My favorite mashup of the week is the new TwitterFeed and Social Actions mashup for social change. The mashup was built by TwitterFeed’s Mario Menti in collaboration with Social Actions and inspired by Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop Twitter application.

What the Social Actions Twitter mashup does is make Twittering for a cause as easy as using TwitterFeed or Alltop. This brings us a huge step forward in the ways we can bring online efforts for social change into the offline world, and spread the word about the causes and charities we support.

The interface is simple (and we all know how social media users appreciate simplicity). You add your cause category (climate change, poverty, preventing cruelty to animals, whatever your cause may be). You choose an Action Type from a list of actions in a drop down menu on the simple form. These include group fundraisers, events, campaigns, pledged actions, affinity groups, volunteering, micro credit loans, petitions, and more. You then enter your Twitter information, and the mashup tweets about your cause for you.

The mashup checks once each day for new postings related to your cause and action type, then sends a tweet on your behalf that includes the phrase “Take Action” to differentiate from your normal tweeting. The actions are pulled from 24 participating cause-based social action platforms, including: Amazee, CauseCaller, BringLight, Care2PetitionSite, CharityFocus.Org, Change.Org, ChangingThePresent, Democracy in Action, Christmas Future, Delicious, Fundable, DonorsChoose.org, FirstGiving, GlobalGiving (UK and US), GiveMeaning, JustMeans, HelpALot, Idealist.org, Nabuur, Microgiving, Prax.ca, Kiva, PledgeBank, ThePoint, PincGiving, SixDegrees, Razoo, Zazingo and VolunteerMatch.

By making it easy to get the word out, the Social Actions Twitter mashup will help causes reach a growing number of people. Social Actions joins the ranks of sites like SocialVibe, another site that generates widgets and other easy ways to drive interest to a cause. Social Action has hit upon the right mix, whereas with SocialVibe you sign up on a site that works a bit like a social network, with Social Actions you don’t have to sign up for anything - you just act on behalf of your cause.

Social Actions has been creating widgets and plugins to make being active for a cause easy for a while now (there is a WordPress plugin by Social Actions, for example, as well as widgets for things like BlogActionDay and other causes). They even launched a Facebook group to mesh with the Twitter mashup. This Twitter mashup was simply the next logical step for the company to continue making awareness as easy as clicking your mouse.

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It wasn’t too long ago that Guy Kawasaki announced Alltop, a news aggregation site that tries to make it easy to find the top stories on a slew of topics (212 at last count) from some of the better sources on the Web. One of the biggest problems with Alltop was its poor design and cluttered layout. But in a major redesign that improves the overall experience, many of those issues have been resolved.

Alltop now lets users search for topics byway of a categorical listing, alphabetical listing, or keyword search, which is conveniently placed on the site’s homepage. From there, you can decide to search for something specific, or click your way around the topics based on your interests.

But one of the main questions with Alltop still remains: is it a valuable enough resource to make users forget about creating their own Netvibes pages and use this service as their source for news? After some close inspection, I’d have to say that it’s getting close.

Back in April we wrote about Flock partnering with Alltop to create a green version of the social media browser that includes Alltop as the default start page. Today SEO blogger Neil Patel has some stats on what type of rankings Alltop has in Google in the year after launch. It’s pretty damn impressive - especially considering that there’s no content on the site - just links.

For example, search for moms in Google and Alltop ranks 1st. How many sites (including NY’s own CafeMom) wouldn’t die for that ranking? Other notable rankings include:

• oddities: 2
• egos: 4
• lifehacks: 5
• celebrities: 6
• dads: 7
• venture capital: 7
• teen news: 10
• humor: 11
• career: 11
• fashion: 13
• mac news: 13
• small business: 25
• world news: 28
• seo: 28
• politics: 29
• autos: 29
• food: 31

Check out the entire list on Pronet where Neil also looks at why Alltop ranks so well. We are listed on the social media page and I’d say we see about 5-6 visitors a week from the listing. I am guessing that categories like celebrities and egos do much better and drive more traffic.

I guess we could start a discussion around whether Alltop should be sharing whatever revenue they earn with the content publishers, you know the ones who make the content that appear on Alltop. Looks like master SEO Calacanis has some competition now!

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Marketing guru and Web-celeb. Guy Kawasaki has recently added another accolade to his growing list of Alltop superlatives, browser homepage.

