Posts tagged social media
Watch out ; Simon Cowell has a new trick up his sleeve!
Mar 19th
It’s no novelty what a rival to TV networks YouTube has turned into these past few years, but with the aid of media giants from the likes of Simon Cowell and Ridley Scott, Google has definitely established its video site as an adequate alternative to traditional television.
Adore him or detest him, it’s no denying what a hit-maker Simon Cowell actually is. He’s been able to captivate millions of viewers for TV networks, but now he’s deviating his attention to YouTube. Towards the end of this week he’s launching a brand new global talent contest on the viral service entitled “ The You Generation”. The new venture will hold 26 competitions for “potential” YouTube stars over the next year.
Cowell is not the only personage to manipulate his power on the YouTube platform. Just last week Ridley Scott, the English film director and producer best known for his commercial breakthrough with Alien, announced a partnership with top YouTube channel, Machinima, to produce 12 original sci-fi short films. Based on Scott’s previous success, we can easily see this turning into a modern version of “The Twilight Zone” that implements YouTube as its means of distribution.
What’s also noteworthy regarding the YouTube realm is a new web series unveiled by Reddit called “Explain Like I’m Five”. Reflecting the meme’s style, this endeavor covers a range of topics from Syria, Existententialism as well as The Stock Market by literally explaining these topics to 5-year-olds. Reddit’s enormous fan base should easily ensure ponderous view counts for the videos. The harmony between Reddit and YouTube is evident so we’d expect similar projects to b evolving quite soon.
Hurray! It is Social Media Day!
Jul 1st
If you are one of the 56% of social media users that have admitted to using channels to spy on their partners, then you can rejoice; you have a special day to celebrate today since it is Social Media Day!
Mashable launched Social Media Day 3 years ago, in 2010 and both the event and social media use have grown tremendously in that time. The event has been declared official by 17 cities worldwide and three U.S. states.
Social media has bombarded our lives; from tweeting about the latest in politics, to rekindling old friendships on Facebook all the way to documenting our lunch on Instagram.
Yet Social media has served a far more influential purpose throughout the course of the past few years; from the behemothic effect Twitter and Facebook have had on the upheaval of the Arab Spring, to more local news when social media has proven to be vital in notifying the public of important information when the catastrophic wildfire hit Colorado just a few days ago. On Twitter, the hashtag #WaldoCanyonFire was a trending topic for several days. Using this hashtag, citizens along with Colorado Springs authorities and the media have been relaying pivotal, life-saving information. Colorado Springs was also a trending topic.
Yet, social media does not stop at Facebook and Twitter; Pinterest is currently the 3rd most visited website in the U.S with 60% of the users being females that is, and it seems everyone wants a bit from the social media apple; with So.cl, G+and Quora of course.
According to a website called The Social Skinny; half of the people that are active online, check into their preferred site first thing in the morning; ahh those annoying Foursquare check-ins, you know what we’re talking about!
Well, moving on to the world of Fashion, as Heidi Klum always says: “one day you’re in and the next you are out.” How have fashion designers and fashionistas reinvented the social media realm you might ask? Well, Oscar de la Renta was up to date sharing his runway show live on Tumblr as it was happening as well as pinning his bridal show, as well as many other brands that have aptly used crowdsourcing for the purposes of generating hype on social media in addition to sparking an emotional connection with their customers and curation to leverage influencers’ networks and create shopping experiences that merge editorial content with retail.
Remember, if all those social accounts get too over-whelming, you always have HootSuite and TweetDeck to come to your rescue and help you sort it out.
On a final note, we’d like to leave you with one fun fact on each of our favorite Social website:
1. Facebook: More than 350 million users suffer from Facebook Addiction Syndrome.
2. Twitter: Twitter handles more search queries per month than Bing and Yahoo combined (24 billion versus 4.1 billion and 9.4 billion respectively).
3. LinkedIn: LinkedIn has 161 million members in more than 200 countries and communities.
4. YouTube: YouTube was founded to share dinner clips of a party due to the files being too large for email.
5. Pinterest: Pinterest drives more referral traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined.
6. Instagram: President Obama is on Instagram, having joined in January 2012.
7. Google +: “Student” is the number one occupation of Google+ users.
8. The mobile Web: China is the No. 1 country in the world for Smartphone use, with approximately 1 billion users.
9. Blogging: 3 million new blogs come online every month.
10. Klout: Justin Bieber is the only person with a perfect Klout score of 100 (says it all, then).
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Keep it relevant, or it won’t be published!
May 6th
It seems Facebook has been swooping the headlines lately by storm for a number of different reasons; this weekend has been no exception.
Apparently on Saturday morning there was a bit of a stir going on in Blog land. Max Woolf a Carnegie Mellon student and avid TechCrunch commenter had posted about our contemporary blog scene. His comment apparently scored high points with the well-known tech startup enthusiast, Robert Scoble as he set out to state his agreement with Woolf’s convictions yet of course adding a few of his own as well.
Surprisingly, his comment did not get through, as this message appeared:
While this “censorship” has received a lot of mixed reviews, Facebook remains firm on its policies against abusive or harassing behavior, since they are eager to create an environment of safe and righteous content.
The issue of a comment being “positive” or “negative” could be quite debatable; Facebook is not only restricted to one country or continent, therefore cross-cultural misunderstanding are not out of the question. In an attempt to solve this issue though, the company resorts to a combination of software algorithms and notifications from other users to identify inappropriate behavior.
