Crossposted from shamable.com, here.

In case you didn’t hear, Twitter has signed a deal with Yahoo for a somewhat more advanced integration than it has with Google or Microsoft. A conversation I had just yesterday with a friend at Agence France-Press (AFP) got me to thinking, and now this announcement has started to confirm my theory:

Twitter is starting to sound an awful lot like a social wire service.

Check below the cut for the rest.

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Crossposted from shamable.com, here.

The Google rhetoric is getting a little ridiculous. Yesterday, they announced Google Buzz, a FriendFeed-Facebook-Twitter sort of mash-up built right into gmail. I just read a mini-review of the service by Jason Calacanis. He began with:

BREAKING: Google Buzz is brilliant. Like ground-breaking,
game-changing brilliant.

He then went on to suggest “Facebook has just lost half its value,” that “this could actually derail the Facebook IPO” and even said “If Google adds social gaming to Google Buzz Facebook is 2012′s Pointcast.”

Google Buzzkill?

Not in a million years. Here’s the deal, people: Google is not God. They are not a perfect company, and they’ve had plenty of failures. Just like Apple, who proved two weeks ago even they can produce disappointing products (*ahem* the iPad), just because Google slaps their name on something doesn’t mean it’s going to be a winner.

Google Buzz might have potential, but from where I’m sitting I’m not terribly impressed. Several reasons for this.

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Well, maybe not entirely shameless self-promotion, but I did write it so I suppose it deserves a little disclaimer. This weekend will hopefully be a great one for productivity. With the incoming D.C. #snomgasm / #snowpocalypse2 / #snom (my personal favorite) / any number of other crazy hashtags, I’m hoping maybe it’ll give me a good excuse to lock myself indoors with a blanket, food, notes, a laptop and maybe a good book, if I manage to get a lot of work, writing and studying done.

Anyway, this is a quickie. Just wanted to point out that from now on I will be writing for not only this blog, but also two other blogs! First, I’ll be contributing to the brand spanking new Shamable.com, written as a guide for public relations and communications professionals, with a more serious, realistic take to the industry than some other blogs that may or may not have been spoofed for the title. The people contributing to this blog are top-notch, triple-A professionals with fantastic ideas and brilliant track-records.

I’m honored to be a part of their site and I hope I can provide some valuable input from my student perspective! Be sure to check out my first entry on the blog (more to come this week), about teaching social media (professors, pay attention to that one).

Secondly, I will now be writing for the AU Intern Blog for the American University Career Center. There I’ll be reflecting on my internship experience this semester at MS&L Worldwide as well as some other random internship-related thoughts that might be bumping around in my head. I’ve actually written two posts for it just tonight, you can see my introduction here and my comments on the TechCrunch intern “scandal” here.

I’ll do my best to note on here when I’ve made some significant contributions to the other two blogs, but please add them to your RSS reader (and me, for that matter!) and keep your eyes peeled for new updates from me and my fellow contributors. Thanks, as always, for reading. Tomorrow evening I’ll have a recap of the fantastic panel event I attended this morning as well as some thoughts on what may be in store, in the near term, for my future (might be a bit vague!).

[Shamable]
[AU Intern Blog]

As evidenced by my conspicuous lack of updates this week, it’s been busy around here! I’ll do my best to catch up quickly and get back to writing a bit this weekend.

First, D.C. Media Makers! I attended my first event on Wednesday evening at NPR’s headquarters here in Washington, and it was fantastic! Got to see some very cool people I’ve gotten to know over the past few weeks, and got to hear the amazing Jen Consalvo (@noreaster on Twitter) speak about her photography work, how to get into photography, and some tips on how to get better shots–even on an iPhone (for what it’s worth, she recommended CameraBag as excellent filter app, pretty cool!).

As a side note on DCMM, this semester I’ve obviously been trying to get out in the city and meet people, go to events, hear speakers, get involved in unconferences, etc. It’s already paying off, and in a big, big way. I’ve met some absolutely amazing people and developed some good friendships already. I feel like I can go to any event now and usually see someone I know. This city is huge, but the community is smaller than it seems, and everyone has been so incredibly welcoming! I can’t encourage my fellow students, and professionals, enough: get out there and take advantage of this amazing city. Meet some of the incredible professionals out here and say hi, get to know them. I know I’ve learned so much just in the past few weeks from these people, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Thanks so much to all of you who’ve taught me, even indirectly, and I’m already looking forward to the next event!

Now, in a more general life update, things have been pretty crazy for me lately. School is piling on the work and the reading, and unfortunately that still has to be pretty much priority number one. However, there’s a couple cool things happening in my life:

• Soon I will be contributing my first post (of many, hopefully) to shamable.com. Seeking to be the no-B.S. guide to social media, it’s a new Web site being developed by some of the best people in the business. I’m seriously honored to be a part of it and I’m hoping I can make some valuable contributions from my perspective as a student here in D.C. during this social media revolution.
• I’m hard at work on my communications honors capstone. The first of two (I’ll do my business honors capstone next year), I’m really excited about the project and overjoyed that I have an absolutely amazing professor advising me with it. The project will ultimately be a social media case study in digital form, and will be appended to this Web site. Expect plenty of updates on that throughout the semester, especially towards the latter end of it.
• Internships, scholarships, awards, oh my! Yes indeed, it’s already that time and applications are littering my desk. This weekend I hope to make a fair bit of headway into scholarship applications for my senior year (gasp, can’t believe it’s almost here already) and internship applications for the summer. Speaking of which–do you know of any opportunities (preferably paid) for a young communications professional to work over the summer? Location not a factor, let me know! All tips are sincerely appreciated!
• It looks like it’s going to be a busy Saturday for me, as I’ve already got several things on the docket. In the morning I’m hoping to get down to the Washington Auto Show, especially since it’s garnered so much buzz this year. At 1:00pm I’ll be heading over to Politics & Prose bookstore here in northwest Washington for an event with one of my former professors, Robert Lehrman. He just had his book on speechwriting published (it’s amazing, by the way) and I’m eager to say hi again! Finally, Saturday night at 5pm the AU PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America) will be holding a networking event at American University. If you’re a communications professional in the area and would be interested and coming to network with some eager public communications students, please let me know! We’d love to have you (and there will be free food).

And alas, I think that’s all I have time for this morning. I hope everyone has a fantastic day!