The Tumblr blog Reasons My Son Is Crying is only 6 days old and already has an enthusiastic following. That’s because the site’s chronicle of the very specific logic behind a toddler’s meltdowns is familiar to anyone who has ever cared for young children, or even used to be one. Reasons My Son Is Crying is finding fans on Reddit and parenting blogs alike.

This isn’t the first, or even the hundredth time Facebook has blocked innocuous links and content. In 2011, Facebook briefly took down film critic Roger Ebert‘s page for “violating the terms of service” after a controversial post by the author generated complaints. Facebook soon restored Ebert’s page and said its removal had been a mistake, but declined to explain further.

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No, the page hasn’t been hacked or anything. But since the news broke last week that the bookseller planned on hosting book signings for former dogfighter Michael Vick, Barnes & Noble’s Facebook page has become something of a discussion board for animal lovers. Vick’s appearances were cancelled by his publisher, but that hasn’t stopped the protestors.

There are literally hundreds of comments left by people criticizing Barnes & Noble, many promising to boycott the company, and from what we can tell, none have been deleted.

Arguments have broken out among the commenters, resulting in impassioned debates on topics including animal rights, the banning of books, prisoner reform, corporate ethics, and the correlation between animal abuse and sociopathy. There is name-calling, emotional bonding, and a whole mess of spelling errors. In short, it’s a free-for-all, and has been for nearly a week.

Whoever runs the Barnes & Noble Facebook page is either a passionate supporter of open debate, or falling asleep on the job.

Here’s hoping they never wake up.

Previously on FishbowlLA:
Publisher Says Threats of Violence Behind Cancellation of Michael Vick Book Tour
Michael Vick Book Signings Spark Barnes & Noble Boycott
Michael Vick’s Appearances at Barnes & Noble Stores Cancelled

During a special live chat sponsored on Thursday by Poynter, LA Times reporter Kate Linthicum and reader engagement editor Martin Beck discussed the role that Twitter and Facebook played in their coverage of the Occupy LA movement.

Beck mentioned that to locate the best hashtags and thus monitor the most dynamic Twitter eyewitness accounts, one of his favorite tools was and remains whatthetrend.com. He also said that both TweetDeck and Hoot Suite were invaluable in helping parse the identified, trustworthy Tweeters.

As a reporter, Linthicum figured out ways to take full advantage of the army of Ustream-ers:

“I would walk around camp and ask the people with cameras for their Twitter handles. I’d know when they were posting videos online, and then I could monitor what was going on from my computer, even when I wasn’t at the camp…”

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The English-language version of moviepilot.com already gets 1.8 million unique visitors a month, even though it was only launched last fall. The U.S. Facebook stats for this German operation are even better: upwards of 4.1 million likes.

Moviepilot relies on Facebook Connect and proprietary algorithms to cater to people who regularly attend Hollywood movies on opening weekend (“a.k.a. “first weekenders”). The idea is to better link up the “right” fans with the “right” upcoming film. At this point in the firm’s evolution, CEO and founder Tobi Bauckhage tells Screen International he felt it was logical to relocate to LA:

“The problem is that our offering is not very easy to box: we’re not a media agency, we’re not a publishing site, we’re not a research company, we’re kind of everything.”

“It needs explaining, so that’s why I moved over here to LA to talk to the studios. The second bit is to educate the studios and show them how powerful and potentially meaningful this data is for their daily work.”

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Last night at NBC Southern California headquarters in Burbank, several dozen invited bloggers gathered for an evening of food, drink and conference room presentations about the station’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram efforts tied to the London Summer Olympics.

Website editorial director Sara Catania, managing editor Jonathan Lloyd, social media lead Olsen Ebright and social media/tech on-air reporter Mekahlo Medina (pictured, above) took turns explaining how the “first social media Olympics” have been leveraged, cross-promoted and harnessed. One of the shiniest beacons of this systematic, station-wide effort is the fact that the follower count @NBCLA has zoomed in the past few weeks from around 27,000 just past the 40,000 mark.

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Last month, we reported about a massively popular LA Weekly freelance contribution from Jonathan Maseng. In the article, Maseng wrote about how the owner and some members of the downtown branch of the CrossFit gym chain had posed for a photo with a homeless person passed out in the streets and then gloried by sharing the resulting picture (and other related snaps) on the business’s official Facebook page.

This past Monday, July 30, aforementioned CrossFit Mean Streets owner Ronnie Teasdale sent out to members a long email/Facebook message about the resulting controversy. While he admitted that the photos (since removed) were in poor taste, he tried to deflect some of the controversy by noting that the passed out individuals shown were not homeless but rather habitually drunk customers of nearby bars. People that he claims he and his staff know well:

Many of the pictures in the article are over two years old. Let me be clear about who the people in the pictures are: they are not homeless people. They are alcoholics who are regulars at the bars nearby the gym. We know their names and have interacted with them over the time the gym has been open, including getting them help when needed. I don’t condone the photos, but the implication of the article, which is that the gym was abusing homeless people or refusing to come to the aid of people in need, is false.

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Here’s an item that has the scandalous, photo-driven hallmarks of a classic LA Weekly “The Informer” dispatch. The only anomaly is that it comes not from Dennis Romero or Simone Wilson but rather first-time freelance contributor Jonathan Maseng.

Just ahead of the 2012 Reebok CrossFit Games this weekend at the Home Depot Center, LA Weekly has published some absolutely disgusting Facebook photos shared by the the owner of the LA downtown end of the CrossFit operation. The pictures, which you’ll have to click through to see, feature in one case GymFit personnel gleefully standing above a homeless man passed out on a sidewalk.

LA Weekly editor-in-chief Sarah Fenske tells FishbowlLA that Maseng’s story started blowing up this morning around 9 a.m. PT, three hours after it was posted. “Right now we’re getting three times the normal traffic on laweekly.com, entirely thanks to that story.”

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The Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers walked away from the inaugural NBA Social Media Awards Wednesday night with some hardware.

The Lakers received the Social MVT (Most Valuable Team) award for having the largest social media footprint (Twitter and Facebook) during the NBA season.

The Clippers received the Fan Nation Award for the highest percentage of increased exposure across all social media platforms.

(Funny how you become more popular when you have a winning product on the floor.)

Individually, Kobe Bryant won a pair of awards (#TrendSetter Award and Thumbs-Up Award) for the most mentions on Twitter and likes on Facebook. Clippers star Blake Griffin won the Got Game Award for the fan-favorite team/play during the regular season.

A crazy end to a crazy story.

Yesterday evening, not long after doing a brief Skype interview with LA-based What’s Trending host Shira Lazar about his recent suspension without pay from the Colorado Springs Gazette, reporter Barrett Tryon tweeted that his job had been reinstated. And… that he was no longer interested in resuming employment with the paper, after being suspended for linking on Facebook to an LA Times article about a change in his outlet’s ownership.

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While they might not be in the NBA Finals this season, the Los Angeles Lakers are the champions of the social media world.

Social media company Unmetric determined the Lakers rank as the highest social media team from the 2012 playoffs. Miami was second followed by Boston, the Los Angeles Clippers and the Chicago Bulls.

According to Unmetric, the scores are “a scientific blend of 24 qualitative and quantitative social media metrics, weighted and balanced to produce a single benchmarkable number.”

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