SocialMedian was barely a thought for people back in February, but it has gained a solid following in the 9 months

of its existence. Many people would ask why this startup has gained any traction. It is yet another social news site with voting and commenting. Did we really need another? Given the amount of traffic that socialmedian is getting, it is obvious that they are onto something.

With this in mind, I figured it was time to chat with SocialMedian Founder and CEO Jason Goldberg and find out if things were actually as good as they sounded.

A look Back

During the summer, there was rapid growth as SocialMedian added Google Reader and other service integration, as well as replize. These features were added because of user feedback. Goldberg has stated several times, “Our model at SocialMedian has been:  small, fast, and listen to users.” You have probably noticed that you do not see any advertising or many press releases plastered all over the major news sites. Essentially, SocialMedian has been built through its user base. The only “press coverage” you tend to see are reviews from various blogs, including here on Mashable.

Almost a month ago, SocialMedian integrated with Facebook and users saw a large amount of traffic coming from the popular social network. Also, in the weeks leading up to the election, socialmedian announced partnerships with the Washington Post and The Guardian. Their election widget was gaining adoption, and Goldberg stated that the few days following the widget release had seen a 300% increase in traffic. Why? It is probably due to the partnerships created through the Election Talk widget.

A chat with SocialMedian

Rob: How big of a traffic boost did the Facebook integration give you?

Jason: We got a nice initial boost when we launched our Facebook integration as our existing members were suddenly easily able to find and follow their Facebook friends and to invite new friends to check out SocialMedian. Since then, Facebook has been a steady boost for us as our users have amplified their SocialMedian activities to their Facebook friends and new users have also taken to our Facebook features. On a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of overall impact to our growth and engagement, I’d say Facebook integration has been about a 7, but has the potential to be a 10 with some new developments we have planned to even better leverage the Facebook platform.

One thing the Facebook integration launch did though was it really went a long way towards starting to mainstream SocialMedian. I used to measure our growth entirely on new registrations. It taught me that awareness comes first then adoption. The Facebook integration made a whole bunch of new people suddenly aware of SocialMedian via their Facebook friends. After seeing SocialMedian postings on their friends’ Facebook pages for the 5th, 10th, 50th time, you start to see adoption. The second thing it did was really up the engagement level on SocialMedian. Suddenly it was really easy to follow people via Facebook. That hit our currently active users with a slew of new follow messages, which ignited them.

Rob: Obviously, the Washington Post and Guardian partnerships are a big deal. Do you see SocialMedian making several partnerships like this?

Jason: YES! It took us two weeks to put together the micro-site election.socialmedian.com for the Washington Post and then 1 phone call to get The Guardian excited about taking the widget. Now we know how to do it fast and know better to get ahead on working with more partners to include them. We also built this in a way in which we can replicate it again and again and again with only 2 days to get a micro-site up and running for any topical SocialMedian news network.

We’ll do our second one next week for the Monaco Media Forum event in Monaco November 12th, where the Prince of Monaco brings together 300 leaders in the transformation of media. It’s a closed event but SocialMedian will enable people to follow every blog post, video, picture, and tweet from home. You heard that here first. The page for that will be http://mmf.socialmedian.com.

Rob: Do you see any scalability problems with the micro-site idea? Meaning how often can you do these without affecting how much staff you must maintain?

Jason: No. It basically builds right on top of our “news network” concept in which anyone can create a news network to gather and discuss news about a particular topic. For these microsites like election.socialmedian.com or mmf.socialmedian.com, all we really do now is apply a template created for the election site which adds some additional views like “rising fast” in addition to “popular” and “recent” and which enables anyone to grab and embed a widget for the news network. We can do hundreds of these without any negative resource impact.

Rob: At the beginning of November Quantcast showed SocialMedian at just over 160K page views, what is the real traffic? I saw the email regarding the 300% increase over 3 days. Does that give you over 475K pageviews?

Jason: Conservative estimates had socialmedian at 500K pageviews (rolling 30 days). October ended consistently above 20K per day. Overall, there were 225K pageviews in September, 280K in October, and 120K the first week of November with traffic rapidly increasing as we got closer to the election. Quantcast has significantly more conservative numbers.

