Artesia Spotlight: January 26th, 2009

Artesia Spotlight is a bi-weekly review of key news in the fields of social media, user communities and virtual worlds. If you want to be the first to read the news, you can subscribe to receive Artesia Spotlight by e-mail on this page.

Post Spotlight

Web 2.0-focused blog Mashable has compiled a list of over 30 Facebook applications that can be used to promote your business, network and collaborate with other users on Facebook.

Event Spotlight

Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th President of the United States attracted record numbers of online viewers. Millions of people watched this historic event through the CNN.com Live video player, where they were also able to comment on the event together with their Facebook friends. Through this integration, over 600,000 Facebook status updates were posted, and CNN served over 27 million live streams for the event. Other sites that offered live streaming also served millions of streams to worldwide users. Record numbers of user generated content related to the event can also be seen on Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and other social sites and blogs.

Obama's administration was also quick in updating the President's web presence; the White House website now features a blog, and everyone will soon be able to see how American tax dollars are being spent on the new Recovery.Gov website, which was announced by President Obama in his weekly address on YouTube.

Other news

• IBM and professional social networking site LinkedIn will create a new plugin that integrates LinkedIn into Lotus Notes, IBM's business desktop client.
• World known and respected Encyclopedia Britannica will follow Wikipedia's lead and allow users to edit its articles. Unlike Wikipedia, Britannica's staff will have to approve all edits before they appear online.
• The Vatican and the United States Congress now have official YouTube channels: The Vatican, The Senate Hub, and The House Hub.
• Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that one third of American adult internet users and almost two thirds of teens have a profile on a social networking site, which they mostly primarily use to connect with friends.
• Following the shutdown of its virtual world Lively, Google has announced the shutdown or limitation of several services, including micro blogging service Jaiku, mobile social software Dodgeball, Google Video and Google Notebook.