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Here are a few of my thoughts on Cliff Atkinson’s new book: The Backchannel.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) issued guidance for brokers today on the use of social media.

The guidance in Regulatory Notice 10-06, which is presented in Q&A format, clarifies the responsibilities of firms to supervise the use of social networking sites to ensure that recommendations are suitable and their customers are not misled. The Notice also addresses the recordkeeping and other responsibilities of firms.

In issuing the guidance, FINRA cites the widespread use of social media:

According to a recent report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 46 percent of American adults who use the Internet logged onto a social networking site in 2009, which is up from8 percent in 2005. Other studies have shown that use of socialmedia sites by businesses to communicate with customers and the public has grown significantly in the past few years.

Check out this video from KMSP Fox9 in Minneapolis on Activeion’s Ionator:

Using social media tools, the American Red Cross has raised more than $800,000 online since yesterday’s massive earthquake.  Laura Howe, the Senior Director of Public Affairs there, is a bit of a new media evangelist, and a prolific Twitterer.

We’ve just confirmed that the Red Cross has already raised more than $800,000 for Haiti through their $10 text message donation initiative (text “Haiti” to 90999), which is backed by the United States State Department.

I recently saw Laura present on the use of new media tools at a U.S. Chamber seminar, and she did a great job outlining how the Red Cross is really using social media tools in creative ways.  This effort is another success story.

Grab your cell phone and do your thing!

H/t Mashable.

Update:  According to Alec J. Ross, Senior Adviser for Innovation at the State Department, that number has now topped $1 million, only a matter of minutes later.

Here’s an interesting presentation by Alex Lundry on the political power of  data-visualization and infographics.

As public policy debates become more and more complex, it seems to me that tools like this are going to become more and more important.

H/t to Sociological Images and Diane Levin.

In a piece over at Foreign Policy.com, Senator Richard Lugar, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committees offers his strong support for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s efforts to utilize social media to advance public diplomacy objectives.

Importantly, he does so while acknowledging that the effort involves giving up a certain degree of control, and is not totally without risk.

But social networking technologies are more often used to enable individuals across a country, or across the globe, to interact, engage, and become empowered. Although this means that our government will not be able to control the message as well as it might with conventional public diplomacy tools, I believe it is a risk worth taking. Terrorists and other anti-American propagandists have for some time been using the Internet and other techniques to communicate and recruit. America needs to beat them at their own game, especially since we invented most of the technology.

This should offer some comfort to the team over at State that they won’t be second-guessed for taking reasonable risks.

In the New Year I have seen several pieces on the uses of Social Media for business. I thought this one by Amber Naslund over at Social Media Today was pretty thoughtful. She comes at it from a realistic viewpoint and also links to other useful resources.

Over the course of this year, I’ll be talking a fair amount about innovative ways to use social media to achieve public affairs objectives.  Stay tuned.

Last month, Activeion was named one of Forbes Breakout Business Ideas for 2009

Since this video was put together Activeion has also released a household cleaning device at a signficantly lower price.

And here’s the Bill Nye video referenced in the Forbes video.

As a result of the new Obama lobbying rules, numerous groups are pursuing aggressive maneuvers to avoid lobbying registration requirements.  See today’s Blog of Legal Times story.