Rob: So how do you measure user engagement?

Jason: Clips/day is our best measure of engagement. Clips aggregate all user activities: clipping, sharing, like/dislike, and 1st comment a user makes on a story. In the past 60 days we’ve gone from averaging 1500 clips/day to more than 3500. We have seen the same sort of increase in comments as well. We attribute our replize feature, where users reply to other users vs. just leaving comments, as the key to the rapid rise in comment levels. One thing worth noting is that Mixx has probably 4-5x our traffic, but we are far higher than them on clips/story vs. their votes, and comments/story. In other words, we have more quality traffic we think and more engaged users.

Rob: Have you seen a traffic boost due to the election partnerships?

Jason: We see that our user growth has been more about the tech community suddenly all talking about SocialMedian at once vs. being all about the election. Over the past 4 days we’ve added more new registered users than in the previous 4 weeks. We’ve seen our 3 biggest traffic days yesterday (on a Sunday!) and the two prior days. It happened because users started talking publicly about how they seem to be getting value from SocialMedian. Nothing beats positive word of mouth. And we’ve worked really hard to cultivate that, while spending $0 on outbound marketing.

It’s all about satisfying users and getting them engaged in the service. Then, when they recommend the service to their friends or readers, it helps that newbies see a party going on when they get to SocialMedian (a vibrant community) that they can join in on vs. have to create. Notably, our strongest area is still tech news and we still have a very tech-oriented early user base, but at the same time our users have created more than 2000 news networks on all sorts of topics.

Rob: Will end of election season hurt traffic significantly, or are you seeing increased engagement from the new users?

Jason: So far we are holding up very nicely as new people introduced to SocialMedian because of the election and from Twit.tv seem to largely be staying around. This past Sunday was our biggest Sunday in history and Monday was better than the Monday before the election…so far so good. I think it’s fair to say that the election helped draw people in but the discussion continues around the news of the day.

Rob: What is the biggest complaint from users and how are you addressing it?

Jason: The biggest feature request we have is for us to add topical news search. We have none right now. That’s coming in just a couple of weeks. We’re also working on better filters and cleaning up the UI, which have been big user requests/complaints.

Rob: What do you see as the biggest reason for success?

Jason: The biggest reason for success is simple. We listen to users. We have done very little to focus on growth and marketing and instead focused almost entirely on helping one users at a time find value and get more engaged with the service. Our theory is that one happy user will bring 10 over time. That’s our focus.

Looking forward

Obviously, things look to be going very well for Jason and SocialMedian. It is still too early to determine whether the traffic will decrease now that the election is over, but the micro-sites give SocialMedian the ability to have focused coverage on any major event or conference. SocialMedian is maturing nicely, and I would definitely keep an eye on their future.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:SocialMedian is Raising $500,000 … In 140 Characters or LessSocialmedian Releases Replize to Start Conversationssocialmedian: The Latest Social News Aggregator [Invites]Socialmedian Opens Up Combining Many of the Best Ideas in Social NewsSocialMedian Adds News Streaming and Opens its Walled GardenPick a Startup to Get Funded: The VenCorps Mashable ShowdownSocialMedian Tweaks Site with New Beta Features [Invites]

Last night I asked “how will President Obama use his massive social media influence?” and today, less than 24 hours later, a bit of an answer has arrived. The Obama transition team has launched Change.gov, outlining some of the President-elect’s agenda, and offering hints of what level of the transparency we might expect from his administration.

For the moment, the site is a bit of a prelude to the successful election, but the continuation of the user involvement we saw during the campaign is evident as well. The site is currently asking users to share their stories from election night, which, for at least around 53% of the American voting public, seemed to be a pretty memorable occasion judging from the TV coverage. There’s also a “Submit Your Vision” section, where Obama asks “Where should we start together?”

Additionally, it would appear that Obama will definitely be making use of the Web and social media to encourage public service. Change.gov features a top-level link to “America Serves,” which, currently is just a policy outline, but does point to the Web playing a pivotal role in this aspect of his administration. Other features include a blog (with comments disabled) – where the only post right now is Obama’s victory speech – as well as the latest announcements and information for the press.

