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Researching and writing about the intersection of brand engagement and social media, I come across a lot of interesting resources and tips that I want to feature in articles but just don’t have the time to write about for you.

I’ve also articles appearing in other publications.

So this week I am trying out a quick digest of links with a summary for you. Do let me know if this is of assistance and I’ll try to post something each week.

• Telecoms provider Orange is launching a major drive on mobile social networking in the UK and is partnering with Facecook, MySpace and Bebo. The service will be commercialised through banner adverts, but will work across all web-enabled phones. Orange wants to establish the service as a standalone application on Orange-branded phones and allow users to synchronise their social networking between mobile, PC and the TV.

• BT has purchased the online business directory Ufindus.com for £20m as it prepares to take on Yell.com, creating an online directory with social networking technology, so that users will not only be able to find businesses and services in their area but will also be able to rate and review them, for subsequent users. This is in response to the fact that increasingly there is greater broadband connectivity in the UK and more people are using mobile devices to search for local information when on the move.

• The Catholic church online news service now has an account with Qik.com, and will be using it to document the Popes travels. Qik is the video sharing platform that works with your mobile phone. The online news site H2onews has come about because of the Pope’s request to use modern methods of communication for evangelization and promoting peace and development (cfr. World Social Communications Day, May 8, 2005).

• Newsweek does a short review of the microblogging platforms of Twitter, Tumblr and Posterous

• The Guardian does a review of the microblogging platform Tumblr claiming it has te potential to become very large as an online platform

• The House of Lords in the UK have an experimental blog and this week announce they have had we have had 60,000 views since they went live – daily visitors are between 200 and 500 visitors, though the figure occasionally shoots up into four-figures. How did I find out about the blog – from the UK Parliament Twitter stream of course!

• Facebook Group ‘Don’t Ban Irish On Aerlingus’ now has over 4000 members – The group was set up for the following reasons and I quote: ‘Aer Lingus have instructed their crew to stop using the Irish Language during in-flight announcements on the new Belfast-London Heathrow route. This group is a message to them that this is not acceptable.’

Additional Articles From Krishna

Over at Small Business Branding you’ll find my article about how to market your business on your business blog and website with ShareThis.com

At PodCampIreland.com you will find articles about cool tools such Wordle.com which allows you to create your own word clouds, PutPlace.com the place to store your digital media, how to Twitter from Outlook, learnings from the Coke launch of i9 Hidrotonico in Brazil and their blogger outreach programme and how to get featured on the new PodCamp Ireland podcast which we’re starting to record from next week.

That’s it for this week’s social media roundup.

Do let me know if you found this of assistance and I’ll post again next week.