This week: Facebook has a Hire calling; Autumnwatch conkers social media; Hour chance to get others online; Spooky Buzz; Twitter DM-strates its social voting with XFactor USA; Who guards the Guardian? Google what's good to know; Lick the lollipop of doom; Careless tweets cost jobs; Anti-Social Media Disorder...

 Recent BBC social media news and launches.

BBC Three's Up For Hire campaign has continued to tackle the UK's youth unemployment epidemic. Radio One featured multiple segments and discussions across the week of TX, while on BBC Three, Up For Hire Live engaged audiences online in conjunction with their television debates. The show integrated, responded to and tailored its content according to the online community's feedback and discussion topics. BBC Three's Blog also played major host to a slew of informative blog posts sharing experiences and advice for young people looking to break through into the jobs market.

Meanwhile the Up For Hire Facebook page has provided a valuable platform for users to connect with, interrogate (and occasionally terrorise) major brands joining the page to offer recruitment advice and support. Perhaps the most telling stat is that of the 4,700 fans the page has attracted in three short weeks, Facebook reported (last week) 4,422 people 'talking about' the page which is an astounding percentage of user interest and engagement (most pages would kill for 10%)

Not enough for you? Then try the Lab UK Get Yourself Hired Test that's been running alongside the events. Tens of thousands of people have taken the test to determine their strengths and weaknesses in jobseeking so far, doubtless more will come through in the coming weeks.

 Autumnwatch is back and blogging, tweeting, Facebooking and hosting the finest damned Flickr group in the northern hemisphere. Despite the turning leaves, Autumnwatch's social offers remain evergreen and fresh, engaging with a variety of demographics across the various platforms, sharing stories, queries and pictures about UK wildlife, rural and urban. There's even video montages emerging from the Flickr group.

The Give An Hour campaign is an excellent idea to raise awareness and encourage people to help fill the 'digital divide'. With the clocks going back in the UK on Sunday 30 October, we all gain an hour - so the campaign asks people to use that hour to enable a friend or a relative with no internet experience to get online and learn how to use this incredible resource. A host of celebrities are on board pushing the message that a spare hour's tutorial could really empower and change someone's life for the better. So please spread the word with the hashtag #giveanhour and share the link with your friends. (Just don't get your granny hooked on Farmville...!)

 Buzz of the Week

Spooks' final series inspired many a tweet, update and blog post over the past weeks of its run. Spooks drew out an interesting thought on the show's implicit pathos from Notepad on Life: Spooks let slip what James Bond never will - 'Even if the shoot-outs and car chases are little thinner on the ground when you work for the real MI5, I can easily imagine some people on its payroll being genuinely damaged emotionally by a career that has a one-word mission statement. Suspicion.' More about Buzz.

Social Media Elsewhere

X-Factor USA has done a deal with Twitter to enable viewers to vote via direct messages (DMs). This will require a fundamental change in Twitter's functionality, as currently users can only send a DM (a private tweet) to someone if the recipient is following the sender. But this is all part of Twitter's continued courting of TV and vice-versa... And both platforms are adapting to find mutual benefits.

Madness? A shiny new toy played with a niche but increasingly super-served audience? Maybe, though BBC News highlights the results of the YouGov report commissioned by social media agency Diffusion: 'it suggested 43% of British adults commented on or discussed TV shows they were watching using Twitter, Facebook, other websites and mobile phones.'

The Guardian took a bold step into online news  transparency and collaboration (with a hint of Virtual Revolution's legacy in there) with their Experiment in opening up the Guardian's news coverage. You have to see it to understand it fully, but the essence is simple - the Guardian posted up several live Google Docs in their blog containing details of the stories their teams were working on (obviously some embargoed stories / breaking news were excluded) and users were able to add their thoughts on the stories: opinion, links, information etc. to help inform the journalists working on those stories. Users could also tweet journalists directly and submit info privately if required. Mashable has an article with more details and comments by Dan Roberts, national news editor at The Guardian.

Google have partnered up with Citizens Advice Bureau to create Good To Know - a guide to internet safety - full of information around password security, not following strange URLs etc. If you're considering using your extra hour to help someone get online the Good To Know site is an excellent bookmark to leave on their browser:

All of which comes at the same time as the somewhat horrifying website Take This Lollipop. The app uses your Facebook information (friends, updates, pictures) to scare the living bejeezus out of you, with the aim to highlight the amount of data you may be sharing online with... anyone. Of course this is all rather disingenuous, as the app requires you to give it permission to use the data regardless of your actual Facebook privacy settings. But if in doubt - sign out of Facebook and search for yourself - you will then be able to see what anyone could see if they weren't your friend, but a sweaty, cellar-dwelling psychotic in a vest...

Infographic of the week:

Appropriately posted around the time of Up For Hire - How recruiters use social networks to screen candidates is an eye-opening view of the impact a person's social media footprint can affect their application, eg 69% of employers surveyed have rejected candidates on the basis of what they saw on the individual's social networking site.

And Finally...

"Ever have one of those days when you just don't feel like Tweeting...?" You probably have Anti Social Media Disorder...

Please note: this is my personal blog. This post is in no way an official communication from the BBC. I write a fortnightly update for BBC Vision staff interested in social media on and off bbc.co.uk. The items covered are on and about the social web; I post the notes here for anyone interested in the hope that they may spark further ideas or knowledge-sharing. Listen to my Off The Wall Post podcasts here.