For the moment, Change.gov is a pretty simple site that is more or less a continuation of the Obama campaign, but it’s encouraging to see the President-elect moving quickly to keep his supporters as engaged after victory as they were during it.

Hundreds if not thousands of observers have already noted the key role that the Internet and social media played in the successful campaign of Barack Obama. But when he’s President, how will he utilize the hundreds of thousands of MySpace friends, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, My.BarackObama.com members, and SMS opt-ins (just to name a few points of presence) to advance his policies and politics?

First off, Obama needs to decide that he wants to make social media tools a permanent part of his political strategy. This seems like a given – the tools he used (along with several new ones most likely) will certainly play a big part his 2012 re-election bid and that of whoever challenges him – but to-date, maintaining this massive social media program has been the role of volunteers and campaign staffers. MySpace and Facebook weren’t even a blip on the radar when Bush won re-election in 2004 – creating full-time positions within The White House to manage social media would be a first, but presumably, something we’ll soon see.

So far, Obama’s social media tools have been all about organizing campaigners and viral marketing. But now that he’s on his way to the presidency and no longer a campaigner, Tweets about upcoming rallies and embedding Obama speeches around the Web suddenly isn’t very useful. So how does he change the way he uses these tools once he’s in The White House? A few thoughts:

Calls to Service

Obama has often talked about a call to service during his campaign – things like expanding the Peace Corps and offering tax credits in exchange for public service. Why not allow users of MyBarackObama to utilize the platform to organize community service projects? Use Twitter and SMS to alert people to opportunities to give back in their own communities or when national tragedy strikes. Utilize Facebook to get the word out about charitable events. The tools and the users are already in place.

Rather than requiring people to be so proactive about doing good, Obama’s social media reach allows them to be reactive – staying informed of things going on in their communities, organizing people that can help, and then pitching in – all from the comfort of their personal computer.

Calls to Your Congressmen

With the shift of both The White House and Congress to a Democratic majority, you can expect to see lots of new legislation over the next four years. Obama’s social media platform offers an amazing opportunity to get people more involved in their government, by keeping them abreast of issues and urging them to contact their representatives to push policy forward.

After all – this is what representative government is supposed to be about – but, think about it, when was the last time you talked to your Congressman (or at least one of their handlers)? Obama can leverage social media to make people much more involved in the process of bills becoming laws, and encourage his supporters to pressure their representatives into supporting his policies.

Calls for Re-Election

Needless to say, Obama’s social media arsenal will soon need to be put to use for his 2012 re-election campaign. Campaigns for this past election started nearly two years ago, and that’s not likely to change in 2012 as Republicans look to gain back what they’ve lost. The key here is for Obama’s team to keep up with the new tools that will best drive enthusiasm and ultimately get people to the polls. Most of the tools that were so key in this year’s campaign didn’t even exist in 2004, and we’re likely to say the same in 2012 as we analyze the services the candidates are using to drive their online campaign efforts.

An Amazing Opportunity

In a quick poll of my Twitter followers, a few people immediately replied to my question of “how will Obama utilize Twitter?” with calls for more transparency in government. While I don’t expect to see tweets from @barackobama like “Reading the President’s daily briefing from CIA. Yikes!,” the opportunities outlined above would be game changing for America, and hopefully get us all – who are still clearly somewhat divided among party lines (53 to 46 percent is no endearing sign of unity in my opinion) – a bit more involved in our democracy.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Obama on LinkedInObama Does the TwitterThe Final Online Push for Swing State Votes in the Presidential RaceOn YouTube, YouChoose ObamaBarack Obama’s MySpace AmbitionsMake Your Own Obama Logo, With Your FaceAirBed & Breakfast: For Obama’s Sake, Skip the Hotels

Conference co-organizer John Battelle welcomes Yang to the stage at 4:50 pm.

Yang says its been an “amazing year” in response to Battelle’s first question on how he’s doing personally. Battelle then asks what happened to Yahoo this year, going back to Microsoft’s offer to acquire the company in February 2008.

