Sometimes it's difficult to catch every story that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.

Community Manager Appreciation Day 2012

Every 4th Monday in January is Community Manager Appreciation Day. In commemoration of the yearly event started by Jeremiah Owyang in 2010, I listed a few of my favorite characteristics of a Community Manager. Among them a love for analytics, a tendency to smile when they type and a strong desire to do what is right, even if it's not what is popular.

From our readers:

trishnet -- "I couldn't agree more that we all define the community manager role differently. It is one of the reasons it's so hard to hire for the role. Any perspective on questions to ask a community manager to help identify a great one when hiring?

Robyn Tippins -- "Real world scenarios. Go through real events that have happened to your company and ask how they would have responded. Feel them out to see if they think they are 'above' customer support. Do they have common sense?

The training and tools can be learned, but you can't teach someone empathy, compassion, patience, the desire to do the right thing at all costs, etc. Also, make sure they have a healthy ego (not too big, not too small). They'll need that to survive!"

More Must Read Stories:

Priceline's Shatner "Negotiator" Makes His Last Deal Today

Perhaps not since "The Sweet Hereafter" has there ever been a more pivotal bus crash shown on TV or in the movies. Today Priceline begins a new ad campaign that shows the death of its William Shatner "Negotiator" character. For those of you that haven't seen "The Sweet Hereafter," a movie based on a Russell Banks story, it is worth renting just for Ian Holm's wonderful performance. But back to Priceline and Shatner. (more)

PaaS Makes Progress in 2011

While Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) has always had its cheerleaders - yours truly included - the harsh reality is that, commercially speaking, PaaS offerings have underperformed relative to expectations for several years running. This is particularly the case among enterprises, which have, by and large, turned a blind eye to the technology. (more)

Will Windows Phone Really Overtake iOS by 2015? (Poll)

These days, the smartphone wars are typically viewed as a competition between the platforms of two companies: Apple and Google. Despite its years-long dominance of the desktop, Windows has hardly been a blip on the smartphone marketshare radar, where it clocks in at just under 2% of the market. (more)

SoundCloud Hits 10 Million Users, Launches Instagram Storytelling Mashup

Not even two years after reaching 1 million users, social audio service SoundCloud announced today that it has surpassed the 10 million user mark. The Berlin-based company has risen to become a major force in audio content creation and sharing on the Web, becoming a sort of "YouTube for audio" used by musicians, journalists and pretty much anybody with a need to record and share their own audio files. (more)

MegaFallout: Shutdown of MegaUpload Spooks Other Services

The fallout from last week's FBI raid and shutdown of MegaUpload isn't limited to founder Kim Dotcom and his associates. As intriguing as that story will be to follow, some of the more immediate side effects are being felt among other file-hosting services. (more)

Facebook Photo Editing App Offers Instagram-Like Appeal

This weekend Google announced that it was shutting down Picnik, its handy dandy free photo editing software. I've used it on a number of occasions for fast, easy jobs that didn't require anything more than simple resizing. But let's be honest: How many of those types of quick photo editing jobs are just for Facebook photos? Aviary, a photo editor for Web and mobile apps, saw this opportunity and jumped on it, launching a photo editor app today for Facebook. (more)

Can Microsoft Rally Developer Enthusiasm For Windows Phone?

The great thing about being a Wall Street analyst is few people ever go back to check and see if the bold predictions you made months or even years ahead of time actually come true.

Still, a report released by IHS in the wake of Microsoft's earnings announcement last week is worth a closer look. (more)

Failure Is An Option

Failure is a word that, understandably, carries a negative connotation. Nobody wants to fail, really. But failure, if you're doing anything worthwhile, is inevitable. What's important is to plan for failure, learn from it, try to avoid damage and do your best to recover gracefully. That was the topic of Selena Deckelmann's keynote, "Mistakes Were Made," Sunday morning at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE). (more)

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Community Managers are, on the whole, good people. They are slow to anger, and quick to give second (and tenth) chances. They cheer-lead awesome folks and great ideas, while quietly, but firmly, discouraging bad behavior. They're passionate about their product, protective of their site and fervently supportive of their community. And, despite working long and varied hours, they still will tell you that they have the coolest job in the world. Keep reading to hear my decidedly biased view of community managers, colored by my almost 16 years of managing communities.

