Social media is full of people who are nasty to others to get their kicks, but now a dangerous new trend of digital self-harm is emerging.
Barbie has decided she needs to join the social media craze and has started an Instagram account. Expect pics of her and Ken pouting and cruising around in a pink convertible.
If you’re not eating, sleeping and breathing social media, it’s time to hop on board. Fortune Magazine’s predictions for social media in 2014 show that social media is transforming the way fundamental ways in which businesses function – which makes this set of predictions especially useful.
“I wasn’t going to write this letter, but today i’ve been dodging phone calls from various industry blogs who wished me to remark upon your having said your career was designed to be similar to mine … So this is what I need to say … And it is said in the spirit of fatherliness and with love.”
It is only natural to use social media on your phone at some point or another during the course of a day. But does using social media on your phone pose a risk to your device, and your life? From Facebook battery drain to smashing your car, this infographic details to pitfalls of mobile social media.
Social media can change our lives. The last two weeks has been an eye opening experience to say the least. A South African hero and international role model for millions was arrested for the pre-meditated murder of his girlfriend, in his house, while she was locked in the toilet. His defence is that he thought […]
According to a recent report, social media sites, including Facebook, monitor users’ chats and scan for criminal activity. The invasive measures are intended to “ensure the safety of public” and authorities are notified if any suspicious activity is detected.
There is nothing worse than being tagged in a Facebook photo that you don’t want to be tagged in. You know, that time at the bar, after tequila number 7, hanging off your mate Jeff? Turns out it wasn’t just a mass upload.
Within the next few days, every single Facebook user will be met with a request for a verified phone number, which will apparently help users “stay in control” of their accounts. This is partially a response to security breaches at LinkedIn, Last.fm and eHarmony, but it’s also because Facebook wants to know more stuff about you.
Sweden has been handing its Twitter account to a different citizen every week for the past seven months. Which has been great for the most part, with priests and lesbian truck drivers representing the country – except the latest @sweden handler has been catching some flack for trying to figure out “whats the fuzz with jews.”
On Sunday Twitter aired its first ever TV commercials. The series of shorts are centered on America’s favourite past-time, Nascar racing, and push their new message: “See what he sees.” Click through to see the clips.
Harvey Nichols in the UK came under fire this week for their latest advertising campaign. Meant to promote their summer sale, the posters depict models that have apparently wet their pants with excitement. The slogan reads: “The Harvey Nichols Sale…Try To Contain Your Excitement.”
Ha! Model Melissa Stetten found herself getting hit on by vaguely-famous actor Brian Presley on a flight out of Los Angeles. Using this new thing called ‘the internet,’ she identified Presley as a married, outspoken Christian with a five-year-old kid. So she livetweeted his ridiculously awkward attempt at hooking up with her. Watch it unfold below.
Pinterest, the hottest social photo sharing website right now, looks set to receive a nice $50 million injection from Japanese giant, Raukten. Plus another reported $70 million coming in from other international investors! This means that Pinterest’s valuation is now in the range of between $1 billion and $1,5 billion. Impressively, they’ve only been around for two years.
Facebook lately been experimenting with a small group of users by offering them the opportunity to promote their own status messages by paying for them. If the “Highlight” feature is more widely adopted, people will soon be able to pay to make sure their cutesy status updates are at the top of everyone’s news feed.
A new startup called Urthecast is in the process of putting together HD cameras to be fitted to the International Space Station, so that people can watch real-time video of the planet from space. Which is at once really cool, and sort of pointless. The footage is looking impressive, though – take a look.
An unnamed Johannesburg resident was robbed, kidnapped, and stuffed into the back of car on Sunday – but managed to send a text to his girlfriend, Lynn Peters who promptly posted a plea for help on Twitter. Frantic retweeting led to a Twitter-coordinated search by private security companies, who retrieved both the car and Peters’ boyfriend.
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 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.
Toronto’s Deadmau5 has been blasting Madonna on his Facebook page for asking folks at the Miami Ultra Music Festival if they’ve seen “molly,” which is young-person speak for MDMA. Deadmau5 moved from slating Madonna’s embarrassing use of drug slang to a spiel about equating electro with drug use – with a couple of tasteful expletives thrown in.
Man, look, I know the successive restriction of online liberties is something we should be fighting tooth and nail, but I can’t be the only one who heard about last Saturday’s ‘Twitter Blackout,’ in protest of Twitter’s new censorship policy, and failed to care.
Over the past few years social media has transformed the proliferation of information, particularly mainstream news. It’s now almost more likely that you’ll first learn about breaking news on your Facebook feed or Twitter account than from a legitimate news source. That’s all about to change.
Following his opening address for the International Knowledge Conference at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, former president, Thabo Mbeki voiced some concerns about Twitter as “a great conveyor of reliable knowledge,” pointing to Gaddafi’s overthrow as a consequence of “false knowledge,” rather than the social media. Mbeki immediately started trending on Twitter.
This year Facebook will go public and start to sell shares on the stock exchange. Thanks to all of us, the social network is now worth $100 billion – more than giants such as Google, Disney, Amazon, and McDonald’s. But who is going to pocket all this money? Check out this infographic, detailing which Facebook friends will be getting pieces of the pie, as well as some other interesting facts:
2011 may be remembered as the year that news and social media tied the knot. Check out a great visual recap of the 2011, as seen on Twitter, after the jump.
An annual report from comScore on what happens online has shown that 1 in every 5 minutes of time online this year was spent on social networking sites – as compared to the 6% of internet time that went to social networking in 2007. By all accounts that sort of growth is expected to continue, and speed up, in 2012.
Facebook yesterday released a big ol’ lump of data about the most shared content of 2011, both globally and for specific countries. Osama Bin Laden’s death was far and away the most popular status update topic, followed distantly by the Super Bowl results and and the Casey Anthony trial for second and third most popular, respectively.
YouTube is launching what they’re calling their biggest redesign in history today – and, granted, every time a website changes they tend to say that, but the differences here are pretty striking, with sweeping changes to the homepage and channel pages, strongly emphasising social media integration.
Whenever anybody talks about viral advertising, something deep inside me gets a little closer to breaking. So please understand that when I say that this campaign by Innocent Foods, which lowers its prices the more social media exposure it gets (“the more people that tweet, the cheaper you eat”) could go nicely viral, I mean it.