Yang says flat out that he’s open to a sale to Microsoft, that they were ready to negotiate a deal and that they weren’t that far apart. He says Microsoft continues to be clear that Microsoft is no longer interested in the deal. Yang also says that he and his board of directors felt that at all times they did the right thing. Both sides are to blame, he says, for the deal not happening.

Battelle says that a lot of people claim Yang is to blame for the deal falling apart. Yang counters, saying he is indifferent about keeping Yahoo independent and just wants what’s best for the company. He also reiterates that they went back to Microsoft after the offer was revoked to get them interested again.
Source:TechCrunch

Hitwise has released a ranking of some of the top news sites, measured by traffic on Election Day. CNN.com came out on top, seeing a 146 percent spike over the day before. But MSNBC.com, Fox News, and the Drudge report all saw nice bumps as well. ABCNews.com had a record day, with a 113 percent jump in traffic over the day before. And CNN’s Political Ticker blog by itself saw a 122 percent jump. (Twitter traffic rose 43 percent and traffic to Twitter Election 2008 rose 1,100 percent).

Some sites, amazingly saw declines from the day before, such as Time.com (-21%), Current TV(-53%), and Slate (-33%).

Here is a list of the top election news sites (you can see all the stats in the table below):

The U.S. Election isn’t until tomorrow, but doesn’t it already seems like Obama has won? That is certainly the impression you get if you look at any of the polls, state-by-state electoral maps, or prediction markets out there. Even the latest Fox News poll has Obama leading McCain by 50 percent to 43 percent.

My favorite prediction tool, and the one with the best record of getting elections right, is the Iowa Electronic Markets. In its winner-take-all market for the U.S. Presidential election, it is predicting that Obama has an 89 percent chance of winning the majority of votes (see graph above). NewsFutures, similarly puts Obama’s chances of winning at 90 percent, and Intrade has his stock trading at 90.6.

If you’re used to Googling yourself the old-fashioned way – you know, through the search engine – a new feature could make your life a little more convenient. You can now get Google Alerts – automatic notifications when specific keywords are mentioned anywhere on the Web – delivered to you via RSS. Previously, these alerts were only available via email, although Google News offered RSS feeds for specific search terms.

To add an alert, you can go to Google’s “Manage Your Alerts” page. From there, you can specify the term you’d like to monitor, and what type of alert it is - “comprehensive” will check for the term everywhere, while you can also drill-down to only receive alerts when the term shows up on the Web, News, Blogs, Groups, or Video. Google will then generate an RSS feed you can add to your reader of choice, though Google encourages you to use Google Reader with a convenient link to view the feed from there.

If you’d prefer to keep getting your alerts via email, Google has left the option available. But that is so 2007.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Alerts.com: Scheduled Reminders for Email, Mobile PhonesIMified Acquires Feedcrier for RSS AlertsConcierge-Style Search Service Yotify LaunchesGoogle Reader Gets New FeaturesFoxyTag Marks Speed Traps on your Google MapsFeedM8 Gives You RSS Feeds via TextThis Is Dave’s United State of Technorati

Source:Mashable!

Forget the news and the polls - Attack Ad Generator is where you want to be over the next four days. The site lets you create your own attack ads by combining magnetic poetry with a baritone voice and imagery from the political season. The results are absolutely hilarious.

To create your own attack ad, you choose a candidate to “approve” the message (McCain, Obama, Ron Paul, or Stephen Colbert), and then select a background image to display. Then, you choose the words that you would like spoken over the ad by sliding words into the “narrator” box – essentially the magnetic poetry concept, but on a Web page. If you want to put some time in, you can create multiple scenes with text overlays.

Once you’ve created your ad, you can save it and either link to it, email it, or embed it on a Web page. Here is one I created quickly, along with two of the funnier ones I’ve found attacking each of the candidates:

The site was created by Mike Demers, a software developer for YouSaidIt.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Web 2.0 Button GeneratorU.S. Pentagon Hacked by Chinese MilitaryIs Stripe Generator a Joke?ShoutWire - Distributed News Editing (A Digg Clone?)Skype Downtime Caused by Algorithm Deficiency (Whatever That Is)Concert Attack Tracks Artist Activity and Launches Facebook AppWashington Post Acquires College Match Engine CourseAdvisor

Comedy Central’s signature fake news programs, “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” are focused firmly on the final stretch of the race for the White House. A glance at Indecision2008, the network’s website devoted to the year in campaign coverage, will reveal as much.

