Exactly one year after its launch, the Facebook Like Button has become ubiquitous across the web and is still installed on thousands of new websites every day.

Facebook first introduced the Like Button at its F8 developer’s conference, along with Facebook Open Graph and instant personalization. Through the “Like”, Facebook spread its social footprint across the web. 50,000 websites installed the Like Button in its first week, and that number rose to 100,000 in less than a month.

That number hasn’t stopped rising since. Facebook said on Thursday that 10,000+ websites add the Like Button every day — identical to what COO Sheryl Sandberg said in October last year. In other words, the growth of the Like button hasn’t slowed down in the last six months. The social network says more than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook so far, including over 80% of the U.S. top 100 websites.

Facebook’s success hasn’t gone without notice. Google recently launched +1, its answer to Facebook’s Like Button, and a study last month by Eventbrite concluded that a “Like” is more profitable than a tweet.

What do you think of the Like Button? How has it changed your habits on the web? Let us know in the comments.

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Saya SUKA!

Canadians planning to tweet election results during next month’s elections had better think twice, because it could result in a $25,000 fine or up to five years in prison, thanks to a 73-year-old law.

Elections Canada, the non-partisan agency responsible for administering Canada’s federal elections, has come under fire for saying that it will enforce the Canada Elections Act, specifically a section that mandates that nobody prematurely announce or send messages about the election results until all the polls are closed.

The following is from section 329 of the Canada Elections Act:

“No person shall transmit the result or purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the close of all of the polling stations in that other electoral district.”

The law was originally enacted in 1938 to prevent radio stations from prematurely transmitting elections results, thereby influencing voter behavior on the west coast by the east coast. The polls close up to four and a half hours later on the west coast because of time zones.

This wasn’t a law designed for Facebook, Twitter and social media, though. There are simply too many potential sources of information for this law to be enforced in a feasible way. Despite that fact, Elections Canada says that public messages on social networks could be construed as breaking the Canada Elections Act.

“As administrators we have to inform people and make sure they are aware of that provision,” an Elections Canada spokesperson told the Vancouver Sun. “It’s not like Elections Canada will be monitoring your Twitter stream. However, if there are complaints, the Elections Canada Commissioner will investigate.”

Elections Canada has no choice — it has to enforce the laws that are on the books, and it’s up to the politicians to change the law. Citizens, especially Twitter users, have vowed to protest Elections Canada and the Canada Elections Act by tweeting, blogging and using social media to discuss election results as a way to defy the archaic law. Expect a lot of tweets with the hashtags #Tweettheresults and #elxn41 to be bending or breaking the rules.

It doesn’t seem like Elections Canada is going to go proactively go after citizens who tweet about election results, but we still hope this is the last time Canada has to deal with this law for its elections. Information cannot be suppressed in the digital era.

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Bayangkan kalau Malaysia pun buat macam ni... ramailah yang kena saman n jail nanti... ish..ish..ish...

Erin Bury is the community manager at Sprouter.com, an expert Q&A site for startup founders around the world. You can follow her on Twitter @ErinBury and read her blog at ErinBury.com.

Less than three years ago, community managers were a rare group of employees most often found at technology startups. Today, the role of community manager is common at companies of all sizes — from startups to multinational corporations. Despite their ubiquity, there is still a lot of confusion around what a community manager actually does and what employers should look for when hiring one.

Performable founder David Cancel recently wrote about the traits he looks for in potential startup hires. He placed the most importance on cultural fit and the least importance on previous startup experience. He also discussed why he hires people based on their personality, not their resume. Employers should take the same approach to hiring a community manager. It’s not necessarily about how many tweets the person has sent out, it’s about whether they’re passionate about your company and can become a brand advocate.

Here are the five qualities you should look for in a community manager to ensure he or she will be the right fit for your company.

1. Passion for Your Industry

A community manager is the face and voice of your brand, providing communications in both directions. If you’re a florist, it’s imperative that the person you hire is passionate about gardening. If you own a bakery, make sure the person either loves making or eating cake (shouldn’t be too difficult). This person will be living and breathing your brand, so you need an employee to take an interest in publications, key players and events within your industry. You can’t force passion, so find out in the interview if the candidate actually cares about what you do.

2. Varied Experience

A community manager is a jack-of-all-trades, especially at a startup. This person won’t have one specific role — like public relations or customer service — within the company. Rather, your community manager will have hands in different departments. The more varied the candidate’s background experience, the better they’ll adapt to the role. Look for someone who has a diversity of experiences on his or her resume — journalism will help him or her create amazing content, while PR and online marketing backgrounds will help him or her get the word out about your company and lead social media efforts. Look for experience with event planning, online analytics, SEO and customer service. You won’t find someone with experience in all of these areas, so rank your top three priorities and find a candidate with experience to match.

