Circle is a social app that notifies you when people you know are nearby. It is available for iPhone or Android. Circle is being developed by Palo Alto-based Hawthorne Labs, makers of the “flirting-facilitator platform” LikeALittle.

via Tech Crunch

Squirrel Monkey imagines what Pinterest might have looked like if it was created in the 1990s. Here’s a screenshot.

Here’s YouTube in the 1990s, Facebook in the 1990s, Twitter in the 1980s and LinkedIn in the 1980s.

Italy-based graphic designer Lumen Bigott has combined Keds brand sneakers with images from familiar online companies in her 2011 concept project, Social Media Shoes. She has more images at her Behance portfolio.

I’m a big fan of inspiration blogs, I also spend a lot of time in social networks and I love fashion: those three things are responsible of this shoes collection. The idea was to find the most important graphic elements of my favorite social networks and apply them to my favorite pair of shoes trying to keeping alive the essence of each brand.

via Flavorwire and Bored Panda

Squirrel Monkey imagines what LinkedIn might have looked like if it was created in the 1980s.

Here’s YouTube in the 1990s, Facebook in the 1990s and Twitter in the 1980s.

Klouchebag is a parody site of Klout, the site that says it measures your standard of influence based on social media usage. Klouchebag, on the other hand, measures how much of an asshat you are on Twitter. It was created by Tom Scott who “got annoyed with the fuss around Klout.” Klout has the tagline “The Standard for Influence,” but Klouchebag is “The Standard for Asshattery”.

Klouchebag uses the ARSE rating system. Anger: profanity and rage. Retweets: “please RT”s, no or constant retweeting, and old-style. Social Apps: every useless checkin on foursquare or its horrible brethren. And English Usage: if you use EXCLAMATION MARKS OMG!!! or no capitals at all, this’ll be quite high.

via Betabeat

Fandalism is a simple social network created by Philip Kaplan (aka pud) that helps musicians meet each other.

via TechCrunch

Squirrel Monkey created this informative VHS recording that imagines what The Facebook might have looked like if it was created in the 1990s. Squirrel Monkey also took a look at the 1980s version of Twitter.

via BuzzFeed

Squirrel Monkey made an animation that imagines what Twitter might have looked like if it was created in the 1980s.

via Viral Viral Videos

“Just Go Outside” is an ad for The Outside, a proven treatment for social media addiction. The video was written and directed by Michelle Ciotta and produced by The PIT, a New York City-based improv group.

SoMe: Tales From A Social Media Expert is a documentary project by filmmaker Loren Feldman which he recently launched on Kickstarter. Our own founder and primary tentacle Scott Beale will be interviewed for the film which is slated to be released in August 2012.

The year is 2038. “SoMe” is the story of Social Media as told through the experiences of Loren Feldman. It will feature interviews with luminaries, and stories about both Loren and the many people he has met over the course of his career on the web. It will tell the story of the people and culture that drives the Internet and social media. The good, the bad, the ugly. The underlying narrative to all of it is how these “new technologies” are affecting us. Who we are, how we relate to other people, and who people really are offline as opposed to online. Identity, transparency, persona, these are just a few of the concepts that will be explored.

Tag Challenge is a simulated international manhunt that challenges the Internet to find 5 suspects in 5 different cities during a 12 hour period. Designed by a team of graduate students from six countries and sponsored by the US State Department, the game is intended to demonstrate the usefulness of social media in matters of global security. The game occurs on March 31 in New York City, Washington DC, London, Stockholm, and Bratislava.

via Wired

Highlight is a social networking iPhone app that shows the user information about other nearby Highlight users. The app was created by Math Camp.

If someone standing near you also has Highlight, their profile will show up on your phone. You can see their name, photos of them, mutual friends, and anything else they have chosen to share. When you meet someone, Highlight helps you see what you have in common with them. And when you forget their name at a party a week later, Highlight helps you remember it.

The video “Future Hipsters” imagines how aging hipsters might reminisce about the good old days of the Internet in the year 2062. It’s a companion to the Future Hipsters tumblr, both of which are a promotion by Entrinsic for Social Media Week (February 13-17).

via Neatorama

The 4th Annual Shorty Awards, the awards show that recognizes the best producers of short content on social media, is accepting nominations via Twitter through February 17. The awards ceremony will be held in late March in New York City (the exact date has not yet been announced).