For those who feel that on-demand video clips aren’t satisfying enough to have on Election Day, however, the network has tapped the Web-based IM engine Meebo to power chat rooms on Indecision2008 to enable live discussion among its users.

In addition to the standard set of Meebo rooms provided for visitors, Comedy Central will host a live blogging session featuring Patton Oswalt, a regular of the American standup comedy circuit, and it will also present interviews with correspondents of “The Daily Show.”

Naturally there will be an attempt by various broadcast and cable-based networks on November 4th to seek out the most viewer engagement possible for the final hours of the election. And with Comedy Central’s fairly recent enhancement of its websites to cater to increased demand for video content, it seems to be a sensible course of action to introduce live communications to the Indecision2008 channel.

As Meebo and Comedy Central explain, their partnership for Election Day is intended “to increase user engagement and time spent online.” So long as enough awareness is made about the new features (the network will market the availability of chat rooms through on-air promos on November 4), real-time chat could well be the next best thing to a 24-hour style news video broadcast.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Comedy Central Launches InDecision2008, a Political Spoof of the ElectionsCyworld Launches Live ChatMozilla Adds Live Chat Support: Eroding Microsoft’s Stronghold?iVillage Does More Social Stuff - Adds Live ChatWindows Live Messenger Arrives on XBoxDailyComedy Partners with PaltalkWindows Live Messenger Partners with GoPets to Launch Virtual Dog Park

Source:Mashable!

For the last couple of days we’ve been asking people: how do you cope with all the info that bombards you through your RSS feeds, Twitter and similar services? When you’re young and eager to soak in as much info as you can, you’re happy to be flooded with the stuff. But, it can’t go on forever. So, how do you make sense of it, and filter out the junk?

It’s not an easy task, I can tell you that. As a journalist, I’m basically forced to go through everything; but sometimes I wonder whether it’s smarter to accept some collateral damage and heavily filter everything that comes in, because the signal to noise ratio is awful, and it doesn’t show signs of getting better. Just like junk food, some of us keep eating against our better judgment; the junk in our RSS feeds and tweets requires its own slow feed movement. Let’s take a look at what can be done about this and how you guys and girls are coping with the flood.

1. Yahoo Pipes - if you’re crafty and willing to put some time into battling the surplus of information in your feeds, Yahoo Pipes is the tool for you. When you delve a bit deeper into Pipes, the whole thing might start looking like a quite complex logic game, but trust me, there’s little you can’t do with this tool. Filtering feeds for specific keywords, mashing up several feeds into one, extracting chunks of data from feeds and matching those against other feeds…the possibilities are endless.

2. TweetDeck - when we asked our Twitter friends what they use to make sense of Twitter’s relentless noise, they responded almost unanimously: TweetDeck. It’s an Adobe Air desktop application, currently in public beta, that lets you split your main Twitter feed into meaningful chunks of information. Essentially, it’s the group feature everyone has been requesting since the dawn of time. The word on the street is that it’s best used full screen on a separate monitor; does it mean I have to buy another monitor (I already have two and I totally lack screen real estate) and call it TweetMonitor? Yes, it does.

3. Best of FriendFeed - FriendFeed is the information junkie’s favorite tool, and this little option can be a really nice way to quickly glance at what’s really good on a given day. It’s almost hidden in the upper right corner, under the view option; choose “best of” and you’ll get the post most liked (bookmarked, commented on) by your friends in the period of a day, week or a month.

4. xFruits - if slicing and dicing your RSS feeds in every way imaginable is your goal, the most elegant way to do it is xFruits. Instead of offering one tool that does everything, they’ve created several simple tools that can aggregate feeds, turn RSS into PDF, turn e-mails to RSS and a lot more.

5. Postrank - previously called AideRSS, this is one of our favorites. The main premise behind it is audience engagement; the better engagement ranking something gets, the more important it is. Postrank lets you set up RSS feeds based on this and filter them into channels. The best way to understand how all this works is to check out the video tutorials which explain the four main ways of using Postrank.

