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Haven’t you heard? Planking is so mid-2011. As the calendar turns to September and we look forward to Fall, the new Internet meme du jour is something called “stocking.” Say what? That’s what we said, too.

Stocking is the act of taking a picture that imitates a stock photo, putting the two side-by-side, and posting the results on the web. The phenomenon is so new, it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page yet.

We’re not exactly sure where the idea for stocking truly originated, but since Aug. 18 the blog Stocking is the New Planking has been entertaining us with imitations of stock photos. Naturally, we decided to get in on the fun.

We hope you enjoy the fruits of our labors.

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Brian Anthony Hernandez

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Brian Anthony Hernandez

Radhika Marya and Matt Silverman

Zoe Fox, Adam Ostrow and Todd Olmstead

Lauren Indvik

Puppy Elliott

Stacy Green

Lauren Drell

Franklin Drell

Christina Warren

Zachary Sniderman

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Anyone for Planking? Lemme know k!

Today’s Google doodle celebrates the birthday of Queen’s legendary singer Freddie Mercury, and it’s definitely one of the most interesting doodles to come out of Google‘s workshop yet. Note that the doodle will become visible on Sept. 6 in the U.S. out of respect for Labor Day.

One of the best vocalists ever in rock music, Mercury was born on Sept. 5, 1946, and he died in on Nov. 24, 1991. He was known for his flamboyant presence on stage, amazing four-octave vocal range and an unforgettable series of hits which ranged from hard rock to power ballads to neo-classical pieces.

Today’s doodle is also accompanied by a blog post from Google, which was written by none other than Queen’s guitarist Brian May, who recently performed at the MTV Video Music Awards with Lady Gaga.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Animated Google Doodles [VIDEOS] | Where Do Google Doodles Come From?

“Some people imagine Freddie as the fiery, difficult diva who required everyone around him to compromise. No. In our world, as four artists attempting to paint on the same canvas, Freddie was always the one who could find the compromise — the way to pull it through. If he found himself at odds with any one of us, he would quickly dispel the cloud with a generous gesture, a wisecrack or an impromptu present,” May wrote.

And the animated doodle itself … well, we won’t spoil it for you. Just go to google.com and hit play.

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Do you know that on 31 August 2011, Google also featured Merdeka Raya doodle on MY google page? Google now are getting more taste on localized feel and mood!

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RIP Amy Winehouse. She was found dead in her London apartment today according to numerous reports. The UK singer was 27-year-old.

Winehouse cancelled her European tour last month, and has long struggled with substance abuse.

Amy Jade Winehouse, born September 14, 1983, exploded onto the UK scene in 2003 with Frank. Her 2006 LP, Back To Black, led by the international smash, "Rehab," garnered six Grammy nominations and five wins.

Social media has fundamentally changed the way agencies work. In a recent interview with Mashable, Razorfish’s Grant Owens predicted that agencies will become much smaller — hiring more generalists and less specialists.

As the technology and client expectations continue to advance, agencies — PR, marketing, media and advertising — will continue to evolve. Will companies become leaner or will they need to staff up? What does that mean for campaign costs and hiring trends? We asked three people from different types of agencies to offer their viewpoints:

• Rachel Kay, president, RKPR
• Todd Defren, principal, SHIFT Communications
• David Griner, director of digital content, Luckie & Company

Though we’re already working harder, longer and faster, some experts predict agencies will become leaner because companies will hire people who can execute multiple aspects of a campaign. Do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not?

Rachel Kay: A decade ago agencies were much more focused in their service offerings, so wearing multiple hats within an organization was a lot less common. As PR people, we created the communication, the creative agency did the artwork and the media buying agency handled the ad buy. Today, agencies are finding it’s more lucrative to own as much of a campaign as possible, and having talent who can take ideas through fruition is definitely more coveted. In addition, there’s a lot more grey area in terms of where things like social media content development reside. It’s really up for grabs if your agency has the talent to execute. So, I’d argue that brands are becoming leaner in terms of resources, while agencies are actually expanding the breadth of their service offerings.

Todd Defren: I see little evidence of this concept. While it’s true that we’re working longer/harder/faster, the number of people required to execute across varied campaigns has only grown. Quite honestly, the more success a company has in social media, the more ambitious they become and the higher the expectation from consumers. Thus, we see demands for more community managers, more writers, more producers, etc.

