Facebook Places, the location check-in service by Facebook has for a while now been active to allot of countries with exception of South Africa.

It seems as if Facebook Places has now officially been activated for South African Facebook users, I picked up on this when Gary Meyer tweeted asking if Facebook just launched Places in South Africa and I quickly fired up my Facebook application to check.

Using the Facebook for Android application I was able to view check-ins of my friends and also it allowed me to check into places as well. Other users have also reported that its working on the Facebook iPhone app.

Whether this is a bug or the official release of Facebook Places in South Africa we will just have to wait and see, as Facebook has made no official statement on their blog yet about the roll out of Facebook Places to other countries.

Does Facebook Places work for you?

[UPDATE]
I just checked out the Facebook Touch site and it seems that Places has also been activated there.

Flipboard the social magazine for the iPad has just released a new version in time for the release of the iPad 2.

The new Flipboard now features support for iPhone photo sharing service Instagram, allowing you to view and interact with your Instagram feed straight from you iPad.

In addition to Instagram support, Flipboard also added a new social search functionality, a first of its kind, that allows you to search across all your social networks and blogs straight from the Flipboard app.

Flipboard also added some speed enhancements to the app, with content now loading up twice as fast as before. They have also added a new reload button at the top of the app that allows you to reload your content when you want to.

Asked in an interview with Robert Scoble whether Flipboard are looking into other tablets, CEO of Flipboard Mike McCue responded that they are currently just focusing on the iPad and there are just so much stuff they would like to do before going to other platforms.

Go check out the new Flipboard app available in the Apple iTunes App Store.

The video for Lady Gaga’s new hit song Born This Way premiered exclusively on US video site Vevo yesterday.

The video for Born This Way, which can be seen above, premiered exclusively on US video site Vevo, the video has also been uploaded to YouTube and already had a staggering 600 000 views in less than 24 hours.

Lady Gaga with her new single Born This Way has already been crowned the queen of iTunes with it becoming the fastest selling single on the Apple iTunes Store selling more than 1 million copies of the song in just 5 days. Its just YouTube this queen of pop still has to conquer as she currently only has the number two spot for most viewed video just behind Justin Bieber.

Who knows Lady Gaga just might have what it takes with the new Born This Way video to take the number one spot on YouTube.

Rumors have been doing the round for long that Facebook will be releasing their very own phone to the market, even though Co Founder of Facebook  Mark Zuckerberg denied it, these rumors just wont die.

Its seems that rumors was true, well sort of, but its not Facebook releasing a phone, it’s HTC.

HTC unveiled an array of new phones at the Mobile Web Congress in Barcelona yesterday and two of these phones, the HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa, had a very popular social networking site button on them.

Both the HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa comes with a dedicated Facebook button on the devices, once the Facebook button is pushed it will lead users directly to the popular social networking website or post content to it automatically, depending on what is being done on the phone at the time.

These handsets are the first of their kind with dedicated Facebook buttons and deeper Facebook integration, but we can expect more phones this year with similar functionality.

The Facebook buttons on both devices are context aware and will gently pulse with light when there is an opertunity to share content or make updates on the devices.

“With a single press of the button, you can update your status, upload a photo, share a website, post what song you are listening to, ‘check in’ to a location and more.” said HTC in a official statement.

Taking pictures and uploading them to Facebook is a breeze, when a user take a photo the simple press of the Facebook button will upload the photo to their Facebook profiles. Facebook messages and convesations will also appear in the phone messages and email inboxes.

HTC phones has for long had pretty good Facebook integration, but with the new HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa they have taken Facebook integration to a whole new level.

Back in 2009 Microsoft released an update to XBOX 360 consoled that allowed gamers to browse Facebook and tweet straight from their consoles through Xbox LIVE.

A few years down the line and us South Africans finally got Xbox LIVE in our own country, but despite all the hype it was not welcomed with warm feelings as most of the services and feature we got used to when using international accounts was now gone. Some of these features included the ability to browse Facebook and Twitter from your console.

Xbox LIVE South Africa is now 3 months old and things are finally starting to look like its taking shape as Microsoft has announced that from 26 January 2011 Xbox LIVE subscribers will be able to access Facebook and Twitter from their Xbox 360 consoles.