6. Techmeme - although a purely algorithmic affair, in the sense that you can’t filter feeds yourself or choose what you get in any way, Techmeme works so well it’s probably the best way to completely replace all your tech-related RSS feeds if you’re so inclined. Quick and relevant, Techmeme somehow manages to find the best news out there, with the number of reactions from blogs focusing your attention on what’s really important.

If you’re into technology, Techmeme is definitely an indispensable tool that saves your time. It also has a gossip news counterpart called WeSmirch, political news is handled by memeorandum, and you can find the best of baseball news on BallBug.

7. ReadBurner - similar to Techmeme in appearance, this service gives more weight to news items which are shared more often on Google Reader. This works surprisingly well, and the front page almost always brings you a great selection of current and interesting news. Disclosure is in order, as this project is Mashable’s Chief Editor Adam Ostrow’s baby.

So, have we convinced you to join the Movement? If nothing else, try one of these tools for size and see how you like the world with less feeds and more relevance. Most importantly, don’t forget to list your favorite tools for slowing down feeds in the comments.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:A Conversation with a Green Girl (video)Blackout At Mashable TowersStalkers Rejoice! Facebook Updates News FeedMashable to Base! Feeds Not Working!Apple Lands Deal with MGMThe Mashable ReshuffleFacebook: So Do We Post to the Mini-Feed or Not?

Source:Mashable!

Current TV already made a splash in the social media space a few weeks ago with the Presidential debates, integrating Tweets into its live coverage on the cable network. Today, the company is announcing their full plans for election night, which now also include the streaming of Digg headlines, as well as video commentary from users of 12seconds.tv and the Current.com site.

On-air, Current will have conventional election coverage – like covering the latest vote counts and making projections about which candidate is winning which states – complimented with user-submitted content. Just like the debates, they’ll be displaying selected content from users who include “#current” in their Tweets. As for the Digg component, Current will feature “Digg hosts” who report on the latest election-related stories being submitted to the site. Regarding video, users who hook up their webcams and opt-in will have the chance of having their comments broadcast on-air. Meanwhile, Current’s election website will show the latest news being voted up and down by the site’s users.

All of this user-submitted content isn’t going out un-edited. Staff from the various companies involved will be deciding what gets on-air. Nonetheless, it should be a progressive broadcast from Current, highlighting the continued integration of social media into mainstream television, like we’ve already seen on CNN and C-SPAN with some of their political coverage. Is it enough to make you watch Current instead of Brian Williams, Katie Couric, or Charlie Gibson on Tuesday?

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Current TV to Integrate Twitter into Presidential Debate CoverageAl Gore: “I’ll Be on Twitter By Tomorrow”The Secret to Twitter, Part IIDigg Optimized for your iPhoneDigg Dialogg Kicks Off at Democratic National ConventionPluggd in to TwitterHow Messed Up Is Twitter For You Right Now? [Poll]

It wasn’t long ago that people took a hard look at the social networking world and saw that such activities didn’t quite jive with the typical workplace environment. Some employers solidified that notion by barring visits to such sites via their networks.

Well, here we are in the final days of October 2008, and two individuals at the UK-based think tank Demos, Peter Bradwell and Richard Reeves, have published a 92-page assessment of the potential upsides of social networking within organizations and between organizations and clients.

The text (which, wonderfully enough, has been issued as a PDF [link] under a non-commercial Creative Commons licensing) is titled “Network Citizens: Power and Responsibility at Work,” and it essentially takes what is arguably a sensible view on the present networking situation. They see workplace bans on Facebook and YouTube as “almost impossible to enforce,” and they draw a sort of sociological analogy to such efforts that would entail limits for gossip among colleagues. A nonsensical move, more or less.

Bradwell and Reeves even think that placing restrictions on Web-based networking within Facebook, et al., can be counterproductive, given the fact that modern technologies have allowed the world to transcend ordinary means of interaction and to attain what is ultimately a more collaborative reality for business development.

