Companies Ban Facebook Twitter

Study Says “54 Percent of Companies Ban Facebook, Twitter at Work”

Planning on firing off a short missive on Twitter or posting an update to your friends on Facebook from the office?

Better check the rules of your workplace first.

According to a study commissioned by Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing company, 54 percent of U.S. companies say they’ve banned workers from using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace, while on the job. The study, released today, also found that 19 percent of companies allow social networking use only for business purposes, while 16 percent allow limited personal use.

Only 10 percent of the 1,400 CIOs interviewed said that their companies allow employees full access to social networks during work hours.

Twitter says Barack Obama Nobel Price Itself a Joke

President Barack Obama has won Nobel Peace Prize !!! has taken many people by surprise, including the President himself, who held a brief press conference this morning to discuss the award.

Twitter Going to Sell Data To Microsoft or Google ?

Micro-blogging site Twitter is reportedly in licensing talks with both Microsoft and Google.

“Ever since Twitter launched, people have been wondering how the company plans to make money. One possibility was that it would launch its own search engine but going up against Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! isn’t something a lot of companies are eager to do. So what else can Twitter do to make money? Well, according to All Things Digital, Microsoft and Google are both speaking to Twitter regarding data-mining agreements and there are a several scenarios being discussed when it comes to compensating the site

Google Going To Buy Twitter ?

“Just a few weeks ago, Twitter finalized a funding round that values it at around $1 billion, despite criticism and concerns over its ability to generate revenue and continue its growth. One piece of the puzzle may be falling into place: Twitter’s reported to be in advanced talks for mutli-million search deals with Microsoft and Google.

Clearly, Google sees great value in Twitter and its real-time search. It also faces new, stiff competition from Bing and even Facebook. The news of the deal poses an important question, though: Does Google need Twitter? And if so, how much? The answer to that question could be the difference in the Google vs. Bing battle.

Barack Obama breaking Record On Twitter

“If you’re wondering why half of the Twitter trends are currently related to US president Barack Obama, news broke recently that he has been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

The official site of the Nobel Foundation is dying under the sudden surge of traffic, but the list of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates has already been updated, as you can see in the screenshot below.

This is a somewhat surprising move by the Nobel Committee, since Barack Obama simply hasn’t had enough time as president to do all that he had set out to accomplish. Still, Thorbjorn Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, claims that the prize was awarded based on Obama’s work so far. “We are not awarding the prize for what may happen in the future but for what he has done in the previous year. We would hope this will enhance what he is trying to do,” he said.

Twitter is currently overwhelmed with tweets related to the event, and is at times unresponsive, but it’s still holding on. Dozens of topics related to the award and Obama are currently extremely popular on Tweetmeme. If Twitter manages to go through this eventful day (NASA’s LCROSS project, as well as Miley Cyrus quitting Twitter are also popular topics) without a meltdown, it’ll be quite an accomplishment for the service that’s so often troubled with downtime.”

[via]

Twitter Launching in More Languages

How do you say “What are you doing?” in Spanish, French, Italian, or German? That’s what Twitter wants to know, as it’s asking users to volunteer for a new project to translate the site into multiple languages (it’s currently available in only English and Japanese).

The project sounds quite similar to what Facebook has done to translate its site into more than 70 languages.

Twitter Is Frozen in Time

Twitter might be talking to Google and Microsoft about multi-million dollar search deals, but apparently, someone forgot to start the engines on the service this morning.

Many user’s timelines haven’t updated in nearly an hour, and on my account, all of my followers and people I’m following are missing. Yikes!

Somewhat ironically, Twitter() search still appears to be working in near real-time, so you can see other users complaining about their timelines not updating.
No word yet from Twitter on what’s up, but we’ll update when we know more. Are you experiencing the Twitter time freeze? Let us know in the comments.

Update: As of 9:20PT, Twitter is “currently investigating a problem causing many users’ timelines to be delayed.”

Image courtesy of iStockphoto(), hidesy

Redux Turns Your Twitter and Facebook Streams Into Pure Entertainment [Invites]

Bring Your Twitter and Facebook Streams to Life

In its last iteration, Redux was already an extremely solid social entertainment engine. Using the site or the handy bookmarklet(), users could share photos, videos or links with their friends or in a specific interest channel. Other users could then comment on those items, give props and share those links via Twitter, Facebook or MySpace().

Now, Redux has added the ability to import your Twitter() and Facebook streams directly into Redux. What this means is that when your friends tweet or share a link via Facebook or Twitter, instead of just seeing the short-url, you’ll actually see the item being linked. If it’s a video, you can play the video immediately within Redux. If it’s an image (like a TwitPic()), you can view it immediately within Redux.

Redux only grabs tweets or status updates that are linking to other content, so you don’t get bogged down with other status updates. Your friends don’t have to be Redux members for their public streams to show-up and you can still give props or comment on the content. If you comment on a tweet, for instance, that comment with a link to the source is sent out over Twitter if you choose. As they like to say, “it’s the most efficient way to waste time on the web.”

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Prepare to Lose All Productivity (in a good way)

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Redux is totally addictive — and it’s designed to be. I find myself having to tear myself away, otherwise I’ll never get any work done. That’s not that different from a lot of other social services, except, in my experience, Redux kept me entertained and discovering cool stuff.

When I talked to Frank Nawabi and Daivd McIntosh — the co-founders of Redux — earlier this week, they told me that one of the reasons they created the service was because it was so difficult to find good videos and good content on services like Vimeo() or YouTube().

It makes a lot more sense to see what your friends or people who share your same interests are sharing or watching, rather than trying to sift through a pile of videos — no matter how “popular” they might be.

Frank and David told me that the average user spends over an hour on Redux at a time. I can believe it! Especially with something like the TV Mode, which just continuously shows you videos from your friends, the overall network or from a specific channel, becoming sucked into the service isn’t hard.

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The Future

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The site has grown pretty organically and the Redux team reaches out to the community to get feedback on what’s working, future features, etc.

David and Frank told me that they are looking at brinigng the TV Mode of Redux to something like Boxee() or set-top boxes in general — and I think that this could be brilliant.

I have Boxee running in my living room and being able to tune into to the best web content from either my friends or a certain channel would certainly be a great way to relax and waste even more time!

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We’ve Got Invites

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Stop listening to me wax poetic about Redux and try it for yourself. Mashable() readers can go here to sign-up for the beta.

Give Redux a try and tell us what you think! Do you like the idea of a visual social web?