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Posts with tag social networking

Cell Phones More Important Than Wallets, Survey Says

by Will Safer, posted May 14th 2008 at 2:07PMBreaking News



If you had to leave your house for 24 hours and could take only one thing, what would it be?

More likely than not, these days it would be your cell phone, according to a new survey conducted by IDC that was sponsored by communications equipment maker Nortel.

Of 2,367 people polled, 38 percent said they would take their cell phone over their wallet, keys, laptop or digital music player. In fact, less than 30 percent chose their wallets first.

Nortel's goal with the survey was to find out how many of us out there are "hyperconnected," which means we use at least seven different devices in our work and personal lives -- and also use nine or more applications to send instant messages, text messages or conduct conference calls. (If you're one of these people, maybe you need a little break from all the tech? We suggest some time outdoors.)

The most hyperconnected country is China. The least are Canada and the United Arab Emirates. Around the world, 16 percent of those surveyed are hyperconnected and that group is expected to grow to 40 percent within the next five years.

But what about the rest of us, those not so hard core with the tech? We're no slouches either, apparently, with the survey indicating that 36 percent of respondents are "increasingly connected," which means we use at least four devices and six applications in our daily lives.

What's driving this need to connect? Social networking is becoming a major force in business. Who is behind the curve? The healthcare industry has only nine percent identified as hyperconnected. Its no surprise that the high tech industry has the most, with 25 percent.

We're busy people, no? We agree with Nortel's assessment, that we're a "culture of connectivity." You can see the details of the study here. [Source: Reuters].

Students Use Twitter to Report on China Earthquake

by Tim Stevens, posted May 12th 2008 at 11:01AMBreaking News

First-Hand Earthquake Reports via Twitter

China may not be a leader when it comes to Internet acceptance, given its history of trying to block anything online that doesn't quite jive with its political message. Thankfully, the country has apparently not chosen to block instant-update site Twitter, a Web site that has become a bit of a sounding board for those who experienced the 7.8 earthquake that struck the nation early on Monday.

Though plenty of news about the quake has been coming steadily from established news sources such as AP and Reuters, it hasn't always covered up-to-the-minute specifics about each and every affected area, and here's where some non-traditional, online information/social-networking services are coming in handy. According to some blog reports on the BBC and Silicon Alley Insider, many English-speaking students are using Twitter to post first-hand, post-quake experiences, which are helping those on the outside understand what's happening there. Users casperodj and inwalkedbud have been two of the most prolific earthquake twitterers, posting some frightening updates such as the one pictured above, as well as some later, more reassuring ones.

By enabling people to post quick updates from cell phones, computers and other mobile devices, Twitter has gained popularity and is gaining a reputation for being a fun way to keep up with friends. Critics call it a waste of time, but this perception is changing since increasingly Twitter is being used as a way to keep in touch during disasters, when sometimes traditional forms of communication or media are not available. Case in point, last year's wildfires in Southern California, when residents used Twitter plus Google Maps to share information about affected areas and shelters.

Twitter has a long way to go before it'll be considered a reliable news source, but during such debilitating disasters, the service is certainly proving its worth among those looking for instant updates. Let's just hope the power doesn't go out next time there's a crisis, which would make using cell phones and Wi-Fi challenging. [Source: twitter via dot.life and Silicon Alley Insider]

New Feature Lets You Take Your MySpace Profile to Other Sites

by Tim Stevens, posted May 9th 2008 at 9:10AMBreaking News

MySpace Launches Social networking is obviously a lot of fun, but if anything it's getting a little too popular; you can't pick a movie on Netflix or upload a picture onto Flickr these days without having to wade through a web of friend recommendations.

What's more annoying is that each network is completely disconnected -- sign up for some hot new site, pick a crew of friends, then move on to the next hot site and try to find the same crew of friends again. Annoying. MySpace is finally looking to end that with a new initiative called "data availability" that will let you take your profile with you to other profile-based sites and services, including Twitter, Photobucket, and Yahoo!.

The changes, set to go into effect in a few weeks, will let you effectively sync up your profiles at a number of partner sites with your MySpace profile. For example, on Twitter you would be able to set up Twitter to pull in your picture and other information from your MySpace profile, in real-time -- so, if you update your main pic at MySpace, it would be propagated over to Twitter as well. You'll be able to do the same with your eBay profile, creating a more informative set of information about you that will "yield a deeper connection between individuals," according to the press release.

