Do you use endorsements or notifications on LinkedIn?

Over at SocialTimes, one writer argued that these two functions are changing the way people present their work lives online. If you don’t share these functions with your LinkedIn community, you could be missing out. Here’s more from the blog:

Part of the problem with LinkedIn has been that people already have so many other social networks to maintain that there isn’t much time to check in with colleagues and see what’s happening in their careers until it’s time to find a new job or to look for someone to hire. The little updates automate the process of keeping touch. LinkedIn added Notifications to members’ homepages in September. In November, the company reported in a third quarter earnings call that members had posted four times as many comments on other people’s updates. As for the newly added Endorsements, you can see pretty quickly which of your skills are the most valuable to your network, or at least the most widely known, by how many people have clicked on them. (LinkedIn said that there were already 200 million endorsements made at the close of quarter three.)

Read more

Collins Dictionary reached out to its readers to select new words for the dictionary. Among the 86 words added, the dictionary now includes: “crowdfunding” “photobomb” and “captcha.”

SocialTimes has more: “Is ‘crowdsourced’ a real word? It is now, thanks to the Collins Dictionary. To help demystify the verbiage of the internet, the publisher asked readers to nominate their favorite words for inclusion on CollinsDictionary.com … After a thorough screening of more than 4,400 submissions, the editors have narrowed the selection to 86 words. Here are 29 tech-related words that you may now officially add to your vocabulary list.”

On today’s edition of the Morning Media Menu, Social Times editor Devon Glenn discussed the new words. Press play below to listen.

On today’s Morning Media Menu, Social Times staff writer Devon Glenn talked about why AppHero raised $1.8 million for its app discovery service.

Here’s more about the service: “AppHero looks at things like your age, gender, and location as well as likes and shares.  Right now, the app doesn’t read your status updates, although Satok told TechCrunch that this is in the works. The system continues to fine-tune your recommendations with each app that you download. As with Pandora and Netflix, you can train AppHero to give you better results by clicking the “not interested” button if you don’t like the apps it recommends.”

On the show, Glenn also discussed an award-winning architecture project that converted a Wal-Mart into a library.

Mediabistro’s AppSlap show just took a look at Citia, a new iPad app that works to “reorganize and condense existing works of serious nonfiction.”

You can explore the app in the video embedded above, guided by SocialTimes staff writer Devon Glenn. but here’s more about the tool:

Using professional writers, editors, designers, and programmers—in partnership with major publishers such as Penguin, Perseus, and O’Reilly—we reorganize and condense existing works of serious nonfiction. We are making books easier to sample, navigate, and share. And when you discover one you love, we hope you’ll buy the original (just flip a card to purchase our titles, in any format).

YouTube news ruled the Morning Media Menu (MP3 link) today, talking about how you can throw a video party with your friends in Google+ Hangouts.

Here’s more from YouTube about the new tool: “Create, control, save and even share playlists of videos with your friends—all inside a Hangout. Just start a Hangout, have everyone load the YouTube app at the top of the screen, and start adding videos. It’s like your own VIP table at the world’s coolest YouTube party. Everyone can add videos in the Hangout through a search tool in the app, or remove the videos you don’t like. All your friends in the Hangout can drag and drop videos to sort the order in the playlist, or skip forward or backward to play the next one.”

Social Times staff writer Devon Glenn shared rumors about iPad and Android apps for Pinterest users. We discussed the surprising news that eBook sales surpassed hardcover sales revenues last quarter. We also talked about Google+ Hangouts improvements for sharing video with your friends.

As the Facebook IPO launched today, with the share price trading between $38 and $42 in the first few hours on the stock market.

While the app market is booming, some fear that we are nearing another tech bubble. Every week we will keep track of tech bubble predictions as we cover this space. Today’s feature comes from The Huffington Post business section, where they are keeping a “Tech Bubble Death Watch” over the industry.

What do you think? The post worried about the future of Facebook: “Its revenue growth is slowing. It hasn’t quite figured out how this whole “cell phone” thing works yet. Advertisers aren’t too sure they can make money buying ads on Facebook, the New York Times writes. One, General Motors, has already pulled its ads. Insiders will be dumping shares in an unusually big way at the IPO. Some 57 percent of the shares that will be available to the public will come from investors who bought the company early and are cashing in on the IPO, writes the Wall Street Journal — a high percentage for any IPO, particularly for a tech IPO.”

Read more

Wish you could build book trailers or YouTube videos straight from your new Google Drive? The video embedded above will show you how.

Today on the Morning Media Menu, Social Times staff writer Devon Glenn showed us how the WeVideo editing app that lets you upload video with Google Drive. The company offers a free 1GB plan, letting users play with the new tool. Check it out:

People can use WeVideo to upload and store their video files directly from their mobile phones, desktop or laptop computers. From there, they can edit the files with tools comparable to those on iMovie, like adding filters or making transitions between clips. They can also add music from a cache of royalty-free tracks. As with Google Docs, WeCreate users can invite friends and colleagues to collaborate on the project without having to email each other the files. When the video is complete, they can share it on social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitter.