The Social Media Week Toronto team goal is to raise a final $10,000 to renovate the Critical Care Unit waiting room at the hospital. Donate online or through your mobile at SickKidsCCU.ca.

SMG is just warming up for the busy conference and events season. Maggie is giving the keynote at Social Fresh in Tampa on Monday morning (Feb. 8). She’s going to talk about The Art and Science of Scaling Social Media. Don’t miss it.

After Social Fresh, next up is PodCamp Toronto 2010. It is shaping up incredible event again this year. All of us at SMG are proud to be a sponsor.

A National debate on Facebook about the merits of an Onion Ring over Canada’s elected Prime Minister aside, Charlie Brooker’s (of Newswipe on BBC4) How To Report The News has our vote for viral video of the week.

In other news:

Facebook turned six this week and reached 400 million users. According to a blog post by Mark Zuckerberg:

Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better. We hoped Facebook would improve people’s lives in important ways. So it’s rewarding to see that as Facebook has grown, people around the world are using the service to share information about events big and small and to stay connected to everyone they care about.

For all you wannabe Jacques Costeau types, this week Google released new data for the ocean in Google Earth. Called Google Ocean Showcase it lets you: “Dive into the ocean and discover who lives there — from a deep sea octopus to humpback whales. Explore lost shipwrecks, dive and surf spots, the ocean’s deepest trench, and the latest discoveries of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).” A little closer to our day-to-day, our very own Kyle McKeown alerts us that Google rolled an update to Google News this week which provides more options for users following stories in using the Custom Sections Directory feature.

That’s about all I’ve got here at the end of an incredible week. What rocked your socks in social media this week?

BUT – before we get into the nitty gritty, I think it’s really important that we share some of our cultural values and the kinds of things we look for in every role, because fit is far more important than skills are. Skills we can teach you, but personality type and perspective and attitude are what will make your career with us.

Are you:

• Competitive and driven to win by providing excellent results and constantly improving your own skillset?
• Determined and committed to success? When life gives you lemons, you made lemonade – instinctively – and it’s really good lemonade, at that!
• Inspired by challenge? You’re not exactly an adrenaline junkie, but you love the prospect of a challenge, and rise to it on every occasion. A job that doesn’t ask you to stretch strikes you as boring.
• A team player? It’s not about you – it’s about the team, and, ultimately, the client. Inspiring and motivating your team to deliver incredible results by providing constructive feedback and holding yourself and everyone else accountable for quality and success.
• Entrepreneurial? In a startup, there isn’t always a clear roadmap. One of your most valuable contributions will be your ability to take ownership for projects and prospects and turn them into roaring successes with the support of the team and bolstered by your own desire to get it right using all tools available to you.
• A lover of learning? Are you possessed by compulsive need to understand and master things you don’t know? If you don’t understand it, you use your considerable critical thinking skills to figure it out, master it and move on to the next challenge.

If you answered “yes” to every one of these questions, have a love of digital and social media and are looking for exciting work in a startup environment, blazing trails with some of the biggest and well-known brands in the world, then please have a look at some of the positions we have open (list below). Our compensation packages are very competitive and include a significant annual education/conference budget, a well-stocked fridge, the computing platform of your choice and a great environment filled with some seriously big brains.

As Doug Walker, our Director of Strategy put it:

“There are very few opportunities to trailblaze with clients, trailblazing with blue chip clients, once maybe twice in a career opportunity.”

At SMG we trailblaze with our blue chip client list EVERY DAY.

Here are some of the positions we’re looking to fill, please send your CV, a note that tells us why you’d like to work at SMG and the the position you’re after in the subject line of your email to: Elaine Dean elaine [dot] dean [at] socialmediagroup [dot] com

Senior Project Manager

Intermediate Project Manager

Social Media Analyst – Community

Social Media Analyst – Metrics and Measurement

Business Development Lead

Business Development Co-ordinator

Interns (paid)

Location is mostly not an issue, though for Project Management roles, we generally prefer that they be on-site in Toronto.

We look forward to hearing from you!

SocialFresh Tampa takes place on February 8th, and amazing, top-notch speakers like Best Buy’s John Bernier, Spike Jones from Brains on Fire, AdRants publisher Steve Hall, Amber Naslund from Radian6, Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions, NBC’s “New Media” Jim Long, Josh Hallett from Voce Communications, Marc Meyer and GM’s Chris Barger will be on deck to deliver insights and intelligence generated from feet-on-the-ground actual execution of social media programs for some of the biggest brands in the world.

I’ll also be there – and am honoured to have been asked to deliver the keynote, “The Art and Science of Scaling Social Media”, during which I will blather about:

Bringing together earned social media and paid media, when done correctly, can generate a perfect storm of credibility and reach – in many ways, the Holy Grail of the social web. Earned media is incredibly expensive to generate, and it’s difficult to get it to a mass audience, regardless of how credible it is. Paid media reaches tons of eyeballs, but does it really win hearts and minds? SMG has worked with clients on a number of very successful programs to marry the two using social ad platforms. Results include average click-through rates of over .8% and as high as 4.11% and re-ignition of conversations around important brand issues. While we can’t completely open the kimono on this innovative new approach, I’ll share high-level insights and intelligence about how some of the biggest brands in the world have cracked a new form of dialogue with consumers.