It would also let eBay shoppers learn an awful lot about you, something that many people will be uncomfortable with. The opportunity to save time by syncing up your profiles sounds quite appealing, but making yourself more identifiable to potentially irate eBay buyers and sellers sounds a little -- unnerving. [Source: BusinessWire, via New York Times]

Users Spend More Time on MySpace Despite Slipping Traffic

by Will Safer, posted May 8th 2008 at 11:23AMBreaking News

Social networking is one of the biggest Internet phenomenons of the last few years, and it's still MySpace that dominates the online social networking landscape, according to Web measurement firm Hitwise.

As reported in ReadWriteWeb, MySpace takes the top traffic prize with 73.82 percent of all social networking traffic. Facebook only garners 14.8 percent of social networking traffic. Other sites take no more than two percent share, so this is really a tale of two brands.

The real story here, however, isn't who is on top traffic-wise but how long that traffic stays on a site. So, while traffic has slipped for MySpace by five percent during the last year, the average amount of time active MySpace members spend on the site has increased by a whopping 73 percent. So that means the members who do stick around really, really do stick around. [Source: ReadWriteWeb]

Alicia Keys Using MySpace to Find Backup Singers

by Terrence O'Brien, posted May 5th 2008 at 9:03AMBreaking News

Alicia Keys Using MySpace to Find Backup SingersMySpace isn't just a place for booty calls and sexual predators -- pop stars also use it as a recruiting tool for their international touring bands. Okay,sp usually they don't, but Alicia Keys must be really stuck for backup singers.

Alicia Keys wants aspiring R&B and soul singers to send 30-second videos of themselves singing, a cappella, to Keys's MySpace account. The winner will then join Keys' tour as it hops around the globe. The requirements are pretty basic: Be a 21-to-30-year-old woman with a valid passport, have some experience singing R&B and/or soul, and make sure you're physically fit enough to dance.

If you meet those minimum qualifications, then head on over and send in your video resume. We're pretty sure MySpace has fixed that whole virus problem by now. [Source: MySpace, Via: Reuters]

What Would Facebook Look Like in Real Life?

by Tim Stevens, posted May 2nd 2008 at 6:01PMBreaking News

Okay, so you're on Facebook and have connected with dozens of friends, half of whom you haven't actually seen in years and, if you ever did, it would probably make for some uncomfortable conversation. What would it be like if one of them came knocking at your door, asking you the sort of questions Facebook asks when making introductions?

We're thinking it would look something like the above, a sketch from a British comedy team called "Idiots of Ants;" a group of blokes who have obviously been the recipient of some random friend requests over the years. Watch and see that they've got represented it perfectly, from the initial "poke" right down to graffiti on your wall. [Source: Idiots of Ants, via AOL Video]

MySpace Launches Karaoke Service

by Terrence O'Brien, posted May 1st 2008 at 9:25AMBreaking News

MySpace Launches Karaoke Service

Our first thoughts upon hearing about MySpace Karaoke were, "Didn't April Fool's Day already pass?" and "Oh God, no." Eventually our utter horror passed just long enough to do some research on this beta service from the company that is trying to ruin personal relationships. The scariest thing we found? It has competitors!

MySpace Karaoke works like this -- first you decide that you are ready to shed all self respect and dignity, then you pick a song from MySpace's catalog of two-or-three thousand licensed tracks to sing along to, and, just like karaoke in any cheesy bar you've frequented, the words scroll across the screen for you to warble along to. The fun part comes when you decide to record and share your complete lack of tunefulness with your unsuspecting MySpace public. You can post your tracks as bulletins, embed them right in your profile, or just save them as favorite tracks. MySpace will let you store up to 10 tracks for free, any more than that will incur a small fee.

We're not anti-karaoke per se, we just think it should be confined to black out drunk nights at trashy bars. [Source: MySpace Karaoke, Via: BetaNews]

Yahoo to Rewire Itself Into Vast Social Network

by Evan Shamoon, posted Apr 28th 2008 at 8:06AMBreaking News




You know how Google has managed to integrate all of its services – Google Maps, Google Docs, Gmail, etc -- into one intuitive, inter-connected whole? Yahoo's about to try to do the same thing.

But the plans go even bigger: specifically, to transform the site into a vast social network where Yahoo users can quickly find, communicate, and share information with one another.

"We are literally in the process of rewiring Yahoo from the inside out," said Ari Balogh, Yahoo's CTO, in a speech at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. They've made a bunch of acquisitions recently -- photo-sharing site Flickr, bookmarking site Del.icio.us and social calendar site Upcoming -- and now they want them all to play nice together.

