CNN published an article about the next big social media thing…Foursquare. Claiming to be a “highly addictive” application, Foursquare rivals competitors like Loopt, but offers a “virtual game in which participants earn badges for checking in at various locations.” But why, with so many social media applications out there do people predict this will be the next big thing? First, it’s developers have already gained success making and selling apps to Google, and founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey has invested, which is sure to strengthen a partnership rather than competition. By predicting this to be the next big thing gets Foursquare’s story in front of people, but what do you think? With 18 million Twitter users proposed by the end of this year, are people ready for yet another app?

An article in today’s New York Times article highlights the University of Washington and their work on “releasing the initial component of a public system to provide authentication for an archive of video interviews…” With people becoming increasingly more savvy in editing photos and videos I think this is an important step forward. “The authenticity of digital documents like videos, transcripts of personal accounts and court records can be indisputably proved for the first time.”

Is science-fiction catching up to social networking? In a recent PC World article it seems that way. Imagine wearing a shirt with a bar code that can connect a stranger to your social networking profile by a click of your cellphone camera. Well a company in the Netherlands called W-41 has adapted such a product. In my opinion only a special sort of person would wear an item like this on a regular basis. But for other uses like conferences or singles events it “could” be useful.

The article states this branding as an “online-offline integration,” and the concept is interesting, although I am not sure how accpetable this is in a typical social situation. I feel this could remove some of the face-to-face interaction, can you image getting an email saying “I saw you at the bar, but I was too scared to talk to you, so instead I took a picture of you so I could email you later?”

Media consultants in Africa are adding one more element to the awareness campaign about AIDS…text messaging. In a recent Newsweek article titled “R U Positive?” it’s noted that “the country has the highest incidence of HIV-positive citizens of anywhere in the world. In some areas, 40 percent of people are infected. But despite those numbers, and despite the campaigns, only about 2 percent of South Africans have ever even been tested.” Read more…

Recently there was talk of Facebook taking cues from Myspace by providing access to custom layouts from Pagerage, allowing the use of video applications and having an increased problem with spam. But now it looks like the tables have turned. A recent New York Times article talks about Myspace’s new profile by saying “profile 2.0 is going to make a lot of MySpace users unhappy, but only if they’re truly happy with their current profile. We think anyone that’s been waiting for Myspace to do some serious spring cleaning on how users can customize their profiles is going to love Profile 2.0.”

There are some good and bad things about this change. Myspace 2.0 will make it easier to customize your profile allowing you to drag and drop modules and switch between layouts. Among the bad are issues for the more advanced users who’ve in the past relied on 3rd party layouts to modify their pages (Lovemyflash, Flaashy). Unfortunately the new Myspace 2.0 profile will not work with this additional code, “profile 2.0 will break most of the custom MySpace themes available. If you choose to try out Profile 2.0 MySpace reserves your 1.0 profile just in case you don’t like what you see in Profile 2.0.”

From the article “Facebook Boycott Called as Millions Blast New Design,” it’s interesting that those who oppose the new Facebook layout are using the tool to form groups to protest. I suppose this is a love/hate relationship…you like the concept of the tool, but prefer it work the way you want, what does that say about the character of the users? This is ironic and similar to the printing press analogy Shirky mentions in the beginning of his book “Here Comes Everybody.” What is also amusing is Facebook itself is a vehicle for this sort of organize group activity, so is this a win-win situation for Facebook? What if they don’t change, will they risk loosing a large portion of their 100 million users, or will users join the boycott then just adapt?