Mashable is set to host a series of East Coast events this April, May and June, bringing together the social media communities in Philadelphia and Atlanta in addition to our regular NYC events.

We kick off the series with our second NextUp NYC event, held at 92YTribeca in New York City on April 28th. Next, we make our first stops ever for Mashable Mixers in Philadelphia and Atlanta. Then we return to New York City for Internet Week NY and our third NextUp NYC event - Social Media Marketing 101. Save the dates: we’re excited to meet the Philadelphia and Atlanta social media communities for the first time!

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Mashable NextUp NYC: Lessons from the Local Internet Startup Community

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New York City,
April 28th, 2009

The second Mashable NextUp NYC will bring together four successful New York startups: Snooth, Behance, Boxee and Aviary. The night will comprise of networking, a presentations session from the startups followed by a panel moderated by Mashable’s Editor-in-Chief, Adam Ostrow. Tickets now on sale.

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Mashable Mixer Philly

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Philadelphia
May 1st, 2009

The Mashable team is excited for our first ever event in Philadelphia. Mashable Mixer Philly will be a great opportunity to meet with myself, Adam Ostrow (Editor-in-Chief), Sharon Feder (Features Editor), Brett Petersel (East Coast Events Director) and the local social media community. Thanks to IndyHall for partnering with us to help make the night one to remember. Location and ticketing to be announced shortly.

IndyHall, our partner for this event, describes itself as:

“A vibrant and diverse community of freelancers, independents, work-from-home people, who have an interest in getting out of their dull work day and participating in a community that’s designed to support and encourage people who make a living doing what they love. We provide communication tools, events (social and educational), as well as a physical space to work and collaborate in Old City Philadelphia.”

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Mashable Mixer Atlanta

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Atlanta
May 14th, 2009

Mashable and Regator are proud to announce the first ever Mashable event in Atlanta: we have a special evening planned so we look forward to meeting the Atlanta social media community. Mashable team members in attendance will include myself, Adam Ostrow (Editor-in-Chief), Sharon Feder (Features Editor) and Brett Petersel (East Coast Events Director). Location and ticketing to be announced shortly.

For those unfamiliar with our co-host, Regator, the company explains:

“Regator gathers the web’s best blog posts and makes it easy for users of all skill levels to find, discuss, rank, organize, and share high-quality content about more than 500 topics. Regator, the most selective blog resource online today, sorts through the junk so you don’t have to.”

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Mashable NextUp NYC: Social Media Marketing 101

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New York City
June 3rd, 2009

The third Mashable NextUp NYC will provide information and guidance on Social Media Marketing; every successful company, whether it’s a small business or a major corporation, can utilize this affordable form of online promotion. The night will comprise of networking and keynotes on the topic by Steve Rubel (SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital) and Pete Cashmore (CEO and Founder, Mashable). Tickets now on sale.

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Social Media for Business: The Dos & Don’ts of Sharing
Thanks to Mashable’s Valued Sponsors
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After announcing sweeping changes to the way it plans to shape its terms of service going forward, Facebook is today making another big move towards transparency: opening up its official corporate blog to comments. And, users are having a field day with it so far, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s post from yesterday about the company’s new “governing principles” attracting more than 1,000 comments.

Facebook says that “they won’t be responding to comments directly” on the blog, but it appears someone is at least monitoring it, as some of the more profane comments I saw earlier today seem to have been removed (see below). Nonetheless, there are hundreds of candid messages, both addressing the current Facebook turmoil over the ToS and additional features and changes that users would like to see.

The move to open up its blog to comments puts Facebook’s in rarified air amongst other top Internet companies. Google’s dozens of blogs have comments turned off, as does Digg (though you can of course comment on the stories once they get Dugg). Twitter used to have comments turned on, but appears to have disabled the option. Yahoo actually leaves comments turned on, with yesterday’s post from new CEO Carol Bartz attracting nearly 100 of them.

