8 Social Media News Stories You May Have Missed

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What’s New This Week?

New Speak-to-Tweet Service: Twitter, Google and SayNow teamed up to deliver a new Speak2Tweet service in response to the events in Egypt.  Does your business monitor current events unfolding for social media business opportunities?

Users call special numbers to record their message. This generates a tweet with a link to the SayNow.com website (recently acquired by Google), which hosts the recording of the original message.

Facebook Deals Launches in Canada: After launching in a few European countries, Canadians are the next in line to try out Facebook Deals.  Is this something your business could use?

Canadians can now use Facebook Deals.

Ning Announces New Design Studio: In addition to over 70 themes and some new design options, Ning is also introducing an Instant Ad Box feature. This provides users with more customization and branding options on this community platform.

Ning's Design Studio becomes available next week.

381 Million Foursquare Check-ins in 2010: Check out the latest data on Foursquare users. Are you using location-based social media platforms?

Click through to see full infographic.

Seesmic Releases Improvements for iPhone: This social media management tool now offers a number of useful improvements for iPhone users. Do you use a social media management tool on your mobile device? (Seesmic was also recently in the news about the integration of Seesmic Desktop with Salesforce Chatter, which provides an enterprise social collaboration app and platform.)

The "Gap" button on Seesmic for iPhone makes navigation easier and users can click through to view the missing updates.

Facebook Improves Page Creation Process: The previous instructions to create a Facebook Page were a little confusing. This should make it easier for people creating their Facebook pages today.

New instructions make it easier to create Facebook Pages.

Here are two more new social media tools worth a look:

Tap11 is a real-time business intelligence platform for companies to monitor, engage and measure the impact of their social media campaigns.

Tap11 currently works on Twitter and Facebook with more networks coming soon.

Actionly is a social media monitoring dashboard and listening platform to find out what people are saying about your brand, products or industry terms.

Actionly works across various social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Google Buzz, Blogs and News.

What social media news caught your interest? What do you think of the other news items this week? Please share your comments below.