What defines a community manager is up in the air, with some calling a purely social media role a community position and other balking if forums, blogs or some other more distinctly siloed community is not a part of the job description. I tend to fall somewhere in the middle in my own definition, drawing the line on a case by case basis, rather than pushing all folks who report to marketing out of our happy little group.

By my definition, the role is a healthy mix of support and marketing. It's letting folks know what is going on in your community while also listening to understand what they want from your community as well. Some community managers may be 90% support, but they'll also do some messaging that promotes their brand's message or upcoming sales/events. Others will spend most of their day promoting, but will also arrange meetups, host a Google Hangout, attend a Twitter chat and write a few blog posts spotlighting interesting community generated content.

Characteristics of a Community Manager

• A well rounded community manager makes everyone feel welcome.
• He doesn't judge a user based on his ability to communicate (or to type).
• She always gives warnings and second chances, because her goal is a happy community, not vengeance.
• He may not be an extrovert in real life, but online he's the life of the party, bringing a great deal of charisma, wit and wisdom to every encounter.
• May start her career as an unpaid volunteer. Often brags that it's the best ROI of any career decision she's ever made.
• She knows every meme and can work that knowledge into most conversations.
• Doesn't mind long hours, because he knows that the work he is doing makes a difference in the lives of so many people across the world.
• Smiles in real life every time she types a smiley emoticon.
• Often is "discovered" based on his passionate voice within an exiting community.
• Innately understands marketing, customer support, product strategy and user experience.
• Enjoys learning new things, from honing a new skill to becoming fluent in a new language.
• Devours analytics because it's the best way to truly understand his community.
• Knows that first and foremost, she's the user's advocate, because in any meeting, everyone else is the company's advocate.
• Defends his company fiercely, but is not afraid to admit when a mistake has been made.
• Fights tooth and nail for the right outcome in a situation, even when it's not the easiest or most popular solution.
• Enjoys the spotlight externally, but tends to be quietly efficient internally.
• He doesn't toot his own horn, but it often gets tooted for him.
• Is fascinated by how people think. He reads psychology texts and stats reports for fun.
• Truly enjoys helping others.
• Is empathetic to a fault.

Community Management is the hardest job you'll ever love. If you're at all interested in a career in community or social media, all you have to do is look up someone in a similar role and they'll almost always go out of their way to help you join their ranks. Over the years I've mentored dozens of budding community managers, and I have enjoyed every minute of it. Most of my community manager friends have done the same.

The project is called Disqus Ranks, and it should be rolling out shortly. Disqus did not return a request for information about the timing of the rollout.

Community managers who don't have their own custom-made evaluation systems will love this, because it provides them an easy-to-use social ranking system in plug-n-play format. Once the beta is released, it will show up in the interface as another feature in the menu list.

The site owner or manager can use a preferences list to calibrate from "most important" to "least important" the weight that each of a certain type of interaction has on the network or the blog.

Then, he can create custom titles for each of those qualifications and assign them to users. At Fred Wilson's blog, AVC, for example, Wilson is going with a bar theme and assigning himself the title of bartender. He assigns different types of users other titles, like regular, or semi-regular, depending on how often they visit the site and how often they leave a comment.

The new features would be an improvement over straight-up commenting, especially since social search and discovery seems to be a huge trend developing Web communities. It's no longer enough for a site manager or a publisher to make commenting available to build the community. The new move seems to be towards being able to identify experts within the blog or the network.

Screenshot comes from Fred Wilson's AVC blog

ReadWriteWeb is privileged to have an engaged community of decision makers and thought-leaders. The community manager's job is to engage with our community, to provide support and help develop it. Read on for more details...

We are looking for someone who is an active user of social media tools (Facebook, Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon to name just some of the ones important to our site). We're also looking for someone with experience managing online communities, strong writing skills and an analytical mind set. This may suit someone with an online marketing or PR background. But we're open-minded about that, as we're mostly interested in your current use of social media.

This job is a great opportunity to work at the cutting edge of social media. So if you'd like to be a part of one of the leading technology blogs on the Internet, email richard AT readwriteweb.com with the words "Community Manager" in your subject line. If you know someone who may be a good fit for this position, please send them our way.

Click here to read Sam's take on the news.