Articles about Social Media

Twitter has blocked Politwoops from using its API, effectively killing the service that archived and published tweets deleted by politicians. Politwoops has a number of international sites, each concerned with the politicians of different countries and it monitored the account of prominent politicians for deleted tweets before publishing them for all to see.

The US version of the service was denied API access earlier in the year, but over the weekend Twitter extended the ban to a further 30 Politwoops accounts. The tweets deleted by those in politics are often far more telling and revealing than those that remain in place, and this was the reason for Politwoops existence. Not for the first time, Twitter has entered the political arena, indicating that it views the deletion decisions of elected politicians as more important than the right of the electorate to see tweets that have been self-censored.

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Twitter has inadvertently given a wealth of priceless advertising to a Welsh car company despite refusing to run its ads. Used car dealership Ceir Cymru has been operating in North Wales for over 30 years, but has been told that it is not able to advertise in its native tongue.

Twitter Ads supports just a limited number of language, and Welsh is not included. Having applied to use the service Ceir Cymru was told by Twitter that it would not be able to advertise as more than half of its tweets are in Welsh -- hardly surprising for a car dealership in Wales. Ceir Cymru says Twitter is "stamping on minority languages".

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It's a little while since Google and Twitter announced a partnership that saw the integration of tweets into search results. When this feature started to roll out back in May, Twitter integration only applied to iOS and Android devices. Today it rolls out to desktop search results as well.

The new desktop integration means that it is now possible to search for hashtags, trending topics, and Twitter accounts with a regular Google search. Including real time events in search results is not new for Google, but Twitter integration adds a new dimension.

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As promised back in June, the character limit for Direct Messages on Twitter is being increased. The 140 character barrier is being dropped so messages sent between Twitter users can be much, much longer than before.

The character limit for regular tweets remains the same -- and tweets via SMS are still subject to the same restrictions -- but private conversations can now be much more verbose. The increase will affect Twitter.com, iOS and Android mobile apps, TweetDeck, and Twitter for Mac.

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If you've added your mobile number to your Facebook account, you might want to reconsider in light of a new security exploit. A software engineer was able to access user data just by entering their mobile number. Profile pictures, names and locations were all accessible even for users who had not made their number public.

There is potential for such harvested data to be misused by malicious parties, as it provides an easy way to link a mobile number to an individual. Reza Moaiandin was able to use a special tool to quickly generate tens of thousands of numbers which, when passed through a Facebook API, fed back the associated user profiles.

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Facebook has become much more than just a social network for connecting with friends and family, evolving into a way to get in touch with companies and even celebrities. Today the site announces that celebrities are now able to share live video from the Facebook Mentions app directly to fans.

Regular Facebook users need do nothing more than follow the celebrities they are interested in, and any live video that is broadcasting by someone they follow will appear in their news feed. While comparable to the likes of Periscope and Meekat, Facebook Live is not a direct competitor as it is only available to those with verified accounts -- but it also has features that neither of these services offer.

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Yesterday we reported about the arrival of the Windows-powered update to Xbox One consoles in November. In the excitement we completely forgot about Microsoft's older console. Well, that's not strictly true -- we did mention that Xbox One is gaining backwards compatibility with many 360 games, but the humble Xbox 360 has a significant update of its own.

Currently available to those signed up to the preview program, the latest update brings a decidedly social element to the Xbox 360. The new Activity Feed displays gaming activity, message and more not only from Xbox 360, but also Xbox One and Windows 10. This is something that gamers have been hoping for for some time, and Microsoft has demonstrated that it has not completely forgotten about the ageing Xbox 360.

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If you can't make it to Lollapalooza this year, there's no need to be jealous of your friends who are attending. At the music festival, Facebook has started testing a new feature that allows people to live stream events on the social network, taking on the likes of Snapchat head-on.

Music festivals are far from cheap -- a full weekend pass costs $275 and that's before you factor in travel, food, and so on -- so the prospect of a social powered livestream will appeal to many... particularly those to whom the idea of camping is abhorrent. Facebook's Place Tips feature can be used by those in attendance -- including performers -- to post videos, photos and updates that can be enjoyed by those who chose to stay at home.

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What do you do if a story appears in your Facebook that you're not interested in? You might just ignore it, or you might try to train Facebook about your preferences by selecting the 'hide' option.

But if you're the sort of person who hides a lot of stories, Facebook might start placing less importance on your dislikes. This might sound counter-intuitive, but Facebook is convinced that it makes sense, saying that for some people opting to hide a story "isn't as strong a negative signal". So who are these people?

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Approximately half of the world’s online population accesses Facebook on a monthly basis, the social media giant has reported.

By the end of Q2 2015, 1.49 billion people accessed the website at least once in a month, up 13 percent from the same period last year and representing half of the estimated global online population of 3 billion, Facebook said.

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A couple of months ago Facebook started to talk about a new security tool. It was initially only made available to a select group of users, but today it rolls out to all.

The aptly-named Security Checkup gives Facebook users the opportunity to double check the privacy and security settings they have in place, helping to ensure that private information is not shared with too large an audience. It can also be used to monitor logins and check for suspicious account activity, acting as a handy centralized hub for everything security-related.

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Customer identity management firm Gigya has released its Q2 "landscape of customer identity" figures, showing how consumers are using third party identity providers such as Facebook and Google+ to log into other websites.

Facebook continued its dominance, now controlling two-thirds of all social logins, followed by Google+ (20 percent), Twitter (six percent) and Yahoo (four percent).

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Workforce diversity is something that has been brought into sharp focus in recent months as companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook reveal the make-up of their staff. White, middleclass, male employees dominate the world of technology, and this is certainly the case at Facebook -- even if a redesigned icon was an attempt to bring women to the fore.

Now the social network is embarking on something of a PR campaign, desperate to prove that it is doing everything it can to develop as diverse a workplace as possible. Today Facebook publishes sections of its employee training program that aims to eradicate the 'unconscious bias' that leads to -- in Facebook's words -- 'black sounding names' getting fewer callbacks than 'white sounding names'.

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Facebook comes in for a lot of criticism, but one thing that managed to rub a lot of people up the wrong way is its real names policy. For some time the social network has required its users to reveal their real name rather than allowing for the adoption of pseudonyms. This has upset many, including musicians and the drag community.

Now a German watchdog has told Facebook that its ban on fake names is not permitted. The Hamburg Data Protection Authority said that the social network could not force users to replace pseudonyms with real names, nor could it ask to see official identification.

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Since the beginning, Google+ has been seen as a mess. It has been dismissed as the social network for people who don’t actually like to be very social, and Google is only too aware that it needs to step up its game. You may well have wondered if the company knew what it was doing… today Google shares details of what it has planned.

Several months ago, Google announced that it was going to split up Google+ into a number of separate projects -- Hangouts, Photos, and Streams. We've already seen the arrival of Google Photos to replace Google+ Photos (you keeping up?) and now, as well as admitting that it made mistakes, Google gives a taste of what’s to come in the months ahead.

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