We’re all busy. We barely have time to sit down and grab a bite to eat, let alone spend an hour a day pouring through the Internets, scouring for the latest and greatest in industry news. Well, we get that, and we can empathize with your plight. Starting this week, and every Friday moving forward, you can expect to see a social rundown, recapping the social media developments and highlights from the week. If you were a kid in high school that responded better to the Cliff’s Notes version of Hamlet than you did the actual paperback, this column is for you! Without further ado, here’s this week’s social rundown:

Yelp Takes on Groupon!

Clearly, social shopping is on the rise. Yelp has been quietly testing out Daily Deals in the Sacramento market. The news was originally broken on Yipit. With an immense user base, earning over 32 million unique visitors (as of May 2010), Yelp’s Daily Deals could indeed give Groupon a run for its money. And to really make things interesting, consider all of the positive relationships and partnerships that already exist between Yelp and businesses around the nation. They will likely be able to score some pretty aggressive deals that will be harder for other social offer sites to come by, and even harder for consumers to refuse. The competition is heating up, but you can probably guess who will be the biggest winner…the consumers. We plan to keep our eyes on this one!

Facebook and Amazon – Jedi Mind Control Over Your Shopping Cart?

Yes, it’s true. Facebook can read your mind, and now that it’s partnered with Amazon, their combined powers can not only tell YOU what you might like, but also what your friends might like. Now just for one moment, let’s put the creepy factor aside. This is actually pretty darn cool, especially if you’re a person who struggles with indecision when it comes to purchases, or often don’t even know where to begin when it comes time to buy a gift for a friend. Connecting your Facebook account is an easy three-step process, using the Facebook Connect application. Groundbreaking? Not really, as many partnerships like this have emerged in the social space. Cool? Convenient? Yes and yes.

Facebook Gets More Inquisitive with Facebook Questions

Earlier this week, Facebook officially launched the beta version of Facebook Questions, which allows users to pose questions to the Facebook community. How is this different than what users can already do in their own status updates you ask? Well, questions will be posed to the entire community of 500 million users – the engaged ones anyway. It’s actually quite similar to Quora, so it will be interesting to see what effect this new release has on the Q&A site. Just like Quora, users will be able to “follow” certain questions they’re interested in, and be notified whenever there is a new response. Right now, the product has only been released to a beta group, but it’s expected to be released more widely in the near future. Here’s what beta users see when posting updates.

SOURCE: http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/07/facebook-questions-launches/

What other big stories hit this week worth mentioning? Drop some link love in the comments below, or offer your two cents on the stories we reported above.

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