The Podium
Blog posts tagged with 'Social Networking'
Wednesday, July 28
By Brad
The Guardian mourns the passing of the world’s oldest Twitter user:
Ivy Bean, 104, began tweeting last year from her residential home in the outskirts of Bradford, and amassed over 56,000 followers with posts telling of food, family visits, and even an invitation from Gordon Brown to meet the then prime minister in Downing Street.
Ivy had fallen ill last month, and her followers had been kept updated by Pat, the manager of Hillside Manor, over the last few weeks. It was Pat who bore the bad news today.
“Ivy passed away peacefully at 12.08 this morning,” she wrote just after 10am, adding: “I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you but it was a very difficult thing to do”.
Monday, June 28
By IIA
According to Ruder Finn, 91 percent of mobile phone users go online to socialize.
— Karl Greenberg, “Firm: People Use Mobile Web Nearly 3 Hours/Day.” MediaPost, February 15, 2010.
More facts about broadband.
Thursday, May 27
By Brad
Via the Huffington Post, a bit of good news:
Federal prosecutors say they are working with police in several countries to investigate suspects in a child pornography “social networking site” that at one point had more than 1,000 members trading explicit images.
U.S. authorities announced Wednesday that they had broken up the international online child porn site, saying more than 50 people had been arrested in more than 50 states since the 2008 start of the investigation. They said they are also seeking the extradition of several suspects from overseas, including the alleged ringleader, Delwin Savigar, who is serving a 14-year prison term in England for sexually assaulting three underage girls.
Thursday, May 13
By Brad
Popular social networking site Facebook has received a lot of heat lately over its privacy policies. (In fact, as the New York Times notes, if you type in the words “how do I” into Google, the result “how do I quit Facebook” currently ranks fifth.)
Part of the problem, as the Huffington Post reports, is the fact that Facebook’s privacy policy has become absurdly bloated and complicated:
Facebook’s 2010 privacy policy is now 5,830 words long—several thousand words longer than the privacy policies for sites like Flickr, Twitter, MySpace, and Friendster. It’s even longer than the Constitution (4,543 words).
While Facebook argues that their settings offer the “most comprehensive and detailed controls” for their users, the dizzying array of options might also prevent many Facebook users from making any changes at all.
Tuesday, April 13
By Brad
With somewhere around 50 million “tweets” a day, Twitter definitely has a social impact. Up until now, though, the service has ignored chances to monetize all its activity. That’s about to change. From the official Twitter blog:
We hope you’ll share in our enthusiasm as today we unveil a simple service we’re calling Promoted Tweets. It’s non-traditional, it’s easy, and it makes a ton of sense for Twitter. Our COO Dick Costolo will be talking about this much anticipated offering in detail today at the AdAge Digital conference. Tomorrow at Chirp, both Dick and our fearless leader Evan Williams will further discuss this program and what it means for the Twitter ecosystem.
What exactly are “Promoted Tweets”?
You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We’ll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate. Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.
As for how this change is going down with Twitter’s users, according to the site Twitter Sentiment, reaction so far is mixed.
Wednesday, March 17
By Brad
Via Ars Technica, a new report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center warns that hate groups are embracing social media networks like Facebook and YouTube:
Unsurprisingly, terrorists and other groups have become fans of social networks because that’s where the kiddies are—young people are particularly vulnerable to messages from these groups, and if Facebook is the best way to reach them, then that’s where the groups will go. SWC says that its members have met with Facebook officials to have some of these groups removed, “[B]ut with over 200 million users, online bigots have to date outpaced efforts to remove them.”
According to the SWC report, hate groups have increased online activity by 20% — in 2009 alone.
Wednesday, March 03
By Brad
Via Mashable, popular micro-blogging service Twitter is counting down to 10 billion — that’s right, billion — “tweets.” The punchline: the company has only been around since 2007.
Wednesday, February 03
By Brad
Post Tech looks at a new survey from computer security company Sophos on social networking sites and cyber attacks:
Sophos said that reports by companies of spam and malware derived from social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter were up 70 percent from a year earlier. And of the 500 companies surveyed, 60 percent said Facebook—by far the largest social network internationally—posed the biggest security risk.
“2009 saw Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites solidify their position at the heart of many users’ daily internet activities, and saw these websites become a primary target for hackers,” according to the report. “Because of this, social networks have become one of the most significant vectors for data loss and identity theft.”
Wednesday, November 11
By Brad
Via the New York Times comes the story of a 19-year-old arrested for robbery, a question about pancakes, and a Facebook status update that served as an alibi.
Friday, October 02
By Brad
The FBI has issued a warning for all those addicted to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace:
According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), there has been an increase in the number of hijacked social networking accounts reported to http://www.ic3.gov.
One of the more popular scams involves online criminals planting malicious software and code onto to victim computers. It starts by someone opening a spam e-mail, sometimes from another hijacked friend’s account.
