Articles about Social Media

It's not all that long ago that the idea of posting news, thoughts and ideas on a social network (or "micro-blogging service" as it is infuriatingly referred to) that imposed a limit of 140 characters on posts seemed absurd. Now Twitter is so commonplace that any company, or even TV show, worth its salt has its own account. The word hashtag entered the technical lexicon a little while ago, but such is Twitter's dominance that it is now spoken aloud: hashtag yousoundstupid.

2013 has been a big year for Twitter, perhaps most notably due to it starting to trade on the NYSE. But there have also be great strides made in how Twitter is used. Of course it is still home to vainglorious, the trolls and celebrities, but 2013 is also the year in which Twitter proved itself to be genuinely useful.

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Headlines about government surveillance of web usage all over the world have been difficult to avoid this past year. Since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on activities by the NSA, both companies and web users have been asking for greater transparency in data collection and there have been endless calls for dragnet data collection to be stopped completely. It is often the case that when confronted with a common enemy, some unlikely alliances are forged. This is certainly true with the NSA, and now Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Twitter and AOL are all coming together to present a united front and push for legal reform.

The collective has written an open letter to President Obama and congress, warning that "the balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual". There has been quite a backlash against the number of requests for data that the US government has made of companies, and the letter makes it clear that the eight companies that have joined forces are not happy:

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Miami-based startup Textter has developed a new service aiming to revolutionize the way people send and receive text messages.

We spoke to company founder Carlos Cueto in an exclusive interview ahead of next week's official launch to find out more about the product and what it has to offer.

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One of the most useful things about the internet is its ability to bring people together to trade and exchange. Think eBay, Play and Amazon Marketplace. But all of these are aimed at people with physical products to sell. London-based Hirejungle has come up with a platform that lets businesses and individuals hire out their goods or services.

Peer-to-peer rental, or the sharing economy, is big business according to The Economist. Whether you want to hire a car, rent a room for the night or find someone to carry out a home improvement job, technology makes it much easier to find what you need.

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Facebook was never really meant to be about news. It is a social network that's about keeping in touch with people. But companies quickly cottoned onto the site as a valuable tool for reaching out to customers, delivering information about product launches, app updates and other news. Despite the fact that Facebook users are invited to update their "status", anything that is posted appears in the "News Feed" of others. Now Facebook is trying to make your News Feed more about news.

There have been endless complaints about the order in which posts are displayed in the News Feed, and the presence of ads, but this latest update has been brought in to help further separate the wheat from the chaff. Having conducted a survey, Facebook has come to the conclusion that its users are more interested in seeing high quality content than countless images of cats and bastardized Keep Calm posters.

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Apple is a company that, generally speaking, likes to keep itself to itself -- but that's not to say it doesn't like to keep its finger on the pulse and learn about what others are talking about. This is demonstrated perfectly by the company's latest purchase. This time around Apple has invested a reported $200 million in Topsy Labs, a social media analytics firm that specializes in monitoring trends on Twitter.

Topsy has access to every single tweet sent since Twitter inception back in 2006, making it the most extensive database of the micro-blogging service. The information available through Topsy is the sort of data that would prove immensely useful to advertisers, but at this stage it is not clear just how Apple intends to use the information. Topsy Labs' tool can be used to monitor trends on Twitter, check the topics that are being discussed, as well as determining the success and impact of online campaigns.

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More than half of Black Friday sales were conducted online this Thanksgiving according to figures collected by Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). A 10 percentage point increase means that a massive 55 percent of people who shopped for technology products on Black Friday did so online, and both online and offline, consumer electronic devices accounted for more than a third of sales. Shopping started as early as Thanksgiving Day itself with more than 39 million shoppers hitting the stores. But how many of these purchases represent good value for money?

Some 35 percent of all sales this weekend were taken up by tech devices. Of this number, tablets accounted for 29 percent of purchases, which is hardly surprising when you take into account that the likes of Microsoft are dramatically reducing the price of Surface tablets -- there are a number other outlets that have followed suit with this particular tablet as well as numerous others. In the first two days of the holiday weekend sales, 24 percent of tech sales were taken up by headphones, 21 percent by game hardware, 19 percent by smartphones and 17 percent by laptops.

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***Warning! There are no spoilers ahead!***

Whether you're a fan of Family Guy or not, you can’t help but have heard that there has been a big storyline -- there was no need to seek out the news, you could just sit back, let it wash over you and absorb it by osmosis. I love Family Guy and I'll admit to getting seriously pissed off at a friend of mine who spilled the beans on Facebook. No warnings, he just straight out announced what had happened in the show. What a bastard! But he wasn't the only one.

