Social Media News Roundup – Week of 08/16

Facebook dominated the social media/online marketing news this week with their launch of Facebook Places – a location-based service along the lines of FourSquare which allows you to “check in” via Facebook to various places you go. While there was much fanfare, the rollout seems to be quite slow as far as people actually being able to access and use it. As with everything Facebook does, it comes with privacy implications. The default setting is that other people can check you into Places. Visit your settings to change that. Here are the instructions.

This hilarious tweet via @anildash sums up Facebook’s cavalier attitude toward all of our privacy:

If your business has a physical location, here’s how to use Facebook Places for your business

In more Facebook news, AllFacebook reports that Facebook is now the third most popular U.S. video site , behind YouTube and Yahoo. Although this shouldn’t be surprising given their gargantuan audience, I was slightly surprised only because I personally don’t see that many people heavily using the feature. Most of the video I encounter on Facebook comes from YouTube.

The other big news for the week is that Groupon’s star continues to rise with its biggest coup yet  – a nationwide deal with GAP which at the end of the day brought in over $11 million!!!

And just for fun…..Looking for some new Twitter people to follow?  For great entertainment follow these hilarious and smart women: @daniellelaporte and @communicatrix