I’m very much looking forward to sharing our insights with attendees, and would also like to remind you that tickets are going fast for this event; you can register online here.

I hope to see you there!

Is it just me or did the iPad feel like old news before it was 30 minutes old? The advance rumours were (in some cases) so accurate this time and so far ahead of the actual announcement that it was hard not to feel a bit let down by reality. The perennial Apple Fanboy Vs. Hater debate aside, the new iPad device tries to fill a gap between the portability of a smart phone and the bulkiness of a laptop or netbook, all with Steve Jobs trademark flair for the stylish. Buried in all the hoopla is that Jobs said when you consider MacBooks as “mobile” devices, Apple generates more revenue from mobile hardware than any other company in the world. (via John Gruber’s Daring Fireball)

New Social Media Use Stats

Neilsen released some new statistics on usage of social media showing that Facebook is continuing to eat MySpace’s lunch, Twitter use has exploded and the global audience spending 82% more time on social media platforms than they did last year. Mashable summarizes the results and offers up fresher month-over-month stats that show Twitter use in decline.

CBC Charges for Article Embeds

The publishing industry continues to struggle with a profitable online news model, focusing particular attention on the wide gulf between outright piracy and fair use of their copyrighted content . The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) among other news organizations have been using the iCopyright system to help monetize their content. The Torontoist breaks down how it is being used.

An Incovenient PR Truth

According to a video by RealWire (an online news distribution service), irrelevance is to the PR industry what pollution is to the environment. Breathe in that irrelevance, baby.

We recently released the first ever Social Media RFP template to help  companies that are looking to add Social Media to their mix ask the right questions to find the right partner. On February 4^th from 4pm-7pm, our executive team will be unpacking that template and explaining exactly how to use it. Of course, as a bonus you’ll have a chance to meet like minded professionals who are  also looking for great social media partners or have done fabulous work in social media themselves.

Refreshments will be on offer and the presentation will be complete with just enough time to get you home for supper- that is if you didn’t over do it on the snacks. You can get more information and register at Eventbrite to let us know you’re coming. The tickets are free and we’d love to meet you- the whole SMG team will be there!

There are also a number of other events being hosted as part of Social Media Week that will be worth checking out. Doing homework for you, BlogTO has done a nice job of summarizing the week’s events including descriptions, dates, times and locations. You should probably reserve your tickets now. I’m guessing they’ll go like hotcakes since some events already have waiting lists. Hope to see you there!

Rung added to Social Technographics Ladder

Remember Forrester’s Social Technographics ladder from back in 2007? Well things have changed since then and surprise, surprise all, the active categories are growing, showing that we are all doing more with social media. Most notably though, the ladder has received a much needed new rung for those of us considered “conversationalists”.

Bill Gates joins Twitter

The world’s wealthiest man now has a twitter account and likely has the highest ratio of followers to tweets (currently approaching 300k followers with only 9 tweets). It appears that he is using Twitter to help launch his new web site thegatesnotes.com which features an inside look at his work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Kids and Media consumption

USAToday summarizes  a Kaiser Family Foundation study which has kids spending an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes consuming media, much of which is taking place on mobile devices (perhaps it would be even higher with improved battery life A friend told me an interesting story that her son was spending so much time organizing social plans via text on a weekend night that in some cases it was too late to go out by the time they had finished the discussion.

Apple’s Tablet

The masters of Anti-social media are at it again, with no official details released of the expected Apple tablet, the rumor mills are churning away before the expected announcement on January 27. One note-worthy point from the WSJ (according to AppleInsider) is that the device is intended to be shared by multiple family members, which if the device is successful could again shift how we consume electronic media. Until the facts are revealed we can enjoy a favourite parody of Apple’s publicity machine from MadTV.

Despite the easy laughs at the expense of self-proclaimed experts, big brands are on the hunt for help in figuring out their approaches to connecting with consumers on Facebook, providing service on Twitter and instituting internal social media guidelines. Because it can touch everything from communications to marketing to customer service to product development, social media has created a muddied playing field that some see as ripe for creating agency opportunities… [Read the full Article]

See also: Social Media RFP: Ask the Right Questions, Find the Right Partner

Online LEGO Maniacs Unite!
LEGO has launched their new social media hub this week, curating and aggregating content produced by LEGO Maniacs worldwide.  The slick site features a playful block-based layout with a constantly updating tower of content, all of which is shareable and sortable.  As a recovering maniac, I feel a relapse coming on.

Facebook Doesn’t Care About Privacy, Probably, Maybe-ish.
Late last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sat down for a chat with Michael Arrington and blew up the Internet.  The big Z implied that the future of Facebook was public, not private and it touched off a flurry of viewpoints on what is evidently still a touchy subject.

I’m with COCO
In what could be cynically construed as a massive social media campaign, NBC’s latest night folks have been the other online buzz of the week.  Conan seems to be the clear online winner (and NBC itself clearly the loser), with a groundswell of support on the major social media platforms, blogs, and of course Craigslist.   Time will tell what part the social media aspect will ultimately play, but the more pressing question is – what would Carson do?

A More Social Google?
This week, GigaOm published an interview with Google’s David Glazer about the Goog’s plans for world domination the social web in 2010.  The crux – connecting everything Google knows about you (Social Search, Latitude, etc) with open community-driven standards like OpenSocial, Friend Connect, and a raft of others to create a “distributed, open social ubiquitous web.”