EQUTE — Pizza Hut is making Twitter a full time job.

Pizza Hut has hired their ‘Twintern’ on to a full time position and asked fans what to call her.

“As Pizza Hut’s Twintern, I’ve been able to connect with so many interesting people who share an affinity for our pizza, pasta and wings,” Alexa said. “I’m excited that I’m now a member of the team and that I can continue to support the conversation around Pizza Hut®. I’m proud to be a part of such an important priority for the team at Pizza Hut’s offices.”

Alexa was offered the job back in October, but her naming contest lasted until the eve of December. Pizza hut followers eventually decided on Tweetologist.

I am happy to report that Alexa is no longer an intern with Pizza Hut, but has been offered a full-time job with the company. The marketing team at the company naturally took that as an opportunity for another promotion which allowed submissions for what would be Alexa’s new job title. After more than 200 submissions, the company is happy to report that Alexa Robinson is now Pizza Hut’s Tweetologist.

There were some other good names from pizza fans out there, including: “Sultan of Sauce,” “Twitteroni,” “Champion of Cheese,” “Tweetza Chef,” “Tweety Pie,” “C Tweet O,” “Personal Pan Tweetza,” and “Social Media Delivery Driver.”

EQUTE — There are so, so many different software packages designed to help keep tabs of social media, and many are quite pricey.

Even if the general public could sign on, CoTweet runs $1,500 a month — just for Twitter — and other services charge monthly fees and huge start up fees just to sign on. So how can one keep tabs on their brand, their site, their product or their business leaders within the social media landscape?

Well one option is Yahoo!

Yahoo! you say?

Yes.

I had never personally used much before, but the Yahoo! Pipes are pretty interesting and are something I will surely use in the future. Just type in your business, brand, CEO etc and see what people are saying across all of social media. Since you can drop in several keywords and really get an eye on what people are saying. And instead of going to all the hundreds of sites and searching internally the “social media fire hose” checks them all and gives you a handy list and map.

Play around with it, there are scores of other interesting Yahoo! Pipes for just about anything.

EQUTE — Ad.ly, a new way to make money via Twitter could be the ideal way to promote your brand and make real connections with your followers.

The service was designed so that power tweeters could make money by allowing advertisers to insert a link into someone’s Twitter stream, but it can also make money for a favorite charity putting a good face on your brand and helping your favorite charity at the same time.

Each tweet will get you a few cents to a few dollars, but giving that directly to a charity is a great way to do a little philanthropy without worrying whether it will affect your bottom line.

Users with real followers that are actually interested in their links will make the most for their charity as advertisers can see the CTR, ROI etc.

So choose a charity and get tweeting for them and for your brand.

The ad network Chitka did some research and found that more than anything, Twitter users want news.

A total of 28 percent of links leaving Twitter went to news stories.

So what can advertisers learn from this? Don’t just send out deals or coupons, make some announcements, tell your Twitter followers about something new and interesting you’re doing. They might repay the favor with a re-tweet and thus you’ve gone viral — at least a little bit — on Twitter.

EQUTE — A new site aims to spot what news stories people are talking about on social media in real time.

Thoora is taking aim at Digg and other news aggregators — it’s interesting, but I don’t know if it will give them a run for their money.

Thoora looks like it wants to combine Digg and Google Trends, which is a great idea, but in practice, it needs some work. The great things it does do is cut the fat from both Digg and Google Trends.

Since it scours blogs and twitter on its own, there is less likelihood that just ridiculous stories stay at the top spot all day. For instance, at the time of this writing a story about John Stamos being drunk was number one — and the 10 poorest cities was number one in US news. From Google Trends, Apple earnings was number one and in Google News it was a story about Afghanistan.

The number one story on Thoora was about a British soccer manager who is in some hot water. It’s not interesting to most of the US audience, but it’s something that has people blogging.

This site could be most interesting to Twitter users looking to make sense of the trends. Once the Twitter spammers are running with the next trend, it can often be hard to find legitimate source for the news.

It’s interesting to get the overview, but to really be a competitor both to dig and Google Trends, Thoora needs more stats and trends. For instance, this neat little activity graph doesn’t have any numbers or days or much of anything stat wise. Demographically speaking, I want to see who is interested, where they are and when they are active. I want to see a breakout story button so I can see the new big news or growing news immediately.

It’s not the be-all-end-all of news trends yet, but it could be interesting to use as a measure of people’s interests and could keep the news reader from wasting time on Google Trends, Digg and Twitter all day.

Thoora is still in beta, so perhaps there is more to come from what could be a really interesting news site alternative for social media junkies.

EQUTE — A new survey shows that 54 percent of employers completely prohibit the use of social networking sites completely.

CIOs were asked in the survey: Which of the following most closely describes your company’s policy on visiting social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, while at work?” Here is how they responded:

“Using social networking sites may divert employees’ attention away from more pressing priorities, so it’s understandable that some companies limit access,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology. “For some professions, however, these sites can be leveraged as effective business tools, which may be why about one in five companies allows their use for work-related purposes.”

So what does this mean for marketers? If you’re targeting a big company with your Facebook ads, make sure employees can see them. Perhaps turn them off until after the work day ends to get the most efficient use of your money.

An now some information on the study from Robert Half Technology:

The national survey was developed by Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of IT professionals on a project and full-time basis, and conducted by an independent research firm. The survey is based on more than 1,400 telephone interviews with CIOs from a random sample of U.S. companies with 100 or more employees. In order for the survey to be statistically representative, the sample was stratified by geographic region, industry and number of employees. The results were then weighted to reflect the proper proportions of the number of employees within each region. The margin of error for this study is +/- 2.6 percent at the 95 percent level of confidence.

EQUTE — Alright, it might be a bit of an overstatement, but a survey of Twitter users’ shows that they love to tweet from restaurants, movie theaters and the bathroom.

The survey, from Crowd Science, aimed to see how the boom in mobile devices affected social media use. Some of what they found was more than a little disturbing.

A total of 31 percent of respondents said they access Twitter from public places like restaurants — hopefully while their friends are smoking or away from the table. I wonder how many people are having a wonderful conversation with their oblivious friend who is they tweet about mittens.

The survey also showed that 8 percent of Twitter users tweet form performances like movies and the theater. I’m sure Hamlet loves to soliloquize to an audience awash in the blue glow from their cell phones.

And the question which will keep me from ever borrowing a phone from a Twitter fiend, 17 percent of them tweet from the bathroom. I wonder if they ever tweet about walking by the sink while staring at Twitter trends.

To add a little danger to the mix, one in 10 Twitterers surveyed said they have checked tweets or shared a tweet while driving. This is fairly disturbing, since research by the Department of Transportation showed that people ignore the road for two seconds while answering a phone and 10 seconds while texting. That’s where their study ends, perhaps they didn’t think anyone would actually head to Twitter in traffic. Sure, they could be safely stopped in a parking lot or stopped in rush hour, but I highly doubt it.

This isn’t to say I don’t like Twitter, I love Twitter, but people should really show some sense. Tweet away during intermission, walking to the car or while you’re waiting for friends — and don’t use it in the bathroom, that’s just gross.