I think Facebook is smart to open up in this way. While comments are likely to be negative a lot of the time, especially when it concerns issues like privacy and community management, it also gives the company an opportunity to see smaller issues that might be bugging people, like numerous users who have suggested things along the lines of, “on people’s status boxes, there should be a “don’t like” and “don’t care option.”

Of course, the overriding goal of opening up blog comments in addition to yesterday’s announcements are to convince users that Facebook listens and responds to users’ concerns, which, will largely remain unclear until the company is once again tested on privacy issues.

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Mashable’s Upcoming East Coast Events: NYC, Philadelphia and Atlanta
DeskAway is a Project Management Tool Your Boss Will Love
Social Media for Business: The Dos & Don’ts of Sharing
SXSW

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: DeskAway

Quick Pitch: DeskAway is a subscription-based on-demand project collaboration service for small businesses & teams.

Genius Idea: Online project management is big business. The space includes big fish like Basecamp and flashier newbies like Collab, with a myriad of options in between. Most of these tools make it easier to manage tasks, share files, and track milestones. Very few of them, however, actually work in corporate environments where senior staff just want a high level overview of the bottom line.

DeskAway, however, provides a convenient all-in-one online project management and collaboration environment that anyone can use, regardless of tech savvy, and bosses will love.

DeskAway’s feature set is exhaustive, but suffice to say it can definitely hold its own against more well-known competitors, because it provides the project creation, task and resource management, and milestone-related features you love with a simple to use interface and boss-friendly reporting options.

Not only can admin users assign known issues with priority levels to team members, but all tasks and issues can be time tracked, so project progress reports come complete with a comprehensive overview of overdue, completed, archived, and in-progress projects that you can print out or share online with management.

DeskAway does a number of things really well, including file management and document creation. Instead of writeboards that use a version of wiki mark-up language, they have docs with a rich-text editor so they function just like typical word processing documents. Docs also come with templates, and support sharing, multi-party collaboration, auto-saving, revision tracking, and comments.

We’ve barely scratched the service when it comes to DiskAway, but we certainly think it’s a viable alternative to other project management options. The online application can be used free of charge, but larger teams and companies will want to upgrade to subscription based plans that start at $10/mo and go to $99/mo for more features, storage, and unlimited projects.

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Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

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There are lots of options for designers and developers to show off their work, ranging from setting up their own website to communities for sharing portfolios. Whobuilt.it takes a simpler approach, establishing what is essentially a whois that associates designers and developers with a given domain name.

Here’s how it works: look up a given domain name, like carsonified.com (the example below), and if you contributed to its development, click “I worked on this site!” To verify you in fact did work it, Whobuilt.it asks you to upload a specific HTML file in your site’s root directory. Once Whobuilt.it confirms the file is there, your name is associated with the website’s profile page.

As you add your name to various sites, you build up your profile on Whobuilt.it, which lists all the sites you’ve worked on. There’s also room for a brief bio, a link to your Twitter profile, and a list of any co-workers you’re associated with. As a user, you can also “like” various sites, which will create a link to your Whobuilt.it profile.

Ultimately, Whobuilt.it could prove a good way to verify that a developer or designer you’re thinking about hiring actually works on the sites they’ve claimed. Meanwhile, as a user of the site, adding your portfolio and accumulating fans is another way to help build your reputation.

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Additional Design and Development Resources

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- Web Design Toolbox: 130+ New Tools to Make You a Better and Faster Designer

- Web Development Toolbox: 120+ New Tools for Web Development

- 10 Video Tutorials for Learning Basic Web Design Skills

Sarah Evans is the director of communications at Elgin Community College (ECC) in Elgin, Illinois. She also authors a PR and social media blog and is the founder of #journchat.

It doesn’t matter if you’re on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr; your online personality is not only part of your overall brand, it becomes an interactive experience for you and your business. So, who is the face or voice of your brand and what do they share? It’s a very important decision in and of itself.

