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Here's the email they are sendng their user base:

Hello,

You've downloaded samples of our books in the past, so I thought
you'd be interested to hear that for 14 days you can download The
Art & Science Of CSS (worth $29.95) absolutely FREE.

All you need to do is follow @sitepointdotcom on Twitter. It's
a two week Twitaway, so don't miss out —- follow us today!

Don't do Twitter? That's cool, we've got you covered. Check
out our 14-day CSS Twitaway here:

http://www.twitaway.com

Freebies like this are few and far between, so help us spread the
word. Tell everyone you think might be interested in a FREE CSS
book about the SitePoint 14-day Twitaway!

Warm regards....

This is an interesting example of creating an event using Twitter, providing an alternative platform too (the site mentioned above) and using a traditional marketing event approach (delivered via non-traditional Twitter) to entice new customers and boost sales.

Say hello to Paris Hilton's Presidential ad campaign which broke exclusively on Funny or Die last week. It's a response to John McCain citing Paris Hilton in one of his ad campaigns. In his ad he likened Barack Obama to the Paris Hiltons and Britney Spears of this world, saying that he is more celebrity than substance.

There are numerous political issues I have with McCain's ad but we're not here to talk about politics. We're here to talk about social media and search. Infectious video content such as Ms Hilton's has, in just a week, spread like wildfire across the web. That's a dream for most marketers and Paris is without a doubt the consummate brand marketer. Of course being celebrity driven, topical and timely helps. And with the most viral of all Presidential videos comes great word-of-mouth and phenomenal PR.  I found nearly 2,000 articles about it on Google and the video hasn't even been live online for 2 weeks. With interest comes searches - since the video broke, there has been a five fold increase in searches for the keywords 'Paris Hilton.'

With search spikes comes opportunity. That's what I'll be talking about in my article for MediaPost on Tuesday 19th August. So stay tuned, there's more to come....

Those fabulous and creative guys over at Poke New York have created upl8.tv

It's for all you video clip lovers who hunt high and low for the good s*** on YouTube. It's hard finding the good stuff amongst all the trash that's posted. But that's where upl8 comes it. It does it for you. In the words of the Poke peeps 'we've created a never-ending stream of semi-curated video creativity (and absurdities) just for you.' Enjoy! We did....

Another good example of the Beeb using UGC and Google Maps. An earlier example was during the petrol strikes.

The BBC site has a long history of audience interaction via comments, emailed in photos and videos etc, under the "Have Your Say" heading.

 

 

The map, here, shows information on individual petrol stations as added by readers.

An interesting use of UGC and a good example of how the web can sit at the centre of communications during events that affect the population of a connected country (I'm avoiding the over-used word "crisis" - the map cleary shows it is not a crisis).

This UGC example also shows how press organisations can gather data from the public and publish it, showing the reality of a "crisis" and cutting through some of the hype and rumour that inevitably exists.

A nice example of the license fee doing some good, too ;-)

As reported here, Gordon Brown has apparently opened a Twitter account, and the UK Cabinet Office minister for transformational government is to publish guidelines on how social media/web 2.0 can be used to learn how people communicate online, and improve how government communicates with the public.

Now, Social Media Optimization's take on this is:

"Wow. A government looking to use social media to enter in, and converse with, its citizens. What a novel idea!

...This is pretty amazing stuff. I thought the U.S. Presidential campaign was pretty cutting edge with the ways that the campaigns have used social media tools, especially YouTube to get their message across. But what the government is doing in the UK from a social media standpoint is much more evolved."

If I didn't live in the UK, then I would probably agree. But...and you saw this coming...I don't.

I am all for governments using the web to communicate better with the their employers - the public - but the UK government aren't that impressive when it comes to the web, data security or computers at a whole.

In fact they pretty much suck. A brief recap:

• NHS systems that cost millions and aren't delivered
• Data security breaches that are laughable and happening as I type this, no doubt
• A government portal that has been renamed and relaunched* and still nobody has heard of it
• An office of the e-envoy (yes, the link to the Cabinet Office website from here is on a 404), sorry an Internet Tsar, sorry the Cabinet Office...actually I think the Inland Revenue are responsible for Internet policy these days, oh hang on, they renamed that too..and their data protection and online record sucks, anyway

So, the UK government, a PM with falling ratings, and Twitter, a social media site that some file away under light-weight fad...now that sounds like the start of a brilliant, well-thought out strategy for using social media sites to engage with the public, doesn't it?

Besides, who wants Alastair Darling on their Facebook? Yuck.

_{*Based on the whims of different ministers no doubt (Open.gov.uk, Direct.gov.uk, sorry, soon to be renamed WhatsThisWebsiteThingyAgain?.gov.uk)}

Bebo has a reported 40 million unique users on a global basis. AOL says in its press release, "Together with its AIM and ICQ personal communications network, the acquisition will give AOL a premier position in the fast growing world of social media with a network of approximately 80 million unique users."

 The deal comes just one week after AOL’s launch of Open AIM 2.0, an initiative that allows the developer community greater freedom to access the AIM network and integrate AIM into its sites and applications, and the announcement by Apple of a downloadable AIM application for the iPhone.

Under the terms of the agreement, AOL will acquire Bebo for $850 million in cash.

Read the press release here.

The article (subscription required, free) lists the staff as: 

David Parfect, ex-commercial director at WPP's 24/7 Real Media

Tracy Yaverbaun, commercial development manager at AOL

Google industry manager Derren Sequeira

The three senior staff are to be joined by Stephen Haines, ex-head of agency strategy for Yahoo!, and Jon Harvey, formerly Yahoo! group head.

Facebook declined to comment.

With more brands looking to leverage this new media, its important to understand the key players driving this phenomenon and how different demographics are adopting social media.

Hitwise, in conjunction with Experian Integrated Marketing, has released "The Impact of Social Networking in the UK", which provides a good understanding of the marketplace, key learnings from 2007 and important areas to look at when developing a social media marketing strategy.

Download the report here.

Advertising is a crucial part of the web's ecosystem - without it, there would be fewer useful websites, and we'd all be poorer Internet users as a result.

However we all know that some adverts are annoying and historically there have been few ways to communicate with site owners and provide feedback.

This has been changing. Some Adsense adverts, for example, have feedback links under them. But even when feedback is provided it normally disappears into a black hole and the users never see any impact of their actions. So next time, they don't bother - and may never the use website in question again.

Digg, like all UGC* websites, relies on it users not just reading at the site but actively contributing and regularly re-visiting - so annoying them is even more of a mistake. Unsurprisingly, Digg's founder Kevin Rose reacted to complaints about adverts with audio by taking steps to remove them. He also blogged about the company's efforts to identify and remove offending adverts.

This is the important point; Digg engaged with it's users without using an anonymous press statement or spokesperson. The founder - the man the buck ultimately stops with - blogged a response and made clear that the process for removing ads wasn't perfect, needed improving - and encouraged the community to continue to report adverts.

This small incident underlines a few simple but important rules of working with a community or user base who regularly use a service or website:

• be honest when there is a problem
• have a public face that is accountable (not just another PR person)
• let users know what's being done to improve things
• tell them how they can help

These steps should mean users feel the service/site is "theirs" and not just some company's revenue stream. Empowered, engaged-with users are happy users - and loyal ones.

*User generated content

Update: Danny Sullivan is one of the most respected figures in the search industry, but even he gets blogging wrong occassionally...and like Digg, sets a good example of how to admit blame and move on using a blog post.