Yes, it is true that the issues of lowered barriers and intensive PC-based socializing reveal things that can be prone to exploitation in quite negative ways. As the authors of “Network Citizens” state, the networks have a definitive “dark side.” Yet the benefits for the pursuit of a relatively happy medium (my own phrasing) have really become too outstanding to negate.

Such benefits have only grown with developments made in the market specific to business relationship management - which goes as much for workers’ presence on LinkedIn as YouTube, depending of course on one’s area of industry. All things considered, corporations currently exercising no-social-networking policies would do well to browse the ideas delivered via this research.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Making Social Networking Matter (Authors @ Mashable)Hear Steve Wozniak Speak at the Social Networking ConferenceXing Reaches 2 Million UsersiHipo Launches Business Network for ProfessionalsnTag Raises $8.3M in Series B Round of FundingParks Associates Study Notes the Opportunity for Developers to Leverage MySpace WidgetsMotionbox to Power Japanese Video Travel Site

Source:Mashable!

Halloween is right around the corner and there are a number of sites and services that can help enhance your holiday experience. Here are over 20 fun, strange, weird and sometimes wacky websites and applications to satisfy those of you with a fondness for the Halloween season.

Here you’ll find everything from sites that map out local haunted houses to Facebook apps that let you carve your own pumpkin, and more.

Which are your favorites?

Spooky Sites

HalloweenMashup.com - A mashup of local Halloween events using Google Maps, Yahoo News, Yahoo Local, Flickr, Upcoming, and HostIP.

FindaGrave - Finds the final resting places of famous or infamous people. Many times with a photo of what it looks like too.

Halloween.com - Covers all the basics of the holiday season.

Kaboose’s Halloween Games - The site has a large collection of spooky games.

Halloween Ghost Stories - Has lots of scary tales to share around the campfire.

Halloween-Online - A resourceful Halloween guide.

Ben & Jerry’s Halloween - Offers a Halloween history, crafts, games and more.

HauntedHouses - Helps you find haunted houses you can actually visit!

History of Halloween - The History Channel has a fun-filled site for Halloween, including the origins of the holiday, with games, trivia, ghost stories, costume ideas and stencils for carving pumpkins.

Halloween Media

HalloweenMovies - Official site for Michael Meyers and his Halloween movies

Halloween Movies Checklist - Check out this long list of Halloween and scary movies from IMDB.

Halloween Photos - If you want to see Halloween photos, try the Halloween tag from Flickr.

Halloween TV Shows - Both kids and adults will enjoy these Halloween video clips from PBS.org.

Halloween Facebook Apps

Happy Halloween - Send Facebook friends a scary gift with a Halloween greeting.

Halloween Gifts - Send Facebook friends Halloween Gifts.

What are you wearing for Halloween - This app lets you post your Halloween costume, see what your friends are wearing, and send them treats.

Halloween Builder - Carve your own pumpkin with this Facebook app.

Halloween Cinema Classics - Send your Facebook friends images of classic scary movie moments.

There are many more Halloween-oriented Facebook applications. Check them out here.

Halloween iPhone/iTouch Apps

Halloween - Play spooky Halloween sounds on your iPhone with this $0.99 cent download.

AdLibs Lite: Halloween Edition - A free iPhone app that lets you mix up words to create fun Halloween stories.

Halloween Picture Haunt - Spot the differences between these haunted images.

Crazy Skeleton - This $1.99 iPhone app brings a talking and moving skeleton to your iphone.

For more Halloween iPhone apps, visit the app store here.

Imagery provided by iStock/skykadelx

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Imeem Gets Full Length Horror Film: Debuts Next WeekInternet Giants Compete For The Ugliest Halloween LogoFreak Your Friends and Win a TiVoQuintura’s Spooky Search CloudsBrain Dead Republicans & Zombie Democrats Duke it Out on JibJabMyPunchbowl Adds Halloween-Inspired Features, Launches Facebook App20+ Sites For A Spooktacular Halloween

Source:Mashable!

While substantial efforts are made to get people to actually go to the polls and vote, once they get there, a lot of things can go wrong – broken machines, not showing up in the registered voter rolls, or excessively long lines, just to name a few. Twitter Vote Report is a new mashup that looks to track these problems and use the wisdom of Twitter’s crowd to try an