In honor of Earth Day, Flock recently launched a special edition of their popular browser with an unprecedented promise, to donate 10% of revenue generated from the niche browser’s searches to charity; and after winning an award for community at SXSW, the charity will be selected by none other than the Flock community itself.

So what does this have to do with Alltop? Well, rather than trying to aggregate "Green" content on their own, the folks at Flock made a smart move and brokered a deal with Guy to use Green.Alltop.com as the special edition’s homepage.

In the end, Flock increases distribution and continues to improve their rep., Alltop.com gets turnkey traffic, and some lucky charity will hopefully get a bunch of money. Sounds like a good Earth Day to me.

You can download the Eco-Edition of Flock here and if you feel like extending your browsing good even further, add the Effortless Good extension. In addition to your searches generating money for charity, any time you shop at Amazon, a portion of your purchase will split among 4 non-profits.

With several years of startup experience already behind him, Rick Kenney is a senior Mass Comm. student and Marketing Intern with The Participatory Culture Foundation, the people behind Miro.

Editor’s note: Flock is a current CN sponsor.

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It’s not every day that a Silicon Valley titan is cast into 5.375″ of plastic. Marketing guru Seth Godin unearthed the real secret to self-evangelist success: Get yourself turned into an action figure. There’s no better way to promote your name than to sell yourself for a mere $8.95 to every wannabe entrepreneur looking for a false idol to consult. Oddball toy store Archie McPhee has recreated Godin’s baldpated goodness, complete with mismatched socks and a Little Book of Marketing Secrets. If only it carried the full line of self-promotional cultmongers, we’d finally be able to pit Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Jason Calacanis, and Robert Scoble against one another in a battle for biggest ego — right before Megatron decapitates them.

Successful rap producer Jermaine Dupri probably didn’t win any friends for his Huffington Post entry defending Jay-Z’s decision to sell his new album American Gangster online only as a full album. Dupri may not be a polished spokesperson, and no one wants to hear, “Why do people not care how we — the people who make music — eat?” Not when it comes from someone tied as the tenth wealthiest hip-hop mogul. Or when that person also gets to sleep with Janet Jackson. But — I can’t believe I’m saying this — Dupri is right. Of course, artists should have the right to determine how their creations are packaged. In admitting that it’s about money, too, he’s just being honest. Music is a business. It’s about coming to mutually agreeable terms with the customer, not catering to his every whim. Even Steve Jobs lets musicians sell songs on Apple’s iTunes in album-only packages. Ultimately, if consumers really have a problem with the way they do business, the artists will fail. That’s their right, too.

Source:Valleywag

PR blogger Vince Bank is peeved that tech evangelist Guy Kawasaki is using Twitter to promote his startup Truemors, instead of giving him “personal insights.” And he calls himself a PR guy? Kawasaki’s fanboys accept and defend his self-promotion. Bank even misses the valuable lesson Kawasaki taught him when Bank’s self-promoting post to Truemors was banned. He asks, “Is this a classic case of ‘Do as I say, but not as I do?’” The answer is yes. Unlike Kawasaki, Bank just isn’t brassy enough to get away with it.

Source:Valleywag

“Once every hundred years media changes.” With those words, at 2:37 PM Eastern time yesterday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg officially flipped Silicon Valley’s bozo bit. East Coast cynic Nick Carr has the best response:

It’s true. Look back over the last millennium or two, and you’ll see that every century, like clockwork, there’s been a big change in media. Cave painting lasted a hundred years, and then there was smoke signaling, which also lasted a hundred years, and of course there was the hundred years of yodeling, and then there was the printing press, which was invented almost precisely 100 years ago, and so forth and so on up to the present day — the day that Facebook picked up the 100-year torch and ran with it.

Source:Valleywag

The Q&A session at the Computer History Museum last night was billed as a talk between former Apple evangelist turned venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki and former anonymous blogger turned book shill Dan Lyons, better known as Fake Steve Jobs. But it quickly turned into a sordid three-way. Brad Stone, the New York Times scribe who outed Lyons as Fake Steve joined the two on stage, and what was billed as the “Confessions of Fake Steve Jobs” turned into a celebration of Apple, blogging, and Dan Lyons’s massive mancrush on the real Steve Jobs.

Fireworks, we thought, were inevitable when Lyons got on stage with Kawasaki, whom he’s savaged on his blog. Turns out the worst thing Fake Steve said about Kawasaki was that he was a motorcycle designer, something Kawasaki found amusing. Our promised fireworks turned into kiddy-safe Independence Day sparklers.