Social Media Gurus on Toothpaste For Dinner

The Social Shower Curtain by SpinningHat is a great way to bring social networking into the bathroom.

via The Daily What & Craziest Gadgets

Timehop is a web service that sends a daily email of the user’s activity on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Instagram, from exactly one year ago. Timehop combines the features of three previously separate services: 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo, And7YearsAgram, and pastposts.

Today Facebook officially launched their new profile layout Timeline, which presents the user’s updates, photos, and other activity as a chronology (video). Once enabled, a user has seven days to review and tweak their timeline before it becomes viewable by other users.

Timeline gives you an easy way to rediscover the things you shared, and collect your most important moments. It also lets you share new experiences, like the music you listen to or the miles you run.

Designer Aaron Wood has come up with more wonderful tech company war propaganda posters. They’re available as prints on his Etsy store. Back in July we wrote about the first posters in the series, which had a social media focus.

Stamped is a new recommendation sharing service that lets users place their stamp of approval on their favorite places and things and share those recommendations with their friends (intro video). Stamped is currently available for iPhone.

Stamped is a new platform for friends to share only what they like best — restaurants, books, movies, music and more. Everyone gets a limited number of stamps to start, and can earn more if their friends like what they recommend. The result is a new source of quality information that is curated by trusted friends as opposed to large anonymous crowds.

ThinkUp by Expert Labs is a new web app that captures all of the user’s activity on social networks and makes the data available in an interactive database. User’s can search, analyze, visualize, and archive their online activity (demo video). ThinkUp is free, open-source, and was officially released earlier this week.

Check in on Foursquare today and get a palindrome bonus in honor of today’s binary date 11/11/11.

You get a super palindrome bonus if you checkin in at 11:11am on 11/11/11.

Mixel is a free iPad app combines art and creativity with social media. To use the app, you create your art collage (the “mixel”) with the elements you choose on an iPad, such as photos or images in your library, then you connect to Facebook and start sharing your art. Other Mixel users can then ‘remix’ your art. Mixel was co-founded by Scott Ostler and Khoi Vinh of The Lascaux Company.

Khoi describes Mixel more in-depth at his site, Subtraction:

Our goal with Mixel is to turn the act of art-making into something incredibly easy, fun and even addictive. Just as importantly, we also want art-making to be deeply social. Mixel is a social network of its own — you sign in with Facebook, and you can find and follow anyone on the network to see all the great work they’re producing. You can also comment, like and share the art, just as you would on any other social network.

But we chose collage for a very important reason: it makes art easy. Photos, the component pieces of every collage, are among the most social and viral content on the Web, and allowing people to combine them into new, highly specific expressions of who they are and what they’re interested in is powerful. Collage also has a wonderfully accessible quality; few people are comfortable with a brush or a drawing implement, but almost everyone is comfortable cutting up images and recombining them in new, expressive, surprising or hilarious ways. We all used to do this as kids.

The YouTube Insult Generator by Adrian Holovaty is a hilarious search engine that sifts through YouTube comments for insults. Choose a term and the search engine combs through related YouTube videos for relevant insulting comments. Try dogs and cats or love and hate.

This is a basically a “search engine for insults.” Type in a search term, and it’ll give you insults you can use against a person who doesn’t like that term.

For example, enter “the godfather,” and it’ll give you “You sleep with the fishes,” “You sleeps with horsehead in bed” and “You will get an offer you can’t refuse.” Enter “alfred hitchcock” and it’ll say “You had your eyes plucked out by crows” and “You have Vertigo.” Enter “mario brothers” and it’ll say “You aren’t Super enough for Mario,” “You can’t beat world 1-1″ and “You are bowser.” You get the idea.

It finds stuff only about 50% of the time, but it works surprisingly well when it does work. Try general terms (“car”) and pop culture (“michael jordan”, “i love lucy”). Each insult includes a link to its source YouTube video.

via Hacker News

Trippy is a new social travel web service and iPhone app that lets users call on their friends for travel planning advice and recommendations. The app works with social networks like Facebook to determine which friends may have been to the travel destination already, and those friends can then make recommendations for where to go and what to do. Adam Lisagor (Lonely Sandwich) created a wonderful launch video for the app. Trippy was founded by J. R. Johnson and launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in September.

Trippy ties into social sites like Facebook to find your friends who know about where you’re traveling to (those who have checked in, live, work, or go to school there) and who already know your personal details (like if you’re vegan, have toddlers, or a penchant for pinot). Makes good sense, eh? Tapping into the travel experiences of your friends is a whole lot more valuable than getting questionable info from random strangers.

via TechCrunch