Just as you create branding guidelines and key messaging guides, so too should you dedicate time to creating your social media personality. There are multiple combinations that you can use to increase your brand visibility and converse with your customers.

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Be transparent and authentic. Be human.

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Don’t want the worst day of your life to be played over and over again like Groundhog Day? Then don’t talk, share, Tweet or write about it via social media. That said, no one is happy, or perfect all of the time. It’s okay to let people into the “real” events which happen in your life. Social media for business is about return on engagement. Connect with people, build opportunities through dialogue which would not have otherwise occurred, then connect them with your business.

Think in terms of “bad driver just cut me off” instead of “just got served papers for a lawsuit.” The first example connects people and encourages dialogue. Who hasn’t been cut off by a bad driver? The second example has the potential to make people uncomfortable or turn them “off” to your brand.

A great example of “what not to do” is posted on Peter Shankman’s blog, How an “accomplished communicator” communicates. The sender of this email has now publicly shared a not-so-nice side of his personality in a VERY public setting.

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A profile pic is worth a thousand tweets

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A major part of your social media personality is your avatar and your profile bio. The first rule for avatars and bios is to stay consistent across social platforms. If you’re sharing information from your business account, decide whether you want your avatar to be your company logo or the face of the president. Each sends a completely different message and requires a different messaging and branding approach. 

Who is doing it well? Here are a few of my favorite business and/or personal branded avatars and profiles on various social media platforms:

Facebook

Businesses have many options when it comes to creating a Facebook personality. There are options for “group” or “fan” pages versus a personal account.

· Benjamin Leis and his pet project’s group page, The Campus Buzz for College Media: Ben uses The Campus Buzz as his avatar to reinforce the importance of his project and brand. He is becoming one with this identity.

· Carrie Kerpen and her company’s fan page, the Kbuzz: Carrie’s profile is on par with her personality—smart and helpful, a loving wife and mother.

YouTube

· Blendtec’s Will It Blend? - The company offers a full library of “Will It Blend?” videos on its YouTube account with a profile perfectly suited to match.

Twitter

· @VeronicaDLcruz - Tweeting from the CNN newsroom in New York City.
· @jasonfalls - Social media explorer for a brand building agency.
· @PRnewswire - Vicky Tweets on behalf of PR Newswire.

An inviting avatar may include one of the following attributes (along with great content): a smiling face, a full color photo (as opposed to black and white), or a familiar logo.

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Leaving a legacy

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Your social media personality becomes part of your brand’s legacy. Don’t brand your personality for the day, the month or the year. This is serious stuff. What you post stays around for a pretty long time and the information (good and bad) isn’t too hard to find. Your social media posts offer vast archives of information about you.

This means, what you share, post or tweet today should reinforce your brand tomorrow. Think about each message you share via social media as an email which has gone public to your entire organization and all of your stakeholders. Now, imagine if they are reading this email and RESPONDING to it. That’s part of the power of your social media brand.

Who is leaving a legacy aligned with their brand on Twitter?

· @BreakingNewsOn - Why? All breaking news, all the time. I’m not confused about what I’m getting from them.

· @dannybrown - Why? He walks the talk on business with a strong emphasis on philanthropy.

· @barefoot_exec - Why? Her messages completely align with her goals—to empower women, celebrate success and encourage greatness.

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Don’t be a social schizo

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Multiple personality disorders do not work well in social media. If you confuse, you lose. If you are a business expert one day, a media maven the next and live news feed after that, people will ultimately stop connecting.

A very simple approach is to make a short list of what you WILL talk about via social media. Stick with it. The pay off? When someone thinks about an expert in interior design, they will think of you because you will have BRANDED yourself as one. (DISCLAIMER: This is not an opportunity to “play a doctor on T.V.” You should actually be an expert in the areas you claim to be.)

The same concept applies for joining multiple networks. Keep the same personality for each. 

