Quick social round-up (Small Business E-Commerce Link Digest – February 19, 2010)

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks around here at thinks Central. But since we spent a lot of time talking about Google Buzz yesterday and the day before, it seemed to make sense to finish the week up with a little more social news.

• Mashable leads off with the well-covered story of Kevin Smith vs. Southwest Airlines. I’m not about to take sides on this one. But it’s worth noting how one individual – admittedly a very popular individual – using social tools can generate their own media storm. Fortunately, many best practices have emerged for how to use social media to your benefit in these cases. So don’t let one blow-up scare you away from the tool. Just imagine what might have occurred if Southwest didn’t use Twitter and didn’t know what was happening.
• Apart from paying attention to Kevin Smith’s travel woes, I’ve been watching the Winter Olympics whenever I got the chance. Well, NBC’s coverage of the Games has created a little social media backlash of its own.
• As if Twitter isn’t popular enough, it looks like Google gave Twitter its best month ever, so more may be on the way.
• While it’s clear that Twitter is on the rise, Facebook still does well, too. And Friend of thinks John Jantsch offers up 5 steps for successful Facebook advertising to help you make the most of the tool, too. It’s no secret I’m a big fan of John’s work and this one is no exception.
• Finally, after all the attention we gave to the Google Buzz backlash and the resulting lawsuit, Wired Magazine’s satirical look at the Buzz backlash is a nice way to end the week.

Happy Friday, Big Thinkers. Catch you back here on Monday.

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