There are two ways of taking out your competition: offer a similar, yet superior and/or cheaper product than your opponent. Or simply buy the entire rival business and start offering its service as your own. The latter happened yesterday when Mark Zuckerberg announcd that Facebook is about to buy Instagram for $1 billion.
A youth activist based in Johannesburg has apparently laid a complaint with the SA Human Rights Commission (HRC) regarding Helen Zille’s tweet of almost two weeks ago, where she referred to scholars in the Eastern Cape that come to the Western Cape for schooling as “refugees”. Read his justification while Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” gently resonates in your head, after the jump!
A new once-click payment system focused on social media is currently being tested in Belgium. Paycento enables internet users to pay to read a single article or download a piece of music without having to fill out forms or enter their credit card details on the website. More details inside.
Cue mass hysteria, Twitter has officially confirmed what many have suspected for some time, there’s a bug that causes twitter users to randomly unfollow people. It’s doubtful whether society will be able to function normally without their precious social media and in all likelihood this is the first sign of the impending apocalypse.
Alesandro Barbosa is one crazy dude! Currently serving a prison sentence relating to firearms offenses and drug trafficking, this guy also throws the best parties in jail. But prison authorities have been left red-faced after Barbosa loaded some party pics onto Facebook. They contain kegs of Heineken, boom-boxes, a flat-screen TV and prostitutes. Check out some pics after the jump!
An blog post allegedly featuring the residential address of George Zimmerman – the man who killed Trayvon Martin – has gone viral. The post went viral after it was retweeted by Spike Lee to his 250 000 followers. Unfortunately, the address actually belongs to an innocent elderly couple, who now live in fear.
The Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory has partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to launch what will arguably become the most extensive online archive of Nelson Mandela’s life. The free global access to photos, videos, letters and personal documents about his life and times will continue to expand as people across the world add their memorabilia to the archive.
A Welsh university student has been jailed for 56 days for a “racially-aggravated public order offence” after making offensive tweets about Bolton Wanderers player Fabrice Muamba, who collapsed with heart failure during a FA cup tie with Tottenham Hotspur on March 17. See the full Twitter feed, after the jump.
These are crazy times that we live in, and crazy times call for crazy people. That is possibly why Jason Russell, the filmmaker who brought us Kony 2012, the fastest growing viral video in the world ever, has been sent to a psychiatric clinic after being spotted pounding the ground with his fists on the […]
What happens to your social networking presence after you die? Who does the online you belong to? These are pressing issues being deliberated by at least two U.S. states this week as more and more pressure is being applied to social networking platforms like Facebook to allow the relatives of users that have passed away to directly access their late loved ones’ profiles.
Yesterday, 2oceansVibe ran a story about the brutal handling of an individual by a Vaalwater policeman. Instead of facing a charge of attempted murder, the officer involved is facing a lesser charge of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. He also spent time as the acting station commander of Vaalwater Police Station, after the incident occurred.
A video clip of a uniformed police officer brutally attacking and detaining an individual has been brought to our attention. The footage, allegedly filmed in Vaalwater, Limpopo, clearly incriminates a Vaalwater police van, and a uniformed police officer who appears to still be on duty. N5FW.
Nelson Mandela’s former defence lawyer, and veteran human rights lawyer, George Bizos, has written to Parliament stating that the protection of state information bill is unconstitutional on several counts.
Following a recent viral expose by blogger Jonathan Corbett on the potentially serious weaknesses in the TSA’s airport body scanners, multiple journalists have reported receiving emails from the TSA “strongly cautioning” them against covering the story. Corbett is encouraging media outlets to cover the story anyway.
A few hours ago, Reuters blogger, Felix Salmon, recorded an exclusive interview in which it was revealed that CNN will buy social media website, Mashable, for more than $200 million dollars. The announcement is due to be confirmed as early as tomorrow, according to Salmon.
