The weekend read

I think the hurricane was enough of a trick for those of us on the East coast this week. Your treat: The good finds, reads and leads that gathered in my Twitterstream this week. Carve out some time in your Friday and check out this haul:

• Lessons in a hurricane costume: Any major event lets us learn more about how we're using social media, and Hurricane Sandy was no exception. Emergency apps zoomed in popularity, including the New York State emergency app...The Weather Channel website hit 450 million views in a day, and 125 million mobile and tablet views, both records..."We are okay" topped the Facebook updates during the storm...the #Sandy hashtag got its own map...Twitter gave away promoted tweets to the Red Cross and FEMA during the storm...and fact-checking fake photos shared during the hurricane got popular, with at least one observer calling Twitter a "self-cleaning oven" when it comes to corrections. This thoughtful piece said the hurricane made social media our "virtual campfire," and noted it gave Instagram its defining moment, with 10 images uploaded every second with the tag #Sandy during this storm
• When the hurricane is your business: Folks at The Knot, a popular weddings website, are going to win my prize for best use of social media for business reasons during a hurricane. The Knot acted quickly to set up a special Facebook page for couples whose weddings were or are going to be affected by Hurricane Sandy, to help them get in touch with new venues or other resources. Smart, smart, smart.
• Doorbells to ring next time: Social media also shared how-to-survive-socially tips you should file away for the next emergency, like connecting your phone to Twitter for emergency communications, and how to use Facebook and Twitter without the Internet. My favorite: 9 ways to make your cell phone last through the whole storm. It makes sense to share tips like these with your own audiences before and during an emergency, so don't keep them to yourself, communicators.
• Magic lantern: The zoom-able slide creation program Prezi (with free and paid versions) launched a new interface that's easier to use.
• Everlasting gobstoppers: For the data nerd: There's now a map of the most-engaging tweets from each of the presidential candidates. You can chew on this until quitting time, and then some.
• Your trick-or-treat team: Inc. magazine has Peter Shankman's take on 5 people you need on your social media team.
• Candy for everybody: Facebook is reportedly rolling out an option that would let followers of your page get all--not just some--of your updates. I'm hoping this counteracts the drop in engagement most pages have seen since Facebook's algorithms for feeds shifted to reduce the visibility of page posts.
• That's a lot of trick-or-treaters: Twitter's now serving up a half-billion tweets per day. I only account for about 20,000 of them, and that's not all in one day, so the rest must be your fault. Not to be outdone, LinkedIn is adding two members per second.
• Who's behind that mask? Here's a useful antidote to the fake photo share: A journalist's guide to verifying images. Communicators, pass this one around the office.
• There's no embargo on how much candy you get: Embargo Watch's Ivan Oransky weighs in on a no-embargoes policy from the new open-access scientific journal eLife. News flash: He likes it. Now find out why.
• Hear those boos and screams better: The mother lode if you record audio: Producer and engineer Bobby Oswinski has a new course on lynda.com about audio recording techniques. Even more candy: There's a free 7-day trial.

And some non-scary updates about workshop deadlines:

• Early registration--and the discount that comes with it--ends today for my November 27 day-long workshop on public speaking and presenting for introverts, with both content and format designed to focus directly on what introverts need and their special advantages as speakers. Join us yourself, or recommend this to a colleague or one of your experts. I'll keep registration open until November 16 or when all seats are filled.
• Early registration and its discount close next week, on November 9, for my December 7 lunch-and-learn for communicators who want to make the case for a training program for your experts. Part brainstorm, part briefing, this will help you develop the data, examples and encouragement you need, whether you want to convince fellow communicators, the powers that be or the experts you want to train. Two hours of insights, plus lunch, a great network of fellow communicators and a followup email so you don't even need to take notes. You can continue to register for this session until November 20, or when all seats are filled.

I hope my clients, friends, colleagues and readers in the eastern half of the U.S. (and those caught in hurricane travel snafus) are all home safe, dry and sound. Time for a weekend for us all....thanks so much for checking in here on your way to a well-deserved rest.