David Griner: Personally, I think this is a golden age for mid-sized agencies, which were said to be dying just a few short years ago. Agencies like ours have never had the luxury of abundant staffing, so we’ve had to focus on assembling a team big enough to manage all our client work, but cross-talented enough to leave plenty of room for growth. But larger shops could definitely shed some weight as “specialized” fields like social media marketing become standard marketing practices.

If agencies do become more streamlined, what does this mean for campaign costs? Will brands be able to capitalize on an economy of scale because teams will consist of a few people who can “do it all” instead of having a larger group of people with specialized skill-sets?

Rachel Kay: In this new landscape, brands and companies are able to enjoy reduced campaign costs because agencies are able to offer more in terms of skill. For example, we are a PR agency, but we’ve run significant Facebook advertising campaigns for our clients that we can fold into an affordable retainer that complements our existing communication efforts. That way, our clients aren’t at the mercy of hiring a separate agency to handle something that is very communication-based in nature. In addition, companies are choosing more online-driven campaigns, which tend to be less costly than something like an extensive street team effort.

Todd Defren: Again, I see little evidence of this trend. Those smaller teams you suggest are being created will not be scalable to help more than one or two clients. Thus the perceived economies of scale are lost, as agencies of this type are forced to charge more, along the supply and demand curve.

David Griner: I personally doubt that clients will see a noticeable amount of savings if agencies streamline. A 100-hour project will still take 100 hours, whether it’s being done by five people or 25 people. Where you’ll see noticeable improvement is in the level of interaction you’re able to have with agency staffers assigned to your project. Having fewer people assigned to your project means better day-to-day workflow and institutional memory, but the downside is obviously the loss of potential expertise.

What kinds of people are today’s agencies hiring: generalists or specialists? What other trends are you seeing?

Rachel Kay: I think larger agencies have the ability to hire more specialists as opposed to smaller agencies, which need people who can operate across multiple tactics. I really prefer employees who can think about communication strategically, but have the knowledge to execute multiple elements of a program, ensuring every part of the campaign is cohesive and integrated. However, it’s definitely clear that many agencies are choosing to separate traditional and digital departments. I can see this shift continuing for the next several years, but as more and more marketing moves online, those gaps will have to close once again, as everyone will need to be dialed into the digital and mobile spaces.

Todd Defren: More generalists are being hired in great numbers, but there will always be niche opportunities for specialists. One issue for specialists: Technology is getting easier and easier, and expectations of quality are getting lower. Thus a project that might have required a professional videographer may now be covered off by a generalist with an iPhone or FlipCam and some cheap editing software. “Depth” is expensive, and to your earlier point, clients tend to look for economies versus sophistication.

David Griner: Generalists — or at least the truly multi-talented — will always be in high demand as strategists, content creators and agency leaders. They’re insatiably curious, eager to experiment and ‘media neutral’ enough to avoid getting stuck in a rut.

How is your agency changing? Let us know in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, francisblack

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Are you up to the trend now?

Previously, people’s interpretation of an integrated campaign was one that looked and spoke to its audiences the same way throughout all of its media channels.

In the current digital and social media landscape, the preconception of having a “one size fits all” approach can no longer be the applied. There are simply too many opportunities to apply a communications strategy and have the content skewed to a specific media and community to encourage conversation and value.

Brand marketing today needs to be comprised of “permission, proximity, perception, and participation”. As explained here, this form of Adaptive Brand Marketing, is an idea that brands and their marketing partners are having difficulty implementing and understanding. To expand upon this, Edward Boches, the Chief Creative Officer and Chief Social Media Officer of Mullen, recently asked the question “How do you keep a brand consistent in a world of abundance?” He broke it down into several components: Brands not only saying, but doing. Your product is really your content. Stop speaking to a target group, but a community. Speak to each media individually, and get others to tell and share your message for you.

This was part of my response to his discussion: “…I’m wondering, when you break down the various areas that define and influence expectations (present, visible, searchable and useful), doesn’t it all come down to “value”? Value comes by action, not just saying but by doing and demonstrating. Seeing the value in a community as opposed to the masses? Inspiring your audience by helping, sharing and partnering. This inspires others to share in the value of that brands beliefs or actions.” Simply put:

Visual look content action share community = brand consistency, which = value.

