Platform Five – This week’s most talked about social media tools and platforms

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Plaform Five – our regular look at the latest emerging online tools and platforms that PR and social media agencies might want to keep an eye on.

This week we’re looking at WePay Giving (a charity donation platform), a major development from LinkedIn, a neat tool that helps you check for vanity Facebook URLs and two developments from the geo-location space that are worth keeping an eye on.

1. WePay Giving – Ironically, I have been working on a project all week that this platform would have suited perfectly! Alas, I’m aware of it now and you should be too. In short, it is a PayPal for charities and can be set up in less than a minute. Read more about WePay Giving at TheNextWeb.com.
2. Personalised foursquare with Ushahidi? This is really interesting. Ushahidi is best known for reporting people’s locations during a crisis, but this week they have made it ‘open-source’ which means it is possible to create a location-based social network of your own. Who will be the first brand to take advantage of this? More at ReadWriteWeb.com.
3. LinkedIn Today – TechCrunch have referred to this as a social news product for pofessionals which is a pretty accurate description. LinkedIn Today delivers the top stories from your industry / sector direct to one page. For example, my page is dominated by articles about PR. Check out the LinkedIn blog for more information.
4. Facebook vanity URL checker – This is incredibly handy and does what it says on the tin. Imagine you are preparing to launch a Facebook page and want to check you can get the vanity URL you’d like (e.g www.facebook.com/ParatusComms) – well, this site allows you to do just that.
5. Get chatting with Yobongo.com – This is being hailed as the possible ‘breakout’ app of SXSW 2011. Put simply, this app puts you in contact with people in your vicinity to allow for location-based mobile chat. Check out this review of Yobongo from Gozmodo here for more information.

Bonus links:

• 10 tips and tools to help with Facebook searches – includes Greplin, a tool with great capabilities
• How90′s.com – a tool that assesses ‘how 90′s’ your website is (for the record the Paratus website scored 20% – phew!!)

Swing past next Friday for more Platform Five goodies from The Paratus Blog.

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