by Vera H-C Chan Weak warbling has made the male competitors look like the weak sisters in this season's "American Idol." But in the anchor spot, Big Mike belted out a ballad that brought judge DioGuardi to tears and vaulted him as the man to beat. Check out how the boys' Buzz ranked on performance night. Top 8 Male "American Idol" Contestants on Yahoo!, Wednesday night performance   Michael Lynche .

Ill be in Austin on Friday for the South By Southwest Interactive conference. Its my first time at the conference but Microsoft has a great presence at SXSW again this year. Microsofts own danah boyd , an expert in social networking research, will be the opening keynote speaker on Saturday. Chris Pendleton of Bing Maps will present a panel on Augmenting Maps with Reality on Sunday . Bing Maps has a lot of great new features and youll want to see how these are being used.

Users of the mobile version of Google Product Search can now see if items are in stock at a local store from select retailers. These retailers include: Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm. Product listings from these retailers will have blue dots that can be tapped to see an "in stock nearby" link, which takes you to a seller's page where it will either say "in stock" or "limited availability". In addition,

We're introducing a new series today called "Faces of Facebook," which features excerpts from interviews with our employees that originally appeared on our internal blog. Their words offer a glimpse of life inside of Facebook and the work they do around the world. Adam Conner was the first member of our Washington, D.C., office when he joined Facebook in November 2007. He works on the public policy team as one of Facebook's official D.C. lobbyists.

I am very happy to announce the countdown to Search & Social Spring Summit 2010, the official search marketing and social media conference of Search Engine Journal! Search & Social Spring Summit 2010 is the second annual conference from Search & Social, the team behind Search Engine Journal, DailySEOTip, IMBroadcast and various other search marketing projects.

Find out what's in stock nearby. Click to read the rest of this post.

The Community Participation Pyramid courtesy of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox In this week's Twitter column I want to debunk a myth that gets spread by the likes of CNN Money and Mashable . Roughly it states that Twitter becomes more of an RSS reader than a real social networking venue due to "only" 27% of Twitter users being active. The number is correct but the conclusion is wrong.

Gowalla is a service that has been getting a lot of buzz lately. If you're not familiar with it, it's a location-based social networksing service that comes in the form of mobile apps. Gowalla announced today, the availability of Gowalla 2.0 for the iPhone 3G and 3GS platforms. Gowalla highlights the following new features with this version: - Design Gowalla developers have created a fresh new experience that is more flexible, readable and usable. - Photos Gowalla 2.

Easily enable stalking by anyone your network. Just kidding. (Sort of) Click to read the rest of this post.

by Claudine Zap Our top picks from the day's hottest searches. Marion Jones (Searches increased by +9,079%). The former track star, stripped of her Olympic medals for steroid use, has a new career with the WNBA. Tasmanian Devil (+2,527%). A colony of the species that is immune to a contagious cancer could save the population . Botox (+2,476%). Really, we get the treatment for medical purposes . " Twilight Saga: Eclipse" (+1,958%). The movie isn't out till June,