Ben Malbon, who’s one of the Founder’s of BBH Labs, tweeted about an integrated campaign by Glue London. In addition to its unique visual appeal, this campaign educates and explains to voters the position of the Green Party in the UK and why it should be supported.  As you’ll see here, it’s one of the freshest and smartest examples of an integrated platform that incorporates all media and stems from two strong “cultural insights” that led to the various executions. The larger and primary target group was comprised of “Disillusioned Labour” who viewed “the parties as indecipherable from one another.” The other and smaller of the two was the “Green Party Heartland, who shared in the beliefs and were advocates of the party.

These insights became the foundation for a strong communications strategy that was complemented by a unique visual treatment not often found in political campaigns. This foundation allowed each of the various media platforms to resonate within that specific channels audience or user.  This further clarified the message and brought value to the party’s position and perspective.

One of the keys to the success of this effort has to do with Glues insights to understanding the political voting culture. In Grant McCracken’s book Chief Culture Officer, and in this interview It’s the end of mass marketing he stresses the importance of having someone within a company or organization who’s responsible for following that specific culture and its relevance to that company or organization. This consists of habits, trends, and challenges facing a brand in past, present and future aspirations. Without understanding this aspect of culture, the Green Party campaign wouldn’t be as clever as it is.

Trying to adhere to this approach myself, I recently developed an integrated launch for a new food cable show “Beyond the Dish.” When creating the overall branding, I wanted to capture the shows personality through its unscripted format and travels throughout the city. It was essential to use each media component as its own channel for driving both viewer and press to the site where the episodes could be viewed, shared, and followed. The results can be seen here

Where do you see things going? Do you agree with the principles of Adaptive Marketing and how do you see marketing firms and agencies evolving from a one size fit’s all solution to one that’s unique to each specific channel?

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Now, that's what we called content to commerce era!

Erin Bury is the community manager at Sprouter.com, an expert Q&A site for startup founders around the world. You can follow her on Twitter @ErinBury and read her blog at ErinBury.com.

Less than three years ago, community managers were a rare group of employees most often found at technology startups. Today, the role of community manager is common at companies of all sizes — from startups to multinational corporations. Despite their ubiquity, there is still a lot of confusion around what a community manager actually does and what employers should look for when hiring one.

Performable founder David Cancel recently wrote about the traits he looks for in potential startup hires. He placed the most importance on cultural fit and the least importance on previous startup experience. He also discussed why he hires people based on their personality, not their resume. Employers should take the same approach to hiring a community manager. It’s not necessarily about how many tweets the person has sent out, it’s about whether they’re passionate about your company and can become a brand advocate.

Here are the five qualities you should look for in a community manager to ensure he or she will be the right fit for your company.

1. Passion for Your Industry

A community manager is the face and voice of your brand, providing communications in both directions. If you’re a florist, it’s imperative that the person you hire is passionate about gardening. If you own a bakery, make sure the person either loves making or eating cake (shouldn’t be too difficult). This person will be living and breathing your brand, so you need an employee to take an interest in publications, key players and events within your industry. You can’t force passion, so find out in the interview if the candidate actually cares about what you do.

2. Varied Experience

A community manager is a jack-of-all-trades, especially at a startup. This person won’t have one specific role — like public relations or customer service — within the company. Rather, your community manager will have hands in different departments. The more varied the candidate’s background experience, the better they’ll adapt to the role. Look for someone who has a diversity of experiences on his or her resume — journalism will help him or her create amazing content, while PR and online marketing backgrounds will help him or her get the word out about your company and lead social media efforts. Look for experience with event planning, online analytics, SEO and customer service. You won’t find someone with experience in all of these areas, so rank your top three priorities and find a candidate with experience to match.

3. Resourcefulness

While past experience is great, it’s not a deal breaker for a potential community manager. It’s not whether this person already knows how to do something, it’s whether he or she can go out and find the answer without guidance. If you’re an entrepreneur, you won’t have the time to hold your new community manager’s hand while he or she learns the ins and outs of your business and your industry. And if you’re a big company, you need someone who can take the initiative to find answers and work independently with different departments.