Ever heard the compliment about a truly admired person, “he or she is the same in public as he or she is behind closed doors?” This is what I believe to be the golden rule of your social media personality. Live your brand across all networks (including offline).

The following people blog or vlog about specific topics and continue the dialogue via other social media platforms consistently:

· Aronado Placencia: (@Aronado) This man lives to promote entrepreneurs and new startups. With a goofy sense of humor and an ability to connect quickly, he is ultimately all about promotion (in a good way).

· Jeff Pulver: (@JeffPulver) Usually looking for social media speakers, getting ready for the next social media summit, or just talking about social media – he really does live “in” social media.

· Melanie Notkin: (@SavvyAuntie) She has branded the new, hip way to be an aunt. Her blog and online personality co-exist harmoniously.

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Social climbing not the best approach

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Social climbers beware. As you build your social media personality, don’t only connect with people who have a lot of “followers,” “friends,” “connections,” etc. It makes sense to engage the “big dogs” of social media, but it’s even better to connect with other quality audiences. Spending too much time looking for the big fish may take away from an entire school passing you by. Go grassroots and begin to build your personality one social media platform at a time.

A relatively easy approach on Twitter:

Use the search function and type in keywords associated with your brand. Reach out to everyone talking about these items with a personally crafted “Tweet.” Do not resend the same thing over and over. People you interact with will read your Twitter stream and want to see what useful information you provide.

Check out networks, groups, or fan pages on Facebook:

Creating a group or fan page for people to become a member of both gives you a new to interact with current customers and offers the opportunity to grow your reach exponentially. The Creative Commons fan page is a great example of a fan page doing it well. Their fan page has several discussion board posts (similar to a blog) and many wall posts – which demonstrates that people are engaged. They also have “REAL LIVE” employees who participate on the fan page.

Start a conversation on Seesmic, a video blogging community:

Post a 30 second video blog on Seesmic, asking for feedback and you’ll get it. There is a small, but mighty network of users on this video platform. If you’re looking for a way to jump on the video bandwagon this is a great way to get started. Todd Jordan (@tojosan) is an engaged member of the Seesmic community and offers “tell it like it is” advice. He gets that it’s not all about the numbers, and follows people who enjoy frequent video conversations with him.

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It’s not a one-stop shop

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There is no one-size fits all personality for your brand. In fact, think you know your brand? Explore social media and see how people really experience what it is you’re selling. You may need to adjust or reflect on your brand.

What is your brand offline? Social media isn’t an opportunity to reinvent a new brand, but to widen your brand’s reach. It’s all about the experience, right? People should get the same (or similar) experience with you online that they get offline. For example, a business owner talks up an impressive customer service experience at his or her business online without ensuring his or her staff truly delivers this service. Making a promise you can’t keep is worse than never having engaged your audience at all.

Remember Motrin Moms? Sharing information via social media without someone there to interact is a giant NO NO! A “must have” when branding on social media is being available to your public.

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Return on engagement

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It’s all about ROE - return on engagement. Is your social media personality working? You’ll know when opportunities arise that never would have been possible otherwise. A few ways to “quantify” engagement:

• Track incoming traffic from links

• Number of people subscribed to RSS feeds

• Number of people in social media groups, fan pages, etc

• Trackbacks or linkbacks to posts

• Conversation tracking tools like Twitter Search (Mashable guest writer Dan Schawbel previously discussed free and fee-based brand monitoring tools)

• Comments on blog posts

• Increased sales and general inquiries

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Best advice? Don’t take anyone else’s advice

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You know your brand better than anyone. Learn some of the social media fundamentals, then apply and find what works best for you.

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More social media marketing resources from Mashable:

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- 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them
- Why Big Brands Struggle With Social Media
- Why Brands ABSOLUTELY DO Belong on Twitter
- Presenting: 10 of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media
- What Are the Top Performing Brands on Facebook

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, lisegagne

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CBS has released an iPhone application that lets users watch full episodes of TV shows, including CSI and the good old Star Trek.