Facebook have already contacted Scoble, signifying that his comment had been marked as “Spam” due to two main reasons : first being that he and Max are not friends; Scoble is only subscribed to Max, making his comments subject to more strict scrutiny. The second reasons is due to the fact that Scoble’s comment included three “@” links, making it look even more suspicious.
Our personal views are that Facebook is a private company in the end, and it’s completely up to them to dictate the way they run their business. This is the core difference between Government censorship and Private Company censorship, if we might call it as such. If we are to compare the two; with the latter, you have the luxury of simply not using their service and moving on to another that permits more freedom or is more in agreement with your needs. However, when it comes to the former, the choice is substantial (life, death, imprisonment, war).
Hence, Facebook is a luxury and not a right. A lot of people enjoy using it and yet they seem to forget one essential actuality; they willingly signed up, on their terms, to use their free service. So, if Facebook decided they could be served ads and be a market for games and other products in return to let you have access to their site, it’s completely their choice.
It seems Facebook are trying to do a new thing every single day, and while people may not welcome these changes with arms wide open, they are forced to yield eventually. Our only hopes remain that these new policies do actually contribute to removing actual spam and not “false positives”.
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Foursquare Unveiled!
Apr 2nd
Just when you thought location-based apps were getting outdated, the techies come and launch Foursquare. Well, it’s not exactly a new app or anything ; it has been around ever since 2009 when Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai launched it, but with its new updates and facebook integration, it has received much deserved exposure.
You might be asking yourself, what does it actually do? Well, to simplify things, it’s a location-based social networking website for smartphone. Users “check-in” by selecting from a list of venues that the application locates nearby. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes “badges”. Location is based on GPS hardware in the mobile device or network location provided by the application.
News and updates:
1. Foursquare integration with Facebook: Users who connect their Foursquare accounts to their Facebook accounts will see a new Foursquare Timeline module that displays recent checkin activity as well as total checkins and top places for the month.
2. Foursquare today rolled out the ability for users to add short personal “bios” to their profile pages on the site. These bios are limited to 160 characters or less, and can be imported directly from a user’s Twitter account or written from scratch.
3. Itunes preview of foursquare app.
4. The top 10 hilarious badges out there: We’ve gathered the best 10 badges that cracked us up, check them out here.
Ways to use Foursquare:
1. Spark up your spring break! Find some lists in the city you’re traveling to for the best places to eat, catch some rays, and party – you’ll have a city guide in your pocket when you arrive, how cool is that!
2. Use it for your university or college : register your University if it hasn’t been already registered, and then check in, hey maybe you’ll be the Mayor!
3. Check out the best places that offer specials; check-in as often as you can and benefit from the specials they offer!
4. Even journalists and reporters can benefit from this amazing app; when you know where people are gathering from protests/breaking news events that draw bystanders to a trendy new restaurant, you will be able to gauge a possibility for a new story cover.
5. Get your Foursquare Photos Automatically Transferred to flicker using Flicksquare.
6. One of Foursquare’s greatest features is the ability to leave tips on a venue. People leave tips about their favorite dishes, things to do, how to get a discount and even where to find clean bathrooms. You’ll find tips like “the Gyro Pizza is the best you’ll ever eat” or “avoid the hot and spicy burrito — it’s neither hot nor spicy.”
7. Coupon lovers; great news for you!! Recently, Walgreens teamed up with Foursquare to roll out a mobile coupon program that lets consumers save money on products when they check-in to any location nationwide, making them the first retailer to offer point-of-sale scannable coupons through this popular tool. We hope more retailers will follow!
8. Foursquare to benefit your business: here’s a very useful video that we’ve found for those of you wit ha new start up business.
9. Great Apps that will elevate your Foursquare practice : Where Do You Go, Foursquare Lists, FourGraph, Agora, Foursquare 7 Years Ago.
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Are you a pinner or a redditor?
Mar 29th
We’ve decided to tackle two of the emerging social and sharing platforms that are as opposite as Barbie is to Matchbox cars; Pinterest vs Reddit. Well, the former is a platform that you can join by either receiving an invite from your friends that are already using it or requesting an invite, while the latter can be joined by simply registering.
To be absolutely truthful, Pinterest is indeed designed in a way that makes it more appealing to women; having visual boards and pins you can like & repin makes it quite easy to use; it’s not rocket science and its display is easy on the eye.
I’ve joined both platforms at almost the same time, yet Pinterest has proven to draw me more; maybe because reddit is too basic and reminds me of the 90s, don’t get me wrong, its authenticity is undoubtable, for you can definitely benefit from the diverse sections they call “subreddits”, but it seems to have a crowd of its own that is made up mostly of young liberal students.It’s definitely underrated for its vast data base.
However, it seems that Pinterest is becoming a Mekkah for spammers and affiliates who can easily benefit from its lack of restrictions; posting pins with links to Amazon and other websites and getting high commissions when they are repinned or clicked. Some argue that this is not spamming ; one does not open something unwillingly, yet others say that this is misleading and invasive.
I believe its a bit of both, you ought not make profit simply from the ignorance of people. Sadly we live in a world where knowledge is power, so make sure you educate yourself and choose whichever platform answers your needs.
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