As the #StopKONY juggernaut continues rampaging across the interwebs and social networks, some reporters have turned to Kony’s fellow Ugandans for comment on the video, and the Invisible Children organisation’s project to bring Joseph Kony to justice. Their opinions? Not positive.
Yesterday, the internet was all about Invisible Children’s #stopKONY campaign and video, but while Americans get themselves into a froth about a country they don’t even know the location of, and a man they only know through rumours, we take a closer look at the organisation behind the hype. And as a number of commentators look closer, the cracks in Invisible Children’s premise, promises and their presentation become anything but invisible.
“Probably not,” is the answer. It seems as if things have returned to normal on the Facebook servers around parts of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The outage earlier affected facebook.com, as well as apps for mobile phones and tablets. Facebook has thus far put the incident down to “technical difficulties.”
This might turn out to be the most inspiring documentary you will watch all year. A serious campaign is underway to bring down Joseph Kony, the infamous leader of the Ugandan guerrilla group: the Lord’s Resistance Army. The LRA is responsible for an unquantifiable number of atrocities across Uganda. Human trafficking, brutal rape, and child soldier deployment are commonplace. This is KONY 2102.
Another alternative to Apple’s iCloud popped up this week, with Google has announcing that it will be combining the Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore into a new cloud-based service called Google Play, allowing users to access all of their media across all of their Android devices.
Has Facebook just been hacked? A short while ago, tweets began to start flowing eluding to the fact that Facebook was reportedly down in many regions across the world including Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. We searched a little, and Facebook is indeed inaccessible to many. What will they do?
Who would’ve guessed that Facebook, the time-stealing, secret-revealing social forum would ever be more than a place to share funny videos of crazy cats and post pics of your latest meal? A recent infographic put together by the Criminal Justice Degrees Guide shows 20 crimes that Facebook assisted or helped to solve.
We were quite stunned by this little diatribe that appeared on the Facebook page of respected local political scientist, Prof. Steven Friedman, yesterday, where he calls into question the integrity of Proteas captain, AB De Villiers.
For the first time ever, researchers will now be able to access extensive historical Twitter data. Previously, only the preceding 30 days of tweets were available for companies to search. The new move means that trend analysts and companies looking for specific insight will now be able to access tweets dating back two years.
Capetonians: on Janssens Road, in Tableview, near the bike shop, this traffic light is sporting a new “green” signal. Apparently, this isn’t the first traffic light that’s been sporting this kind of “green” signal either.
[Thanks, Jake R]
Did you know that Shrien Dewani’s lawyer used the previous advert to try and convince a court that South African jails were dangerous and that he shouldn’t be extradited from Britain to face trial for allegedly killing his wife Anni? The sequel, which aired last night for the first time, is bound to instil yet more fear in drunken drivers’ minds.
We’ve told you a lot about the shenanigans of SA’s Big Four banks recently. Yesterday a Twitter storm erupted around Standard Bank and FNB, with the former accusing FNB of misleading advertising. The irony? The mud-slinging quite quickly turned in the direction of Standard Bank, with Tweeters taking FNB’s side. Here’s a snapshot of what happened.
This week, the Catholic Church begins its annual Lenten cycle, culminating in the holy days associated with Easter in just over a month, and given the flagging interest many young Catholics around the world are apparently showing in sticking to their Lenten vows, the Pope is taking his fight for their pledges to the Twittersphere.
Yesterday’s 46th Superbowl in the States, which saw the New York Giants eke out a last minute 21-17 win over the New England Patriots, also saw an unprecedented surge in activity on social messaging phenomenon, Twitter. To the tune of 10 000 tweets per minute, that is.
Facebook is expected to file for an IPO later today – Wednesday morning stateside – raising $5 billion. This is a fair deal less than the $10 billion previously rumored. Folks figure Zuckerberg wants to start with a conservative base at first. Because he can’t be sure this “Face-book” thing is going to take off.