This is the first time that iPhone users are getting the chance to watch a wide range of premium content on the device for free; watching user-generated YouTube clips is one thing, while watching a full episode of Star Trek is another. Other shows that are included are Late Show with David Letterman, The Young and the Restless, as well as some episodes of 90210 and Smallville.

The application is free, a nice touch from CBS who seem to understand that this is a great promotional vehicle, and not something you should use to rip your viewers off. Of course, you’ll need to watch your data plan carefully, or make sure you’re connected to a WiFi, otherwise you might find that your phone bill has gone where no phone bill has gone before.

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Thanks to this week’s advertisers and partners for enabling us to bring you the latest social media news and resources.

Advertise with us and get noticed.

Help us to help you. Mashable is seeking out site sponsors for our large, diverse audience — social media users, venture capitalists, early adopters, developers, bloggers, and many more. You’ll receive hundreds of thousands of views a day in addition to weekly recognition to thank you as our premium sponsors. Are you interested? Contact us for more information and to receive our media kit and rate card.

This week, our valued sponsors are DEMO, Influxis, EdgeCast, Microsoft BizSpark, and Pitney Bowes.

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With more than 20,000 technologies reviewed and 1,500 companies selected to launch on the DEMO stage over the past 18 years, DEMO has continually searched the globe to find innovation where it lives. During the dozens of six-minute presentations in two days, you will be the first to see the latest, most innovative and market-defining products unveiled for the very first time. Only the best-vetted products and companies are chosen to present in a show-me-don’t-tell-me format that demands demonstrators seize the moment and convincingly crystallize the opportunity. Mashable has partnered with DEMO for its big event of 2009 and we urge you to get the discounted tickets before it’s too late.

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Influxis is an official Adobe hosting partner and resource for the Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server. Influxis provides Flash hosting plans for all levels of use – beginner to enterprise. With a reputation for exceptional customer service, Influxis provides an extremely reliable international network of FMS servers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany.

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EdgeCast Networks offers a superior, cost-effective, global content delivery service that gives our customers competitive advantage in the delivery of digital media. Our world-class content delivery platform provides customers the cost benefits and flexibility of controlling their own content delivery network while liberating them from ISP contracts, capital investments and operational hassles.

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BizSpark is a program which offers new software businesses and entrepreneurs access to Microsoft design, development, and production tools with no upfront costs for up to three years. Members can also connect with a nationwide community of Network Partners – investors, incubators, service providers, and entrepreneurial organizations – who are keen to help.

For more information, or to connect with a Microsoft BizSpark advisor, please visit MicrosoftStartupZone.com/BizSpark.

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Pitney Bowes is the leader in Digital Mailing Systems. They provide small businesses with on-site postage solutions. And for businesses looking to save money, a mailstation 2™ postage meter is the perfect solution. See how much your small business can save by trying the mailstation 2™ Risk-Free for 60 days.

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Thanks to ConVerdge for implementing our My Mashable social network and W3 MARKUP for the development and maintenance of Mashable.com

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Mashable would also like to thank AttentionPR for their PR support. AttentionPR proves that PR today is measurable, transparent, and yes, social. Learn more about AttentionPR.

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Mashable added a new feature today powered by StumbleUpon, allowing you to explore Mashable pages, rate them and get recommendations for Mashable content you might like.

StumbleUpon, as you may know, is a way to discover interesting web content based on your interests. Realizing that our readers would love to see a custom version of Mashable tailored to you, we’ve chosen to become a StumbleUpon Premier Partner, and we’d love your feedback on the new feature: To Start Stumbling Mashable, click here!

This feature is also accessible by clicking the “Start Stumbling” button in the Mashable menu, as shown in the screenshot above. Once you see the StumbleUpon toolbar, you can “Like” an article, rate it, or hit “Stumble” again for another article. And of course StumbleUpon can recommend articles from other sites you may enjoy.