When opened, the spam allows the cyber intruders to steal passwords for any account on the computer, including social networking sites. The thieves then change the user’s passwords and eventually send out distress messages claiming they are in some sort of legal or medical peril and requesting money from their social networking contacts.
So far, nearly 3,200 cases of account hijackings have been reported to the IC3 since 2006.
Before you freak out, however, the FBI goes on to note that in general social networking sites are safe to use, and then offers some tips to help ensure you won’t fall prey to scams:
• Adjust website privacy settings. Some networking sites have provided useful options to assist in adjusting settings to help protect your identity.
• Be selective when adding friends. Once added, contacts can access any information marked as viewable by all friends.
• Limit access to your profile to only those contacts you trust with your personal information.
• Disable options, such as photo sharing, that you might not regularly use. You can always enable these options later.
• Be careful what you click on. Just because someone posts a link or video to their wall does not mean it is safe.
• Familiarize yourself with the security and privacy settings and learn how to report a compromised account.
• Each social networking site may have different procedures on how to handle a hijacked or infected account; therefore, you may want to reference their help or FAQ page for instructions.
Friday, September 25
By Brad
Nielsen has some new numbers on social networking use in the United States, and it turns out that use of services like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter has tripled — that’s right, tripled — since 2008.
As Read Write Web reports, this influx of users is changing the face of online advertising:
While for consumers, hitting up Facebook for a daily dose of socializing is just par for the course nowadays, this change in consumer behavior has had dramatic impact on the online advertising industry. Where before, advertisers were somewhat wary of social media properties, they’re now spending more than ever for prominent spots on social networking sites. Even as companies decreased their overall ad expenditures, they increased their spend on top social networks and blogs - up 119% from last year. ($108 million in August 2009 up from $49 million in August 2008). And when broken down by category, the increases are even more dramatic. The entertainment industry, for example, has increased spending by 812% year-over-year on social network sites and the travel industry increased spending by 364%.
Wednesday, September 16
By Brad
Yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the insanely popular social networking site now has 300 million members worldwide — an increase of 100 million users in just five months.
Monday, September 14
By Brad
After forays into blogging, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, the FCC is taking its social networking efforts a step further by launching a new site for public input on important topics to be addressed while crafting a national broadband plan. The site, broadband.ideascale.com, allows users to vote on topics and add topics of their own.
Tuesday, September 01
By Brad
If you owe back taxes, beware of what you post on a social networking site such as Facebook and MySpace. The IRS may just be watching. From the Wall Street Journal:
State revenue agents have begun nabbing scofflaws by mining information posted on social-networking Web sites, from relocation announcements to professional profiles to financial boasts.
In Minnesota, authorities were able to levy back taxes on the wages of a long-sought tax evader after he announced on MySpace that he would be returning to his home town to work as a real-estate broker and gave his employer’s name. The state collected several thousand dollars, the full amount due.
Meanwhile, agents in Nebraska collected $2,000 from a deejay after he advertised on his MySpace page that he would be working at a big public party.
Friday, August 21
By Brad
Via the New York Times “Bits” blog comes news of a new study that finds of employers are now using social networks to screen job applicants:
According to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com, 45 percent of employers questioned are using social networks to screen job candidates — more than double from a year earlier, when a similar survey found that just 22 percent of supervisors were researching potential hires on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.
The study also found that Facebook was by far the most used site for employers—not too terribly surprising since the site has over 250 million users.
Friday, August 07
By Brad
That collective Internet freakout you heard yesterday was the sound of people worldwide realizing many of their favorite social networking sites were experiencing major technical difficulties—difficulties stemming from hackers targeting just one individual. CNet reports:
A Georgian blogger with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Google’s Blogger and YouTube was targeted in a denial-of-service attack that led to the sitewide outage at Twitter and problems at the other sites on Thursday, according to a Facebook executive.
The blogger, who uses the account name “Cyxymu,” (the name of a town in the Republic of Georgia) had accounts on all of the different sites that were attacked at the same time, Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, told CNET News.
Whether the attack had something to do with the long-brewing conflict between Georgia and Russia in unknown. But this certainly wouldn’t be the first time the conflict between the two nations spread online.
Wednesday, August 05
By Brad
When it comes to blocking websites and social networking applications from citizens, China is one of the leaders of the pack. But a new study from the group Netpop Research (via Read Write Web) finds that despite their government’s attempts at censorship, 92% of Chinese citizens use social media sites—a higher percentage than the U.S.
By Brad
Due to worries about the spread of malware and spam, the United States Marine Corps has blocked the use of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The ban is for a year, allowing the Pentagon to research what, if any, steps can be taken to ensure online security for troops.
Tuesday, August 04
By Brad
Twitter—the popular 140-character-limit service—had over 40 million unique visitors in the month of June, an increase of 19% from the previous month.
Unfortunately, as the New York Times reports, a number of NFL coaches aren’t too keen on the idea of their players Twittering with abandon, and have banned its use during the season.
By Brad
According to the latest numbers from comScore, Facebook is now the fourth largest website in the world — more than Wikipedia, eBay, and even Amazon.
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