Facebook on Xbox LIVE features include:

• Connect with friends using Facebook
• Explore news feeds from friends and family
• Post, read, and respond to comments on status updates and photos
• View photos using the Xbox 360 built-in scaler for great-looking pictures
• With Friend Linker, find friends on Facebook that also have Gamertags and invite them to your Xbox LIVE Friends List
• Update your status with achievements in-game

Twitter on Xbox LIVE features include:

• Read Tweets from people you follow, post new messages and reply to existing  ones
• Automatically sign into Twitter when you sign into Xbox LIVE
• Link your Gamertag to your Twitter username
• Connect with Xbox LIVE friends who you follow on Twitter, view user lists and favourite Tweets

Please note that the Facebook, Twitter, video chat features and Xbox LIVE Party require an Xbox LIVE Gold membership.

Group buying is the latest trend to hit the Internet, and although sites like Groupon has been operating for a while the trend is really only now catching on with consumers and thus everybody it trying to get a piece of the pie with group buying sites popping up left and right.

Big news last week in South Africa was the acquisition of Twangoo, local group buying site, by Groupon, but for those that has been left out there might just be hope.

Mashable just broke the news that Google is preparing to launch its own group buying platform to compete head on with Groupon. This comes only weeks after Groupon rejected a $6 billion acquisition from Google, but the Silicon Valley company is not letting it go.

The news of Google’s group buying venture came after a confidential fact sheet was passed on from a reliable source to Mashable. In the document the new group buying service is referred to as Google Offers, describing it as new product to help potential customers and clientele find great deals in their area through a daily email.

Google Offers will function much like Groupon with users subscribing by email and receiving a daily deal in their inbox. Users will then have a specific time period to respond to the deal and when the minimum amount of users have bought the deal, it is activated.

Google has confirmed the rumors about Google Offers and that it is currently in testing phase.

Google Offers Fact Sheet

Do you make use of group buying websites? If so tell us which ones.

Rumors has been doing the rounds on the Internet that social networking giant Facebook will be shutting down on March 15 because CEO Mark Zuckerberg allegedly wants his old life back.

If you really think about it, why would Facebook shut down only days after it acquired an additional $500 million funding?

Facebook Director of Corporate Communications Larry Yu has denied the rumor saying that it is false. In an email sent to Mashable, Yu added the following, “The answer is no, so please help us put an end to this silliness. We didn’t get the memo about shutting down and there’s lots to do, so we’ll just keep cranking away like always.”

The first App I installed when I got my iPad was Flipboard and up and till today I am still using it daily to catch up on whats happening, so its save to say the Flipboard is my favorite iPad App, the only drawback is that you need an iPad to experience it, but that could change soon.

Flipboard launched in July 2010 only for the iPad and has since seen great success on the platform winning iPad App of the year, but to grow Flipboard will have to expand their horizons to other platforms like the web where sites like paper.li already own a large portion of the market.

Flipboard just posted on their Twitter feed that they are hiring, amongst the available positions is two that stands out, one position for a Designer-Web Developer and another for a front-end Web Developer to envision and design the future of reading content online. Could this mean that Flipboard is gearing up to launch a web version of the social magazine?

Perhaps Flipboard will join other publishers like Sports Illustrated and New York Times and publish a Chrome Web App, either way I am looking forward to be able to read Flipboard from the web also.

I would say that 2010 was a successful year for social media and its the same story for YouTube with users watching more than 700 billion YouTube videos during year and uploaded more than 13 million hours of video.

Here is a list of the top ten most watched YouTube videos during 2010 based on the view counts of videos uploaded during 2010, these exclude major label music videos.

1. BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes)

2. TIK TOK KESHA Parody: Glitter Puke – Key of Awe$ome #13

3. Greyson Chance Singing Paparazzi

4. Annoying Orange Wazzup

5. Old Spice | The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

6. Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10

7. OK Go – This Too Shall Pass – Rube Goldberg Machine version

8. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE – Trailer

9. Jimmy Surprises Bieber Fan

10. Ken Block’s Gymkhana THREE, Part 2; Ultimate Playground; l’Autodrome

At the beginning of this year Twitter surpassed the 10 billion tweets marks, now 2010 is at its end and 25 billion tweets later Twitter is giving us a window into what the world was talking about on Twitter over the year.

A massive 25 billion tweets was sent during 2010, and out of those 25 billion Twitter has identified the top 10 tweets of 2010 as well as the leading Trends in eight categories: News Events, People, Movies, Television, Technology, World Cup, Sports and Hashtags.

Top 10 Twitter Trends of 2010

1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. FIFA World Cup
3. Inception
4. Haiti Earthquake
5. Vuvuzela
6. Apple iPad
7. Google Android
8. Justin Bieber
9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
10. Pulpo Paul

Its clear that South Africans made their mark in the social sphere with the Word Cup and Vuvuzela being in the top 10 Twitter trends of 2010.

For a comprehensive list of Twitter trends for 2010 broken up in categories visit the Top Twitter Trends in 2010 website.