In addition to the ability to explore, rate and get recommendations for Mashable articles, you’ll also see a “Stumble counter” on selected Mashable blog posts - like this one! - that tracks the number of times that post has been Stumbled (note that we also include buttons for many of StumbleUpon’s rivals, and have done for some time).

We hope you enjoy the new feature, and please do give us feedback on how we can continue to improve.

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Something must’ve been lost in translation between Twitter and Canada’s Bell Mobility. On Tuesday, Biz Stone told Twitter users, “if you’re a Bell Mobility customer, you can update Twitter via SMS and receive updates from Twitter via SMS. There are no limits and no added fees (beyond your normal texting plan).” Meanwhile, Bell Mobility issued a press release, telling their own customers that they could “access SMS service for Twitter for 15 cents for each message sent or received.”

Of course, when customers of Bell Mobility discovered this, they were outraged, mainly because the carrier wanted to charge 15 cents for what amounts to a standard text message. A company spokesperson defended the policy as of yesterday, but today, we’ve seen a reversal, and Bell Mobility has indicated that there will be no additional fees for Twitter messages.

Twitter updates users on their blog again today, writing, “Twitter and Bell have agreed that Bell customers on the company’s text messaging bundles will be able to receive unlimited incoming Twitter SMS messages at no extra charge.” Meanwhile, The Vancouver Sun confirms the news with Bell Mobility, indicating that Twitter itself – more specifically the angry Tweets of Bell Mobility customers – lead to the change.

Twitter’s post on the issue doesn’t mention the whole mix-up, and the company has not responded to our request for comment. They did however acknowledge the issue in a tweet yesterday that read, “There’s some confusion about Bell Mobility pricing of Twitter SMS. We’ve been investigating this and will clear it up to tomorrow.”

In any event, it’s a bizarre series of events that seems to have been resolved, but it reeks of sloppiness on someone’s part. Nonetheless, I’ve always thought that Twitter offers an attractive value proposition to carriers, in that its service provides an incentive for customers to upgrade to unlimited texting plans. Whether or not there is a financial aspect to the Bell deal, we don’t know, but it certainly seems like Twitter could play that hand if it wanted to.

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This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Lumosity

Quick Pitch: Lumosity.com is the leader in online and mobile brain training and now offers 2 mobile games, Speed Brain and Memory Matrix.

Genius Idea: How do you spend your time when you’re away from your computer and left to just your mobile device? If the iPhone App Store’s list of top apps is any indication, most likely playing games. Lumosity is a company that wants you to make more productive use of your time, with an iPhone application that its scientific research claims will improve your memory.

The game itself, Memory Matrix [itunes link], is pretty simple, but more challenging than you might think. You’re presented with a “matrix” of squares, several of which are shaded in. The shaded squares quickly disappear, and you then need to identify which boxes were shaded in by touching them on a blank matrix. The game gets progressively harder as you do better, with the matrix expanding and more tiles getting shaded in.

Lumosity has done studies to show that this type of game improves what’s called “working memory,” which is used for “temporarily storing and manipulating information.” You’ll be able to see if they’re correct since the game lets you track your performance over time.

From a business perspective, the game is in fact designed to get you to upgrade to Lumosity’s web services, which include all sorts of different interactive activities to stimulate your brain function. To do that, the app prompts you to upgrade if you’d like to receive additional training on the Web, where there are dozens of different games to try with a $9.95/mo account. Alternatively, if you don’t want to make that kind of commitment but want another challenge to try, there’s also a 99 cent iPhone app called SpeedBrain.

In any event, Lumosity is a good example of using the app store mainly as a promotional vehicle for a web service, by offering a small taste of the real thing free of charge. There’s also a bit of a viral hook built in, as the game keeps track of high scores and encourages you to invite your friends to a challenge.

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Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

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