It’s about time someone did.

Two of my favorite social neworks are now closer than ever before. Flickr2Twitter was announced today and I couldn’t be more excited.

While I’ve been a fan of Twitter photo sharing services like TwitPic, I’ve never liked the quality of most phone cameras. Being able to share these fuzzy, lower resultion images with the world wasn’t that appealing to me. Flickr2Twitter has this function too of course. However, it’s the ability to post photos directly from Flickr to Twitter with the virtual press of a button that I find most appealing.

Setup is quick and painless. Once complete, you simply click the “blog this” button above your photos. You even get the option to edit the content of the tweet. The link uses Flickr’s own URL shortener.

I think this is useful and smart addition to the Flickr experience. I’d love to hear about other people’s experience and opinions of this new feature.

I was really pleased to see my Twitter background featured on Twitter Backgrounds Gallery this week. Thanks for the votes and comments.

I’m excited that more sites like this are popping up. Anything to help inspire folks to make their backgrounds more unique is definitely a good thing.

So much of this most recent election cycle has taken place across the social web. Twitter and SocialMedian have created stand-alone political sites, Current TV combined Twitter and the televised debates, CNN is reading Facebook and Myspace mail from viewers during reports. How, if at all, has this influenced your vote? Jump onto Seemic and join the conversation or leave a comment here.

Al Gore may not have invented the internet, but he’s doing a hell of a job to make it better. Gore’s cable network, Current TV has mashed together two of my favorite vices: politics and Twitter.

Hack the Debate is an innovative use of the two mediums. During each debate (last week’s vice presidential debate shown above), they show tweets in pretty close to real-time on the lower portion of the screen. As a new one appears, the previous tweet moves up, slowly breaks apart and fades away. The animation is quite beautiful and actually less distracting than I had anticipated.

Twitterers from both sides of the aisle took part last week, and I must say it’s quite addicting to watch and participate in. Anyone on Twitter can join in by simply adding the hastag #current to tweets during the debate. It’s become my preferred way of watching. Find Current TV in your area.

Other broadcasters take note: this is how you do it right. No frills, elegant execution, using the data in a contextual way to add value and encourage participation, minimal filtering. Well done Current TV!

It all started a few weeks ago. I had recently given into the hype and begun using Twitter. I quickly became addicted to the micro-blogging platform and a bit of a zealot, trying to convert everyone I met into a user. But this isn’t about that. I’d like to focus on the day I realized how powerful the twitterverse (yes, people call it that) really is.

One evening while watching CNN I tweeted (people call it that too) about Anderson Cooper. Not 24 hours later, Anderson Cooper was following me on Twitter. Now, as of this writing he’s following 1,498 others. But what stuck with me was that he had been listening. He took the time to set up an alert. He gets it. Not many other journalists do right now. After reading his tweets, I discovered that he’s actually very funny too.

Lightning struck again this week when I tweeted a link to a thoughtful piece about Zappos that Tim Brunelle had written for talentzoo.com. The article mentioned Zappos and their innovative use of Twitter for customer service. Less than 5 hours later Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh was following me. Again, he’s listening. He’s also a voracious Twitterer. He gets it too.

Slowly the potential power of this platform is sinking into mainstream America. Comcast, of all companies, now has a dedicated staffer monitoring Twitter and blogs for complaints. They’re beginning to get it.

How about your company? Are they listening? Do they get it?

There’s something about this post from Minneapolis Metblogs earlier today that fascinates me. It’s not the subject matter per se (a scoop on the latest venture of a recently fired local weather man) it’s the story’s sources. They cite a tweet by local blogger and entrepreneur, Graeme Thickins (go Graeme!), and the meterologist’s LinkedIn profile.

Twitter and LinkedIn? Why not? Both can be valid sources of certain types of information, both are public, and, most importantly for journalists and bloggers alike, they are readily accessible.

I see this a trend that will continue to grow as more people become engaged in social networking. It wasn’t that long ago that the the New York Times shared information about Eliot Spitzer’s high-priced “escort” gleaned from her MySpace page. I remember watching CNN coverage of the mob of reporters camped-out in front of the woman’s NYC apartment building. In liew of other story developments, they turned to social networks once again. One correspondant had it on good authority from someone “inside MySpace” that she had logged in recently but made changes to her profile.

If CNN and The Times consider the social web a worthwhile source, can we be that far away from other industries taking advantage of this information? It’s not uncommon for employers to Google potential hires. Isn’t searching social networks a logical escalation of this practice? Even current employees are at risk. What about checking FriendFeed for any activity on a sick day? Are we close to a day when law enforcement won’t consider someone a missing person until their Facebook status hasn’t been updated for at least 48 hours?

As we put more of ourselves out there on the web (which I strongly support), are we really thinking about the implications this could have on our real life interactions down the line? Bigger question: What do you think of social networks as news sources?