These are my links for June 16th through June 17th:

• Corporate Twitter ~ hands up if this sounds familiar! –
• Coca-Cola Marketing Shifts from Impressions to Expressions –
• Facebook’s Dominance Worldwide…Mapped. – Facebook is rapidy approaching 700 million users worldwide, despite reports that the social network is beginning to lose members in the US and the UK.
• The Royal Dutch Mint Introduces World’s First QR Coded Coins – While QR codes have appeared on advertisements, art, mobile apps and even sides of buildings, they hadn’t appeared on any currency until recently. The Royal Dutch Mint has unveiled the design for a limited-edition set of QR-coded coins to be released on June 22.
• Make a Duct Tape Hammock for Cheap Summertime Lounging – Lifehacker – With about three rolls of duct tape, two large wooden dowels, and 20 feet of rope, you can make a cheap homemade hammock to turn your back yard into a prime Summer lounging spot
• #Nerdbird: Virgin America’s Newest Plane Is a Twitter Hashtag –
• Bit.ly Pro goes free, custom short domains and analytics for all – After a year and a half in testing, domain shortening service Bitly has moved its Bitly Pro service out of beta and straight into its core offering, now providing domain shortening and link analytics completely free of charge.
• The Guardian goes ‘digital first’ – The Media Blog – It is perhaps the boldest acknowledgement yet of something we've all known for some time - The Guardian has today said it is to become a 'digital first' publisher, reflecting the fact the future of the newspaper industry lies online, not in print. The news comes on the day the Guardian revealed losses of £33m.
• Internet users now have more and closer friends than those offline – Have a computer, Internet connection, and no Facebook profile? Now you're the weirdo outcast. In a new study done by the Pew Research Center, collections of data from thousands of participants showed that people who use social networking services are now not only likely to have larger networks than those who don't, but also have more close friends. The authors of the study don't cite technology as the cause of our newfound friendliness, but those inclined toward social connections are now more likely to be online and networking than not.
• Google Public Policy Blog: Me, Myself and I: Helping to manage your identity on the web – In recent years, it’s become easier and easier to publish information about yourself online, through powerful new platforms like social networking sites and photo sharing services. One way to manage your privacy on these sites is to decide who specifically can see this information, determining whether it is visible to just a few friends, family members or everyone on the web. But, another important decision is choosing how you are identified when you post that information. We have worked hard to build various identity options into Google products. For example, while you may want to identify yourself by name when you post an answer to a question in a forum so that readers know the response is reputable, if you upload videos about a controversial cause you may prefer to post under a pseudonym.
• The Hashtag Economy by Brian Solis – Hashtags are to the social web what emoticons were to Web 1.0 and TXTing. While both are forms of expression and sentiment, there is one subtle, but vital difference. Hashtags are not only part of online culture, they are defining a new era of communication on the Web and IRL (in real life). What started out as a way to index conversations in Twitter has now substantially altered how people convey, relay and discover information in and out of the popular nichework. In social media, “x” no longer marks the spot, “#” is now the indicator for popular culture and all that moves it.
• Handing over social control – brave New World – New World has launched a competition for a member of the public to become its social media custodian. As part of the home appliance brand’s image overhaul, the competition winner will attend trade shows and write about their experiences on various social platforms.
• Web Ink Now: Owning awareness vs just renting it –