" style="margin: 10px;" title="Get Satisfaction" src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Get-Satisfaction.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="190" />Today href="http://getsatisfaction.com/" target="_blank">Get Satisfaction is bringing their popular social CRM tool inside Facebook Pages with Social Engagement Hub. The new app, created by href="http://www.involver.com/" target="_blank">Invovler using the Get Satisfaction API, gives brands and businesses the ability to integrate the entire support experience into Facebook.

That means the Ask A Question, Share an Idea, Report a Problem, and Give Praise functionalities are all present and commingling with the service’s intelligent question database so both customers and brand representatives have the ability to collectively tackle queries.

The Social Engagement Hub lives in its own tab inside the Facebook Page and can be fully customized, branded, and tweaked for a specific purpose or campaign. The most impressive part, though, is that all activity inside the hub is centralized on the Get Satisfaction platform, so no conversation is lost inside the Facebook experience and each one can be distributed across multiple environments (which allows for repurposing).

The application is currently being tested by a handful of brands (check out href="http://www.facebook.com/pomwonderful#!/pomwonderful?v=app_227698805184" target="_blank">POM’s support tab), but the company is rolling it out to all interested businesses. The Social Engagement Hub is targeted to bigger brands, but coming this spring Get Satisfaction will roll a slightly scaled down version — minus customization — for small and medium business that will cost $99 per month in addition to their current paid plan.

According to a new report from Dan Zarrella, the weekend is the best time to post content on Facebook as articles posted then are shared the most. One explanation for the phenomenon was that more than half of companies block Facebook. While I’ve noticed that Twitter is the exact opposite, this report definitely sheds some light on Facebook user behavior.



Unfortunately we have no way of knowing how accurate this report is. The primary reason is that no information was shared about the sampling data. How were articles selected when testing sharing volume? Was an arbitrary data set selected for testing against Facebook’s share analytics tools? Whatever the model is, it’s definitely interesting.

I also would imagine that many Facebook users turn to their mobile devices to monitor content while on the go during the weekend. Then again, the same users who are blocked from accessing Facebook at work may be visiting their friends’ activity while in transit to and from work each day. Unfortunately this basic glimpse in to Facebook user behavior is nothing more than that: a basic glimpse.

I’d be interested to see other statistics on Facebook sharing. Do notice that your friends share more information on the weekends or is there more activity during the weekdays?