Hey everybody,

As you may be aware I’ve been asking people on Twitter to take part in some Foursquare research I’m been conducting. Can’t reveal all just not but can promise that none of the sensitive data you submit will be revealed at any stage.

To help increase participation, and as I have way too much stuff in my room anyway, I’ve added prizes to the mix! Complete the below survey by Friday night and go in the running for free DVDs! Which ones? Well, that would be telling, but know this: they will be awesome.*

The below survey is an embedded Google Docs form and completely private, but if you want to take it on Google’s site rather than here on my blog, you can follow this link: http://bit.ly/FoursquareSurvey

So yes, please take the survey, convince your friends to, and wait with baited breath for the results which I can assure you will be very interesting.

*In all likelihood they will be cult classics or great films from the last few years. I have a tendency to buy DVDs of films I’ve already seen but a lessor tendency to unwrap them so you know they’ll at least be good films.

This is a follow up post to the one I wrote last week on the launch of Facebook Places, events and the future of check-ins.

After my post last week one of the first things people – and by people I mean normal people, those who don’t spend their time learning the nuts and bolts of social sites – asked me most was “what does this mean for privacy?”

This came in a range of forms, naturally: “will this help stalkers?”, “who the hell would want to have people know where they are all the time?” and “It’s not automatic is it? It’s just I go to… some places… I’d rather keep secret.”

The truth is that any evolution of location based services, and don’t mistake the fact that Facebook essentially setting itself up as the platform for this across the web is a massive development in the space, will result in a swathe of fears, misinformation and genuine security concerns.

MC Siegler summed up the oncoming storm of debate well just the other in this post on TechCrunch:

I originally wrote this post for my employer, the Daemon Group, and you can continue reading the post on our blog here.

Now, many of you will know that I spend a LOT of time on Facebook, some for personal reasons and even more for work, so when I saw this song I just had to share it with you. We don’t have long to wait now until we see the Facebook movie, The Social Network, but perhaps Turkish musician, Ismail YK, is hoping to score a spot on the soundtrack?

It’s pretty fantastic, isn’t it? Thanks to @Beaney for bringing it to my attention. Naturally you want to know what the lyrics are and what he’s typing to the lucky lady in the clip, right? Well I can help you out!

Read more »

So, some time ago I was on the TV talking about media, both social and ‘old’, newspapers and the future of both. The embeddable player at the time was broken so I never got it on here and I actually forgot about it. That is, until someone sent me a YouTube link.

For the record, I was actually incredibly ill the day we filmed this at the ABC offices in Ultimo. That’s my excuse for why I look so terrible. As for what I actually say? Well, that’s all me. I would say that I was edited to put me more in opposition to Gerard Noonan, but that’s all good.

Anyway, this is it. Enjoy.

Certainly interesting to see this now, about a year and a half after it first went to air and to reflect on the fact that we’re still having many of these discussions, especially as newspapers tout tablets as their saviors and independent organisations, like the late, great New Matilda, still struggle to lock down revenue models.

All discussion at the moment is about the election, but after that dust has settled it will be interesting to look at who did the best at covering the campaign and what indicators this can have for what news organisations are doing it right, and which no longer deserve to be saved?

Today (well, yesterday American time) Facebook held a press conference in which Zuckerberg and Co officially revealed what many of us have been eagerly awaiting: Facebook’s push into location based social activity, Facebook Places.

You can read the live blog of the event on what was revealed and what went down here on Mashable, but what I actually want to talk about is what I was surprised wasn’t revealed.

Anyone working in or around social media at the moment will have heard that we’re in the year of mobile and the location based revolution. I myself have been guilty of discussing this shift ad nauseum in the past, but what this actually ignores is what the growth in Foursquare, Gowalla (both of whom were present as partners at the Places launch) and Brightkite actually signals…

I originally wrote this post for my employer, the Daemon Group, and you can continue reading the post on our blog here.