It’s the Social Media Roundup, and SMG is a year older, wiser, and awesome…r.

That’s right, SMG celebrated 3 fan-damn-tastic years of awesomeness last week, with special guest – the endangered caribou!  I’ll let the stars of the video kickoff for the week say it better than I:

So now that THAT’S stuck in your head, on to the news.

Authenticity vs. Transparency, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Toplessness
Augie Ray has written a great post about the recent trials and tribulations of CEO Chip Conley of Joie de Vivre hotels.  Chip posted a picture of himself topless at Burning Man (with…something on his head) on Facebook and some of his employees took offense.  What followed sets up a nice case study for the distinction between personal authenticity and transparency.  (Seriously, what IS that on his head?)

Sign Up Now to Enter…But Not on Facebook
Last week, Facebook made revisions to its Promotions Guidelines which dramatically restrict the methods by which companies can run contests and the like on their fan pages.  Among the restrictions: you will only administer the promotion through an app, you must submit materials for review by Facebook at least 7 days in advance, and the prize may not include dairy products.  The lactose intolerance lobby has some clout, it seems.

Rupert, Rupert, Rupert
Rupert Murdoch is making headlines (and getting plenty of free advertising, to boot) by threatening to remove all NewsCorp properties from Google within the next few months.  To which Google responded: meh, alright. Now, if this is a ploy to fire up the search wars again by selling exclusivity to Bing or Yahoo! then I say interesting play, Mr. Murdoch.  Otherwise, I’m in Google’s camp.  Meh, alright.

My blog is better than your twitter!
Joel Postman has a post up on Social Media Today that sums up most of my thoughts on the value of twitter vs. blogs.  The one other advantage in the blog’s corner that I’d add is the permanence factor.  The twitter stream is so quick and broad that your tweet is swallowed up and downriver before you know it. The search options are coming along, but dollar for dollar, I’d put my money on something that I know will be findable and there until the ablogalypse hits.