Something to know about Dan Lyons: The man is as hilarious in person as in his best blog posts. He’s quick, succinct, and dead-on with his observations. He is, as they say in Detroit, “wicked smaht.” Also, he has a huge hard-on for Steve Jobs. Like, major mancrush. Lyons describes Jobs as a “son of Zeus born to a mere mortal” and other outrageous claims, which makes it seem like he’s taking the piss out of Jobsian worshipers. Not true. Lyons really is an Apple fanboy who believes in the infallibility of His Steveness. Jobs is, to Lyons, “the most interesting person alive.”

Which seems like the most boring thing he could say. But here’s a secret for you: That awe is what makes the blog work. Lyons clearly venerates Jobs, without which his Fake Steve blog might come across as mean-spirited, not a satirical celebration.

One question kept coming up: How was Lyons treated by people who he slammed in the blog? He admitted to being worried about their reactions, but said that there have been few negative repercussions. He brought up Bike Helmet Girl, an early target for Fake Steve due to her appearance in a photo taken at a Yelp party last year. He initially ran the photo with a derisive caption. “Bikey” wrote in, a correspondence was born, and her character became a recurring figure in the blog. Lyons finally got a chance to meet her at a book signing last week, and spent a good minute in the Fake Steve character, dreamily recounting their meeting. (Lyons never revealed the lingering question about Bike Helmet Girl: Why was she wearing a bike helmet in the first place?)

I asked him about an article he wrote for Forbes, “Attack of the Blogs,” a cover story which he railed against anonymous blogging as an abhorrent practice. Has being an anonymous blogger changed his mind about such practices? He admitted that he would like to “get a do-over” and rewrite the story. He likened his attack to writing a story focusing on spam as an example that all email was bad. “Tomorrow, Valleywag will call you a hypocrite,” Kawasaki warned him.

Other Fake Steve revelations:

• Someone named “Katie Cotton” — the same name as the head of Apple PR — ordered a number of Fake Steve T-shirts from CafePress. (Brad Stone asked the real Cotton about the purchase. She declined to discuss any clothing purchases.)
• The front row was filled with a line of Apple employees, one of whom brought an OS X programming book as light reading during downtime.
• Kawasaki asked Lyons and Stone if they thought they would always be known as “Fake Steve” and “the guy who busted Fake Steve,” much like Eddie Murphy will always be known as Donkey from Shrek. Lyons and Stone’s reactions suggested they thought Kawasaki was nuts — and then started talking about how Donkey wasn’t really representative of Eddie Murphy’s career.
• Brad Stone broke the news that Lyons was Fake Steve while Lyons was on his way to a Maine vacation with his wife, a vacation he had promised would be work- and blog-free. Stone’s call to Lyons while he was en route changed all that. During their conversation, it was revealed that Lyons is the father of two-year-old twins. Stone and his wife are expecting twins soon. As their call was ending, Lyons promised Stone that he would buy two voodoo dolls of the twins and poke them at 2 a.m. random nights, to make up for Stone ruining Lyons’s vacation.

Does Web 2.0 commodify the work of artists? Yes, if it makes them create silly projects like this “Are You Social?” shirt. “The owner of the T-shirt is expected to mark the services he uses with a pen and to wear it in public. What happens when users start wearing their network identities openly in public?” Then users start getting drinks thrown in their faces, that’s what happens. Take off the shirt* and have a real conversation.

*then put on another shirt please

Source:Valleywag

Guy Kawasaki does an FSJ Q&A in Mountain View, semantic search gets a little sexy in Palo Alto, and you get a chance to control the government, all in today’s Valleywag Calendar.

• Tonight, in Mountain View, Forbes writer Dan Lyons meets with former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki for a Q&A session hosted by LinkedIn. Will there be mud wrestling? We can only hope. [Upcoming]
• A panel on semantic search is taking place at Pillsbury Winthrop in Palo Alto. Former Powerset CEO Barney Pell is scheduled to speak. Take the chance to ask him about the rumored reasons he’s no longer CEO of the hyped-up search engine. [VC Task Force]
• Hey, it’s election day! The only big contest around here is for Mayor of San Francisco, which is going to be Gavin Newsom again. (Since when does one elect a God-Mayor? - Ed.) Still, though, go out and vote. It’s your civic duty!

Got a to-do that’s a must-do? Send it to calendar@valleywag.com. Check out more events on our Google Calendar: