PR and Social InkLings for the Week of August 8

Facebook and Your Digits, Rupert Murdoch...Again, British Prime Minister vs. Twitter, Free Coffee and Karma, Stock Market Help and the Vogue Elevator

This week in Facebook news: a rumor started that Facebook was harvesting numbers from users’ phones and making them public. This is all due to a misinterpretation of a feature called “Contacts,” previously called “Phonebook.” Download Facebook’s mobile app and this feature syncs your phone’s address book with your profile, so you can access numbers from your Facebook account. The feature uses your contacts to match your friends’ Facebook profiles with their numbers. Read more about Facebook’s response and how you can adjust your profile settings here. Are more privacy issues going to keep popping up? Most likely, yes. Is it going to stop people from using Facebook? I’m going to go out on a limb and say absolutely not.

Anyone hoping that News Corp. will soon be accepting applications for the CEO position? I didn’t think so. But, just in case, Rupert Murdoch is making it very clear that he will be staying on as the head of the corrupt media company. In the recent quarterly earnings call, (the first one in a year), Murdoch addressed the succession question as well as reiterated that he was “shocked” by the scandal at the News of the World. Read on here.

Unrest in London after continued rioting erupted in its Tottenham neighborhood following protests over the shooting death of a local man by police. As was the case with the uprisings in Libya and Egypt, social media played an instrumental role in organizing groups of protestors. In response, just like the other countries, the British government has said that it is considering shutting down access to all social media networks and is asking these sites for their assistance. So far, Twitter has said that it does not plan to block accounts or take down any posts. Read more here.

While the London government is placing a large part of the blame on social media, these same sites are now acting as a valuable tool for thousands in the hurting city, helping to bring together clean-up organizers and followers. So, what are your thoughts – should London restrict and/or monitor social media activity?

Jonathan Stark is a pretty nice (and smart) guy. When he recently launched “Jonathan’s Card,” he said it was a social experiment using digital currency and mobile phones. A pay it forward type of campaign, Jonathan allowed strangers to download a copy of his Starbucks card and buy coffee, and encouraged them to also add money to the card for a little good karma. The result? Donations of more than $8,000 and a whole lot of buzz. Was this truly a feel good mission or a promotion for the caffeine giant? Mashable weighs in here. My take? Anyone that is willing to give me a free latte is OK in my book.

With the stock market on a steady decline, brokers may feel like there’s nothing left to do, but put their head in their hands and give up. Help is on the way, weary investors, as there are a slew of stock market apps and websites to assist you in monitoring your investments. While these apps will not raise the Dow, they should make tracking the state of the market less complicated.

I love good gossip, especially when it’s about Vogue office cattiness and the elusive Anna Wintour…and when it’s broadcast on Twitter. Conversations overheard in a Vogue elevator were posted by a mystery Twitterer. Just these nine tweets created quite the stir, as it was quickly dubbed “the media world’s new favorite twitter feed.” Followers are anxiously waiting for more: proof that it is not always how often you tweet, but how interested your followers are with the content that is important.