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Time magazine's Person of the Year is an annual tradition, dating back to Charles Lindbergh in 1927. The tradition has continued ever since, encompassing such luminaries as Mahatma Gandhi, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and controversial figures such as Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and twice Richard Nixon.

This time around, the news magazine is asking for help, and seeking it from Twitter. However, before your ego swells, the publisher is only taking your vote into consideration, not making it the deciding factor. "While the choice is ultimately made by TIME editors, this will give everyone who's interested an unprecedented chance to air their opinion and cast a vote before the final decision. Using Poptip, TIME will gather votes on Twitter, where readers can weigh in on who made the biggest impact in 2013 via Tweets", says Twitter's Andrew Fitzgerald.

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It's an indication of the impact of social media that Twitter is now often the first place where people learn of major news stories. But that's a double-edged sword because it can be hard to know how accurate the information you're reading is.

From today Twitter is making it easier for government organizations and charities in the UK and Ireland to make timely and accurate information available via Twitter Alerts. The alerts service launched in the US, Japan and Korea in September of this year and has already been used by a number of public services to share information during emergencies involving public safety, bad weather and so on.

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It would be a strange week if Google didn’t steal a few headlines, and this week saw the introduction of new quick actions to Gmail as well as the launch of a series of online tools to help with the aftermath of the Philippines typhoon. Changes were also made to attachments in Gmail so it is now possible to download files directly to Google Drive. After the launch of the Nexus 5 -- which Brian was not blown away by -- Google also started to roll out Android 4.4 to Nexus tablets -- Mihaita was on hand with a guide to manually upgrading for anyone who did not want to wait for the OTA update to arrive. The news wasn't so good for the Chromebook 11 which was taken off sale after problems with overheating chargers. Google won a court battle after a judge ruled that the scanning of books is not illegal.

This week it was revealed that while BitTorrent still accounts for a large proportion of web traffic, and usage has actually increased in Europe, in the States there has been a drop in traffic. Anyone who seeks entertainment through other channels will be pleased by the fact that Roku streaming boxes can now be used to access Disney and ESPN channels. The Netflix channel was also updated with a new look.

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Canadian maker BlackBerry is expanding the reach of its BBM service through the latest update for the iOS app, that now includes support for non-cellular Apple-branded devices. As a result, Wi-Fi iPad and iPod users can also communicate with their BBM-using friends, as the app no longer limits access only to iPhones and 3G/4G iPads.

BlackBerry has yet to bestow non-cellular Android devices with the same ability, as BBM is still listed as being incompatible with tablets like the Wi-Fi 2013 Google Nexus 7 even in the latest version of the app that arrived yesterday. Now let's take a look at what (else) the Android and iOS updates for BBM add.

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After a long wait Vine is now available on Windows Phone 8, officially bringing its popular six-second videos outside of Android and iOS. The app arrives in Store with a respectable feature set, including free and unlimited clip uploads and social network integration with Facebook and Twitter.

Vine takes advantage of built-in Windows Phone features, such as live tiles and camera lenses, as the app allows users to pin the Vine camera and their favorite accounts and channels on the homescreen and trigger the Vine recording mode from the built-in camera app (or third-party camera apps that support lenses, like Nokia Camera).

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I tell BetaNews writers that when assessing anything ask: Who benefits? Then: Who benefits first? Both questions are top of mind as I absorb yesterday's stunning YouTube changes: Integration with Google+ comments.

Commenting is an ongoing debate in our newsroom. I have long advocated that we eliminate anonymous responses to stories. I'm identified. Why shouldn't commenters claiming I "pull ideas out of a monkey's ass" also be identified? I stand naked in the light, while they cower in darkness. But in wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden's stunning disclosures about NSA spying and corporate giants seeking more information about us -- yes, I wash both hands after peeing, thank you very much -- my views about anonymity are changing. I can't control the NSA but can exercise limited restraint with Google. I begin by asking about YouTube identified commenting: Who benefits first?

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Today Twitter makes its debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In typical Twitter style, the company announced its share price via tweet, ending weeks of speculation about the price point that would be decided upon.

Rather than the anticipated $15 to $20, the IPO (Initial Public Offering) of 70 million shares are up for grabs priced at $26 each -- effectively valuing the company at $18.2 billion.

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