4. Flexibility

Every day for a community manager is different. Whether attending events, working on a PR push for a product launch or creating content for your online properties, this new employee needs to be able to roll with the punches and adjust his or her schedule based on the news of the day — and that doesn’t always fall within the 9-to-5 workday. If a company crisis occurs on a Saturday or there’s an important event on a Thursday night, you need your community manager to be on top of it without complaining. Find someone who thrives on that variety.

5. Personality

It’s important for your new hires to have a great personality and to fit in well with your other employees. But when hiring a community manager it’s also important to find someone who has a vibrant personality that will resonate with your community. Your community manager is the first point of contact for customers and community members, and his or her interaction dictates whether your audience will have a positive or negative opinion of your brand. Find someone who knows how to communicate in a fun, interesting way; who knows how to be diplomatic when people complain or criticize the company; and who can meet strangers at events. Finding someone who’s a cultural fit internally is important, but finding someone who is a cultural fit with your community is imperative.

Every company has a list of projects and responsibilities they want their community manager to manage. But don’t just think about the tasks you want them to complete. Think about finding someone — with a personality and passion that reflects your brand — who can complete them in an independent manner.

Interested in more Social Media resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.

Canadians planning to tweet election results during next month’s elections had better think twice, because it could result in a $25,000 fine or up to five years in prison, thanks to a 73-year-old law.

Elections Canada, the non-partisan agency responsible for administering Canada’s federal elections, has come under fire for saying that it will enforce the Canada Elections Act, specifically a section that mandates that nobody prematurely announce or send messages about the election results until all the polls are closed.

The following is from section 329 of the Canada Elections Act:

“No person shall transmit the result or purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the close of all of the polling stations in that other electoral district.”

The law was originally enacted in 1938 to prevent radio stations from prematurely transmitting elections results, thereby influencing voter behavior on the west coast by the east coast. The polls close up to four and a half hours later on the west coast because of time zones.

This wasn’t a law designed for Facebook, Twitter and social media, though. There are simply too many potential sources of information for this law to be enforced in a feasible way. Despite that fact, Elections Canada says that public messages on social networks could be construed as breaking the Canada Elections Act.

“As administrators we have to inform people and make sure they are aware of that provision,” an Elections Canada spokesperson told the Vancouver Sun. “It’s not like Elections Canada will be monitoring your Twitter stream. However, if there are complaints, the Elections Canada Commissioner will investigate.”

Elections Canada has no choice — it has to enforce the laws that are on the books, and it’s up to the politicians to change the law. Citizens, especially Twitter users, have vowed to protest Elections Canada and the Canada Elections Act by tweeting, blogging and using social media to discuss election results as a way to defy the archaic law. Expect a lot of tweets with the hashtags #Tweettheresults and #elxn41 to be bending or breaking the rules.

It doesn’t seem like Elections Canada is going to go proactively go after citizens who tweet about election results, but we still hope this is the last time Canada has to deal with this law for its elections. Information cannot be suppressed in the digital era.

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Bayangkan kalau Malaysia pun buat macam ni... ramailah yang kena saman n jail nanti... ish..ish..ish...

Exactly one year after its launch, the Facebook Like Button has become ubiquitous across the web and is still installed on thousands of new websites every day.

Facebook first introduced the Like Button at its F8 developer’s conference, along with Facebook Open Graph and instant personalization. Through the “Like”, Facebook spread its social footprint across the web. 50,000 websites installed the Like Button in its first week, and that number rose to 100,000 in less than a month.

That number hasn’t stopped rising since. Facebook said on Thursday that 10,000+ websites add the Like Button every day — identical to what COO Sheryl Sandberg said in October last year. In other words, the growth of the Like button hasn’t slowed down in the last six months. The social network says more than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook so far, including over 80% of the U.S. top 100 websites.

Facebook’s success hasn’t gone without notice. Google recently launched +1, its answer to Facebook’s Like Button, and a study last month by Eventbrite concluded that a “Like” is more profitable than a tweet.

What do you think of the Like Button? How has it changed your habits on the web? Let us know in the comments.

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Saya SUKA!