Here are some words of wisdom from Gary Vaynerchuk on the necessity of keeping your business fast acting and flexible in the age of social media.

Even though 2010 has just begun it’s hard to imagine a PR disaster this year worse than the one Toyota is currently facing. Critics of the auto-maker contend that Toyota should have gotten out in front of the recall and begun fixing the situation before it exploded on an unsuspecting public.

While this is no doubt true, I think it’s more valuable from a public relations standpoint to focus on what they’re doing now. And what they are doing is setting a good example for all companies large and small.

Their first example is an obvious one — don’t allow a crisis of this magnitude to happen in the first place.

But the second and more serious example is showing the importance of a full-throated mea culpa. They screwed up huge and it’s causing hundreds of thousands, even millions of customers worry, hassle, and in some cases serious injury.

Companies who suffer a breach of trust with their customers on such a mass scale simply cannot apologize often enough or in too many venues.

Toyota has kicked off their apology tour with a new commercial recounting the company’s long history of building dependable, quality products and apologizing for letting customers down.

You can look for this to be the first of many ‘apology’ ads soon to be blanketing the globe on radio, television, billboards, and the Internet.

The lesson all companies should take to heart is the importance of owning up to mistakes rather than playing the blame game. Don’t get angry and defensive or lash out at customers and critics.

The very worst thing any company can do in a situation like this is to come off looking arrogant. Instead, admit your mistakes fully and completely and promise to make it right — no matter what it takes.

Consumers understand that mistakes happen sometimes and even if they’re furious right now, your decision to be up front and honest with them will go a long way to winning them back.

Toyota is an amazingly strong brand. They really do have a long history of making quality automobiles. Even if you’ve never owned a Toyota or a Lexus you know their brand is synonymous with quality — and more recently for not taking bailout money (but that’s for another article).

So as disastrous as this recall is for Toyota, and I believe it will get much worse before it gets better, they will ultimately emerge on the other side intact. Their track record is simply too good for a single incident (even as cataclysmic as this) to sour consumers on the brand — at least in the long term.

As a very recent convert to Mac I find this documentary particularly amusing. It’s the passion (however irrational it sometimes is) of Mac users that really pushed me to finally buy one. And I have to admit I really do love my Mac — just not in a funny hat wearing aging hippie way.

Here are my 5 top Firefox extensions. If you haven’t used these you should give them a try:

1. Copy and Go – Copy marked text, paste it and Go to the URL on a new tab immediately.
2. Image Zoom- Adds zoom and rotation functionality for images.
3. Bulk Image Downloader- Download full sized images from almost any thumbnailed web gallery.
4. Read It Later- Read It Later allows you to save pages of interest to read later.
5. FEBE – allows you to quickly and easily backup your Firefox extensions and bookmarks.

What Domino’s Pizza is doing with social media is something all corporations should take notice of.

Here’s my take:

There’s no doubt that iPhone users are the most passionate mobile consumers out there. There is very little left for a human to do at this point that an iPhone app hasn’t been created to do for us.

That passion that iPhone users are famous for is also apparently causing AT&T to have a meltdown. The data traffic created in large cities by iPhone users is so severe that AT&T has stopped selling the iPhone in New York City.

If you attempt to purchase one online and you live in New York — “this package is no longer available in your area.” AT&T claims New York simply doesn’t have enough cell phone towers to handle all the traffic.

It’s pretty sad that AT&T’s infrastructure is in such sad ass shape that it’s on the verge of collapse from iPhone users, but I guess it is.

I say leave the iPhone to the kiddies, and get yourself a Blackberry.

I’ve been in front of a computer since the days of dial-up BBS’s and AOL 1.0. As a result, I can type pretty damn fast…or so I thought.

I covet her powers — 119 wpm with only 3 errors. God like I tell you. At 200 wpm she will probably levitate.

(hat tip Mashable)

A group calling themselves the “Iranian Cyber Army” hijacked and defaced Twitter last night.

Here’s the message they posted on the front page:

Iranian Cyber Army

THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM

U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To….

NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA?
WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST
Take Care.

Twitter says the problem was due to compromised DNS records, which allowed the hackers to redirect people looking for Twitter.com to their own servers.

Twitter is fast becoming an integral part of people’s daily life all around the world. Millions and millions of people use it with millions more joining all the time.

Now that Twitter has moved into shiny new offices in San Francisco, maybe they should get their act together on the security side. Allowing our sworn enemies to brazenly hack their site is in a word — unacceptable.

As for the “Iranian Cyber Army” — they’ve shown they can post cute messages on websites. We’ve shown we can drop really big bombs.

(hat tip Lifehacker)

INQ Mobile recently conducted a study to determine the most influential Twitter users of 2009. They have released the top 20 most influential for the U.K. and internationally. They measured influence across five categories including entertainment, music, politics, sport and technology.

Here are the top 20 international influencers. Click over to INQ to read the U.K. top 20.

1. Pete Cashmore – CEO Mashable
2. P. Diddy – Entertainer
3. Stephen Fry – Entertainer
4. Oprah Winfrey – Entertainer
5. Kim Kardashian – Entertainer
6. Ellen DeGeneres – Entertainer
7. Ryan Seacrest – Entertainer
8. Barack Obama – US President
9. Ashton Kutcher – Entertainer
10. Britney Spears – Singer
11. Shaq – Professional Athlete
12. Mariah Carey – Singer
13. Lance Armstrong – Professional Athlete
14. Biz Stone – Twitter co-founder
15. Arnold Schwarzenegger – Governor of California
16. Al Gore – Politician (global warming evangelist)
17. Tony Hawk – Professional Athlete
18. John Mayer – Singer
19. Veronica Belmont – Tech TV Show Presenter
20. Serena Williams – Professional Athlete