Week 13 Shorts

Teachers warned over befriending pupils on Facebook. Experts warn of big gulf in school social networking policies, as staff use Twitter, chatrooms and emails to contact children. More than one in 10 school teachers accused of misconduct last year had used social networking sites and email to forge inappropriate relationships with their pupils, an analysis of disciplinary cases has found. [Learn more].

Another Lesson From Steve Jobs: A Driving Vision Has 4 Key Elements. STEVE JOBS OFTEN SAW FURTHER THAN HIS COMPETITORS. HIS VISION HAD FOUR DEFINING FEATURES THAT WE CAN ALL LEARN FROM.

A visionary has passion, but vision and passion aren’t the same thing. A passionate leader without a clear vision won’t succeed; likewise, neither will a visionary leader without passion.

Passionate leaders without a vision will often confuse the troops or put a higher level of energy and stress on the organization. That organization will flounder around with frequent starts and stops and strategy changes, and will eventually burn out. Visionary leaders without passion will have a hard time keeping their troops engaged, and some may question the veracity or credibility of the vision in the first place if the leader doesn’t seem to be excited about it. [Learn more]

Startups reveals the top 10 business ideas and opportunities for 2012.

1. Career coaching
2. Cycling
3. Dance and Zumba
4. Frozen yoghurt
5. Hobby and crafts
6. Independent coffee shops
7. Mobile apps
8. Smartphone repairs
9. Social gaming
10. The Olympics

Everywhere you look these days, it seems, small business is big business. George Osborne has offered an array of tax breaks to encourage investors to plough money into early-stage companies. Meanwhile, Vince Cable is leading a one-man crusade to slash through the red tape blighting these very organisations. [Learn more]

Five Ways to Boost B2B Fan Engagement on Facebook. Eloqua has put together an entertaining slideshare presentation just in time for the new year of B2B social outreach. In “10 Ways to ‘Solve’ Facebook for B2B,” Eloqua recounts how BrandGlue helped the company boost its Facebook community by 2,500%. (Yes, two zeroes.)

“Although the presentation contains some beefy data, the intended audience is your everyday B2B marketer,” Eloqua’s Joe Chernov notes in a post at It’s All About Revenue. Eloqua turns its lessons learned into actionable tips for B2B companies looking to boost their magnetism on Facebook. Here are five highlights: [Learn more]

Addictive UX: Why Pinterest Is So Dang Amazing. Today we’re going to examine a very specific example of good design and discuss what makes it so successful. Along the way we’ll discover the importance of good design and how to structure experiences that turn users into addicts.

We’ll hone our sights in on Pinterest and perform a seriously in-depth analysis to see why this seemingly generic idea seems to stand so far out from the competition. The ultimate conclusions will equip you to design experiences that your users will absolute love. [Learn more]

Buyer Beware: 6 Dead Giveaways that a Review Is Fake. Last week the New York Times revealed information suggesting that one vendor is literally buying 5-star reviews on Amazon.com. With customers relying more on star ratings and customer reviews than vendor marketing hype, this revelation poses a problem for consumers [Learn more]

Week Shorts is a short compendium of interesting news articles compiled at Connected and published for those interested in the new media world. All the articles are taken from third party sources and links are provided back to see the full article after minor editing and formatting changes. Connected acknowledges the owners of the work and respective copyrights. The article is provided, as-is with no warranty as to its accuracy. Connected cannot control and therefore will not be held liable for the content of third-party web-sites.