Alessandro Cesarano is a grad student at the University of South Florida (USF) that decided to use Facebook to send out homework assignments instead of Blackboard. Blackboard is an academic content management system powered by databases that is commonly used in small-to-major colleges and universities. “I like the Facebook page?better than Blackboard because students have more access to authentic cultural material, and I don’t have to waste class time teaching them how to use a new program because many of them already use Facebook,” stated Cesarano in an interview with The Oracle.

Cesarano said that this also adds a collaboration, communication, and increased student engagement outside of class advantage. Cesarano also plans to use this social media experiment as his dissertation. However other instructors are resistant to the idea because they see Facebook as being a distraction and there could be privacy issues that arise between students and the instructor. To avoid this, Cesarano encouraged students to create a separate account for academic purposes instead of personal use. [The Oracle]

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Director of Product Management RJ Pittman has left the company to pursue a career at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). Pittman tweeted about his departure but later deleted it. Blow is an e-mail that Pittman sent out about his departure [TechCrunch]:

Offerpal released data that contains survey information about how much social gaming consumers are willing to engage in alternative payments for exchange of virtual currency.  Below are the stats:
-53.3%  percent of consumers are willing engage in alternative payments to earn virtual currency
-29.7% of social gamers do not have the ability or the means to pay for virtual currency with cash options

The study was put together using a study by comScore and Offerpal’s own monetization performance. Some of the alternative payments include filling out surveys, joining groups on Facebook, watching a video, shopping at retailers, or signing up for a subscription to a newsletter.

“The data we’re seeing shows that there is clearly a strong demand within social gaming for alternative ways to pay for virtual currency,” stated Offerpal Media CEO George Garrick in a press release. “When you think of how easy it is to conduct some of these marketing actions like watching a video ad, and the fact that so many people are already doing them online frequently and for no compensation, it makes complete sense that they might as well get rewarded in virtual currency for it. Our goal is to leverage all the most popular alt-pay methods to monetize the maximum number of users at the highest Revenue Per User for our developer partners.”

“Until now, marketers have been limited in their ability to measure the impact of social media on their business, but StrongMail Social Studio changes the game,” stated Ryan Deutsch, VP of emerging media at StrongMail.  “Marketers finally have access to the metrics that they need to evaluate the performance of their social media efforts. Whether they are launching viral referral campaigns or making content sharable, everything can be measured and tracked back to the business’ bottom line. 2010 will be the year of accountability for social media marketing.”

StrongMail’s Social Studio software allows companies to monitor the analytics around social media campaigns.  Social Studio tracks conversions in addition to reach and awareness.  StrongMail is based in Redwood City, California.  You can find them at Facebook.com/StrongMail and Twitter.com/StrongMail.  [StrongMail Blog]

Nikon and Yfrog are teaming up to create a gallery of pictures and videos of the South by Southwest conference.  “In addition to viewing content and posting comments, site visitors and attendees can use yfrog to upload images and videos to the Nikon gallery by using the hashtags “#SXSW” or “#SWSWpics” share content through their own social networks, and follow a real-time Twitter feed on the site,” said Katie Carlson of AtomicPR.

Between Nikon and Yfrog they hired five popular bloggers to post videos with Nikon digital cameras.  These five bloggers include Jeff Pulver, Chris Brogan, Sarah Austin, Marko Slavnic, and Brooklyn Vegan.  The gallery is live at http://www.yfrog.com/Nikon.

Leftos.com has launched over the weekend.  Leftos is a place for users to anonymously discuss issues that are related to male and female interactions.  “Think Yahoo! Answers meets Loveline or Dr. Phil” said Ken Wohl, co-founder of Leftos. Leftos was also co-founded by Zach Lipson, one of the founders of the Future Midwest conference. Leftos is currently in Beta so if you have any feedback, let the team know at Twitter username @Leftos.

Topics include single life, dating, sex, relationships, marriage, and divorce.  Adding topics and replying to the threads are very simple.  Leftos is an acronym that stands for “LEssons For The Opposite Sex.” Maneesh Sethi works as the Lead Developer behind the site.

At the “Bigg Digg Shindigg” event in Austin, Texas at the South by Southwest conference Digg CEO Jay Adelson revealed that the company is launching a new user interface some time in the near future. It is rumored that there will be personalized feeds and the return of the Digg leaderboard in the new UI. There should also be one click URL submissions too. You can sign up to view the alpha version at New.Digg.com.  [Mashable]

YouTube user Nigahiga (Ryan Higa) of Hawaii has hit 2 million YouTube followers.  This is about 10 months after he hit his first 1 million.  Higa’s videos include song parodies, TV show parodies, and a segment called movies in minutes.  In August 2009, Nigahiga replaced Fred as the most subscribed user on YouTube. Below is a video called Word of the Day: Pwned made by Nigahiga.  Its one of the funnier videos that Higa has made.