3. Resourcefulness

While past experience is great, it’s not a deal breaker for a potential community manager. It’s not whether this person already knows how to do something, it’s whether he or she can go out and find the answer without guidance. If you’re an entrepreneur, you won’t have the time to hold your new community manager’s hand while he or she learns the ins and outs of your business and your industry. And if you’re a big company, you need someone who can take the initiative to find answers and work independently with different departments.

4. Flexibility

Every day for a community manager is different. Whether attending events, working on a PR push for a product launch or creating content for your online properties, this new employee needs to be able to roll with the punches and adjust his or her schedule based on the news of the day — and that doesn’t always fall within the 9-to-5 workday. If a company crisis occurs on a Saturday or there’s an important event on a Thursday night, you need your community manager to be on top of it without complaining. Find someone who thrives on that variety.

5. Personality

It’s important for your new hires to have a great personality and to fit in well with your other employees. But when hiring a community manager it’s also important to find someone who has a vibrant personality that will resonate with your community. Your community manager is the first point of contact for customers and community members, and his or her interaction dictates whether your audience will have a positive or negative opinion of your brand. Find someone who knows how to communicate in a fun, interesting way; who knows how to be diplomatic when people complain or criticize the company; and who can meet strangers at events. Finding someone who’s a cultural fit internally is important, but finding someone who is a cultural fit with your community is imperative.

Every company has a list of projects and responsibilities they want their community manager to manage. But don’t just think about the tasks you want them to complete. Think about finding someone — with a personality and passion that reflects your brand — who can complete them in an independent manner.

Interested in more Social Media resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.

This year’s Foursquare Day festivities drew an impressive crowd of users on Saturday (4/16); together, their checkins exceeded 3 million in number during that 24-hour period.

The number of checkins on Saturday set a new record for Foursquare, which only reached the milestone 100 million total checkins in July 2010. 

The service’s first-ever Foursquare Day was held April 16, 2010. This year, a total of 19 mayors — including Mayor Bloomberg of New York City — declared April 16 Foursquare Day in their cities and towns. Additionally, more than 1,200 events were organized around the world. And one superfan even got a checkin-themed tattoo. Ouch. 

Did you attend an event or celebrate Foursquare Day on the 16th? 

Images courtesy of Flickr, Foursquare.

Clay McDaniel is the principal and co-founder of social media marketing agency Spring Creek Group. Find him via @springcreekgrp on Twitter. 

Do you remember life before Evite, Facebook Events, and Eventbrite? Handwritten paper invitations and RSVP phone calls seem like relics of a forgotten age. The web has dramatically changed the way people plan special occasions. Social media is making it easier than ever before to plan, promote, and execute a wide range of events from industry conferences, client events and partner symposiums, to large social gatherings and charity events. What’s more, social media allows you to solicit feedback and extend the life of your event by inviting attendees to connect via online communities before and afterward.

Whether you just want to generate a bit of buzz or instead have specific goals to increase ticket sales and attract top speakers and attendees, social media can make the planning process smoother by leveraging digital word-of-mouth. Here are eight tips for best results.

1. Establish Your Event-Related Channels

The months and weeks before your event is a critical promotional period. Use every social media channel at your disposal to get the word out about your event, and encourage people to share information on the event in return for small rewards. For example: “Share this event with 20 friends for 10% off your admission.” Start by creating an event page on Facebook and an event hashtag on Twitter, then create an event blog where you’ll post updates about it (new speakers, registration discounts, etc.). Make sure your Twitter hashtag is specific to your event or organization, without being too long.

Once you’ve created these pre-event social links, populate them with lots of content. If it’s a social event, post video or music clips, create a pre-event contest, or connect event-goers through socializing and games. For a social or community event, content should be engaging, fun, and shareable in order to drive word-of-mouth interest. If the event is more corporate in nature, offer fans and followers sneak peeks at topics to be discussed, or special pre-conference articles and presentations.

2. Provide Incentivized Word-Of-Mouth Promotions

Make sure that everyone who follows or likes your event on Twitter and Facebook is rewarded for their interest. Offer fans and followers special discounts or content. To incentivize people to register for the event, offer them early-bird discounts, invites to pre-event parties, or other rewards. If you really want to boost the power of word-of-mouth, you can use tools like Meteor Solutions to identify your key influencers, then actively motivate and reward them for sharing information about your contest.

3. Make Registration Social

Don’t forget to use a social registration service like EventBrite, which not only makes registration easier and more streamlined, but allows attendees to share their event activity with friends. Other popular social event invitation platforms include Plancast and Twtvite. Most of these services are highly integrated with social networking platforms and can be configured with user caps and privacy options.

4. Use Location-Based Services and Checkin Rewards

Geo-location sites let you set up a page with rewards including badges, coupons, specials, or gifts. These location based services are easily integrated with other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, so checkins will be shared with larger networks. When attendees come to your event, you can reward them for checking in at different stations, panels, or activities. Rewards such as free ice cream, a gift card, or other small incentives can be redeemed after the show.