"We are not building another social network," said Mr Balogh. "We are building social into everything we do."

Well, everything done by people sitting at home, alone, in front of their computers, with nothing but their cat, some Cheetos, and the blue glow of their monitors to keep them company, that is. [Source: BBC]

GetBack.com Leads Visitors Back In Time

by Evan Shamoon, posted Apr 24th 2008 at 5:56PMBreaking News



Do you have a nostalgia addiction? Are your best moments those spent singing Def Leppard and Twisted Sister karaoke at the top of your lungs? Do you scour eBay for signed photos of The Fonz, and cry tears of joy when you inevitably win? Do you actively miss high school?

Well, have we got the site for you. Getback.com is a destination for all things retro: essentially a multimedia social networking site (think: MySpace), it attempts to chronicle the most memorable pop-culture events of the '60s, '70s, and '80s ... and allow you to chat longingly about them with your friends. There are separate channels (Music, Movies, Games, Life & Style), each packed with various audio/visual content.

"We set out to create a social media experience that will resonate with pop culture enthusiasts of all ages. We are creating a feel good experience for our users: listening to music, looking at album art, remembering their favorite films, playing games," states Chris Dominguez, President, of GetBack Media. "We developed GetBack to connect users to a digital reincarnation of year's past in an emotional and impactful way."

Our tour of the site included precisely one listen to Harold Faltermeyer's Axel F, one This Day in 1972 (including John Lennon's attempt to form his own country, Newtopia), and a joyride through a chunk of the 1980's Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) library. You can even browse by year: click on 1986, for example, and you'll find blurbs about The Kids in the Hall, the price of jeans, and Boy George guest starring on an episode of the A-Team.

The site has some major backers -- Getty Images, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, All Media Guide, and Intellivision (to name a few) -- so there's no dearth of content.

Now, make with the reliving your glory years. [Source Getback.com]

Facebook Adds "People You May Know" Feature

by Thomas Houston , posted Mar 31st 2008 at 11:07AM



Facebook debuted a new feature last week called "People You May Know." It's pretty much self-explanatory and straightforward -- Facebook uses advanced algorithms (i.e. looks at friends of your friends) to build a surprisingly accurate list of people you probably know. If you're a LinkedIn user, you've probably seen something very similar -- LinkedIn's version is appropriately named, "People you may know."

Much like the status updates and birthday sections, the new feature is extremely easy to use, and you'll find it automatically added to the middle of the right sidebar when you log in to your Facebook account. The list -- generated from your list of friends and your friends' friends -- isn't 100% perfect. We're not surprised that it pulls in a couple people we've never even heard of, but it sometimes works almost too well. We're not sure we really want to see old acquaintances from school or that person we met at a party a few months ago.

From News.com

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Facebook's Own Israeli-Palestinian Dispute

by Will Safer, posted Mar 18th 2008 at 12:12PM

Can there be virtual border disputes and rival claims to a country even online? Apparently so, as Facebook found itself being criticized by both Palestinian and Israeli members who live in the West Bank.

FacebookThe popular online social networking site was, for a time, identifying Israeli settlers whose homes are in the West Bank as being residents of Palestine. The settlers disagreed and threatened to close their Facebook accounts -- plus they claimed Facebook was making a political statement. In response, Facebook decided to allow people who live in the West Bank to choose either Israel or Palestine as their home.

But this move has upset many Palestinian residents of the West Bank.

Now there are people on both sides who have created Facebook groups with names like "It's not Israel, It's Palestine" and, of course, "It's not Palestine, It's Israel."

At least their arguments are simple, even if the underlying problem is not.

Maybe someone can come up with a Facebook group where people from both sides can join?

From Reuters.


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REM to Release New Album a Week Early On iLike

by Thomas Houston , posted Mar 12th 2008 at 5:17PM

Free R.E.M. Music On iLike

Yesterday, R.E.M. announced plans to release the new "Accelerate" album -- the band's 14th studio release -- on the online music sharing service iLike. On March 24th, all 11 tracks -- along with a video introduction and discussion -- will be made available in their entirety on iLike in streaming form. The iLike music and social networking site -- 23 million users strong -- allows users to share and listen to music and also interact directly with artists.

Lead-singer Michael Stipe said, "I think you can either go with it or sit back and watch it happen, and I would rather be out on the field than in the bleachers." It's great to see legendary bands like R.E.M. and Radiohead trying out new ways of interacting with fans, not to mention offer up their musicc for free.