5. Bring your Event to Life With Twitter

Using social media during an event can mean the difference between a flat, boring affair and one where attendees are engaged and excited. But too much real-time social interaction can also derail the main presentations or talks.

First and foremost, encourage attendees to tweet during the event using the established hashtag. An active Twitter stream during your event not only engages participants in real time but also allows people who could not attend to get a feel for the sessions and topics being discussed. Some event organizers set up a huge screen behind speakers to display hashtagged tweets in real time. But again, this “backchannel” can backfire if the tweets become negative or go off-topic. All that interaction can derail speakers as they try to respond in real-time to all the “interference.”

6. Include Non-Attendees

Don’t forget to set up a livestream during the event using Facebook or UStream so fans can follow along online. Facebook enables you to store this stream so that people can watch it after the event proper. You can also create a YouTube channel for the event to post videos before, during, and after. Encourage non-attendees to ask questions through Twitter or Facebook during the event and answer them live.

7. Post-Mortem: Extend the Shelf Life of Your Event

Your event doesn’t have to end the day it’s over. Social media can keep the momentum going for many weeks and months afterwards. On your blog, post a “wrap up” of all the key highlights. You can add links to presentations, key learnings, and other downloadable documents. Of course, you’ll want to post photos on the blog and on Facebook, and continue tweeting about the event even after it’s over. You can post thoughts, ideas, or links to longer articles that might be of interest to those who attended.

Another great way to keep your event from fading fast from people’s memories is to create ways for attendees and other interested parties to continue socializing, discussing, or debating topics covered there. Do whatever you can to keep the conversation alive.

8. Use Social Media Metrics to Measure Success

Consider using online surveys to ask attendees for feedback on panels, venue, speakers, topics, and other facets of the event. Facebook polls are fun, easy ways to get quick responses and feedback from attendees. Be prepared for honesty. If someone has a negative comment to share, make sure to address their comment or concern and store the information to improve next year’s event. Lastly, pull total social media stats from sites like Search.Twitter.com and Social Mention, or set up Google Alerts ahead of time. If the results are positive, don’t be shy about publicizing some of these metrics to highlight the reach and impact your event had. 

Interested in more Social Media resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.

Image courtesy of Flickr, dhammza / off

Nero, a software company known for its media suites, is launching a free app-based system on Tuesday that organizes and syncs media between multiple devices. Its Kwik Media Manager joins a host of other products that are aiming to free digital media from a particular device.

The manager provides a library for your music, video, photos and data that looks a lot like iTunes or Windows Media Manager at first glance. But unlike iTunes, which makes transferring files to multiple devices a pain, it makes transferring an iTunes library onto an Android device a matter of drag and drop between folders. The same goes for transferring video from a camera to an iPad or photos from multiple cameras to one photo library.

Kwik Media Manager also comes with basic editing tools like automatic red eye reduction, an easy slideshow editor, a video clipper and a disc burner that is free for a limited time.

Nero’s new system rivals products like Libox, Unifi and MediaRover that similarly transfer media between devices. But Nero is trying to do so on top of a basic editing and organizational structure. For the casual user, it could replace very basic photo and video editing programs, a slideshow creator and a library in one swift and free download.

One major way that Nero’s strategy is different from others is its app approach. While the basic software download is free, an app store that will eventually open to third-party developers sells additional features to more advanced users. For now, it’s filled with Nero’s best tricks. For $0.99, users can add a face-recognition app that searches photos based on who is in them. A Blu-ray player app costs $29.99. And the “move it” app, at $4.99, will automatically optimize files for the devices to which they are being transferred. This avoids a flash video being loaded onto an apple product or a tiny video being loaded to a larger device.

While Nero has previously powered a similar media manager solution for Dell and sells a MediaHome product for $40, Kwik Media Manager is a huge departure from the way that it usually does its business. And a smart one. Not only do users have an option to buy Nero’s full-priced multimedia suites within the app store, but they have options to spend what they want on the features that they’ll use.

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Hurm... Soon Samsung Tab, real soon!

Alhamdulillah.... Today, April 20th, I'm officially a year wiser. Happy 26th Birthday to me... I hope this year, I'm blessed with good rezeki so i can do good deeds to my parents. Insha-Allah.

Facebook has accidentally turned on email notifications for some users, and the social network’s users are complaining loudly.

Most users receive email notifications for events such as when someone sends a friend request or when a friend posts on their wall. This feature can be turned off in user settings, but apparently something has happened at Facebook that has caused the feature to be activated again.

“Some people are suddenly receiving email notifications for settings they had turned off, and the checkboxes are now checked,” Facebook said on its Known Issues Facebook Page. “We are currently working on a solution to this problem.”

As one might expect, affected Facebook users are not happy and are posting to Twitter and Facebook to complain.

We’ve reached out to Facebook and will update this story when we learn more.