Let the cavalcade of free music over new forms of digital distribution continue!

From Digital Media Wire and Yahoo

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Death Toll For Internet Teen Suicides Hits 17

by Evan Shamoon, posted Mar 11th 2008 at 12:02PM

Bebo Wales Internet Suicide Pact


After the body of a teenage girl was found hanging in the woods of a Welsh village last Tuesday, media attention is once again focused on the only thing seeming to link the suicides together -- the Internet.

When the body of Jenna Parry was found, it marked the 17th young suicide in just over a year near the town of Bridgend, South Wales (pictured, above). Though no evidence has been found of a suicide pact (or any sort of "cult" responsible for the series of deaths), nearly all of the victims used a social networking Web site -- similar to MySpace and the like -- called Bebo, that's popular with young British children.

The string of deaths began with Dale Crole, an 18-year-old who hanged himself at an abandoned warehouse on Jan. 5, 2007. His friend David Dilling, 19, took police to the scene. Then, just a few weeks later, Dilling died the same way. A week later the boys' friend Thomas Davies, 20, hanged himself in a local park. And so it has continued.

The Internet has been a recurring theme in the hangings. Most (possibly all) of the victims were members of Bebo, and many of them posted messages on the public memorial pages of those who preceded them in suicide.

"I'm sure they all knew each other," Ferdinand, 14, who lives near Parry's house, told Newsweek. "I knew six of them myself. I've been on some of their personal pages on Bebo, and they were talking about 'I don't think I can cope with it,' and 'I'm going to end it.' I didn't think they'd really do it."

As we reported earlier this year, it's believed by some that the friends were all trying to gain notoriety with their own memorial pages.

Sad to say, but the Internet has long been a breeding ground for group suicides -- just three years ago, an Oregon man was arrested for organizing a mass suicide pact -- but this is the first time that such trends have hit the social-networking space. Given that Facebook employees seem to have the ability to see whose profiles you've looked at, or keep personal profiles after they're deleted, it would follow that at least this lack of privacy would help catch potential suicides in their tracks before anything tragic occurs.

From CNN

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Student Faces Expulsion Over Facebook Study Group

by Will Safer, posted Mar 7th 2008 at 7:11PM

Using a Facebook group is not the same as face to face collaboration on schoolwork, according to administrators at Toronto's Ryerson University.

Facebook logo.Case in point: a freshman student faces expulsion for setting up an online study group via Facebook last semester. The professor for the class claims this lead to cheating and not just normal study group help. The student, Chris Avenir, says the online activity is no different than a group of students gathering in person to give each other advice on how to complete their chemistry homework assignments.

Avenir faces 146 counts of academic misconduct, one for each of the classmates who signed up for the Facebook group he set up last term, plus one additional count for setting up the group in the first place.

Oddly enough, students are permitted to meet in person to help each other with assignments. The name of the group itself -- Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry Solutions – is based on the actual room in an academic building where his classmates would typically meet for study sessions.

Is this simply a case of scale, where the numbers and accessibility of the online activity gives students an unfair advantage, or were they really cheating?

The professor seems to think the latter, having changed Avenir's grade from a B to an F after learning of the Facebook activity and recommending the student's expulsion. Avenir will have a chance to defend the group, which he says is simply the modern version of study hall for the "wired generation."

That argument may be more readily received by a computer science professor than a chemistry professor, it seems.

Students at other schools have previously been disciplined or expelled for Web sites or Facebook pages that criticize or threaten other students and their schools, but the is the first time we've heard of a student being punished for encouraging fellow classmates to study more.

From The Toronto Star.



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Harvard Scholars Head Up 'Net Safety Task Force

by Evan Shamoon, posted Feb 29th 2008 at 9:51AM

MyspaceOver the course of the next year, Internet scholars at Harvard University will form a task force to explore how children can avoid unwanted contact and content when surfing the Web. And when we say surfing the Web, we mean spending countless hours on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites.

They're calling it the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (catchy, no?), and it comes after an agreement between MySpace and all state attorneys general (except Texas'!) in January. It will be comprised of of leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and non-profit groups.

MySpace actually created the task force, choosing Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society to run it, but the group will apparently operate independently. Keep in mind, however, that this is the magical world of Rupert Murdoch, where Fox News runs completely independently of News Corp.

And when we say "runs completely independently," of course, we mean "doesn't at all run independently whatsoever, like, not even a little bit."

From USA Today

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