Today Is Dump GoDaddy Day
December 29, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
December 29th is Dump GoDaddy Day. That’s today, so will you be joining in the celebrations? The “holiday” came about at the insistence of SelfProdigy, a Reddit user who was very troubled by GoDaddy’s early backing of SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. The bill is currently being reviewed by the House Judiciary Committee. If SOPA passes, responsibility for content uploaded to a site, in violation of copyright laws, will be thrust onto the shoulders of the site owners, be that Facebook, YouTube, or their tech peers.
Before kicking off Dump GoDaddy Day, SelfProdigy informed GoDaddy of his disapproval of their position with regard to SOPA. GoDaddy responded to SelfProdigy’s criticism with a “generic letter,” which only served to further enflame SelfProdigy’s indignation. In an interview with Fox News, SelfProdigy said: “My heart was broken. I’ve used them for years. I didn’t like the generic letter they sent back to me so I posted a call to boycott. I didn’t know it would catch on the way it did.”
After Dump GoDaddy Day went viral, GoDaddy releases a public statement abandoning its previous stance and proclaiming that it no longer supported SOPA. GoDaddy apparently wanted to stay on the side of the “internet community” when all the SOPA hullaballoo blew over. But many are saying it’s more than a little too late because GoDaddy registrations are already being “dumped.” Four days ago, 72,000 GoDaddy registrations had been lost. GoDaddy spokesperson, Danica Patrick, appears above.
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http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2011/12/dump-godaddy-day-is-dec-29-in-response-to-sopa-support.html
Britney Spears, Google+’s Ashton Kutcher
December 23, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Britney Spears has done it again, and this time there’s no need for cloying interjections, the newly engaged singer gained the distinction of being the first person on Google+ to reach one million followers. Ashton Kutcher shares the same honor, but on a different network: Twitter.
There seems to have been a very concerted effort on behalf of Spears’ management to ferry her across the magic threshold because, as many have been pointing out, there’s an enormous section on her official homepage existing for the sole purpose of enjoining visitors to follow her on Google+.
Despite the still-somewhat uncertain merit of making it big on Google+, at least at this particular instance in time, the triumphant score will be something a great many Britney fans will be cheering. The Google+ achievement can certainly also be credited to her enduring popularity, and perhaps, also, to the nostalgia people feel for the era she defined. Critics and skeptics, as if we needed a clue, will no doubt patter on and on about the lack of competition from other major stars that Brit faces in the network that has been out only since the summer.
Either way, seems Google+’s tech adoring users have a soft spot for a singer.
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http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397948,00.asp
Charlie Sheen Tweets His Cell Number to Justin Bieber, Publicly
December 14, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Reportedly, “Winning!” and “Ray’s Pizza!” is how Charlie Sheen was answering his cell phone last week after the torrent of calls and text messages started coming in: he had inadvertently tweeted publicly a direct message disclosing his phone number. His online followers did not wait a second before commencing the serial retweeting and dialing of the once-privileged digits. As if that weren’t enough to cause a media riot by itself, the kicker was that the would-be direct message was sent to @justinbieber, the person whose unquestioned dominance in the Twitterverse forced Jack Dorsey’s group to recalibrate the trending formulas.
To go by captured screen shots, Sheen’s would-be direct message to Justin Bieber read: “310-954-7277 Call me bro. C.” Although questions remain about why Sheen wanted Bieber to call him, many are probably relieved that the message didn’t contain anything scandalous beyond the individuals involved in the exchange. Sheen, who’s seen his share of controversy, was the object of unrivaled attention earlier this year after a tumultuous exit from “Two and a Half Men” and his subsequent replacement by Ashton Kutcher as the show’s lead. Sheen has a Twitter following that exceeds 5.5 million while Justin Bieber comes in second only to Lady Gaga.
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http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/charlie_losing_on_twitter_R1a76bCjgMCgQcTeZRNX6O
The Original 7ven’s Twitter-Inspired Funk Track Is Out
December 12, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
The beloved funk band The Time has a new name and a new single, and both are making headlines. The Original 7ven, as the band is now known, recently debuted “#Trendin,” which may or may not constitute the first hashtag as song title. The track is also further proof of Twitter’s unfaltering progress in lodging itself in the American cultural imagination. But the best news is that the song’s actually good! You’ll have a good-natured chuckle after taking in an earful and hanker after a lyrical belt-out, if not a jam session.
So beware: next time you’re getting down at a house party, it’s likely you’ll find yourself making emphatic head banging motions (à la Jellybean Johnson) between alternate shouts of “We trendin!” and entreaties to your dance floor cohorts, with earnestness and feeling, to “tweet it up ‘yall!” It’s also foreseeable that these will proceed to do just that, because as anyone who’s been out lately knows, people now dance with iPhones in hand — all the better to capture the awkward and suave moves of their “tweetie pie.”
The group has been grooving since 1981. A few years ago they performed their classic “Jungle Love” with Rihanna on the Grammy stage, and last month they opened the Soul Train Music Awards. “#Trendin” is available on iTunes.
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Big Changes for Twitter Before 2012
December 9, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Earlier today, Twitter invited the press to its still-under-construction new digs on San Francisco’s busy Market Street to announce some big news: a site redesign is going live before January. The updates are meant to make Twitter even more engaging and interactive. The overriding principle for the adjustments seems to have been making the site more accessible and easy to use, for both ordinary people and for advertisers. As it could only have been expected, a hashtag has been created for the new Twitter design: #LetsFly.
Dick Costolo, Twitter’s CEO, was quoted as saying: We are going to offer simplicity in a world of complexity.” Those who attended the conference did not miss the fact that many of the redesign’s aspects harked back to the Jobs-ian/Ive-ian minimalist aesthetic. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and current executive chairman, has called Steve Jobs his “mentor from afar.”
Because the company is looking to court advertisers, it needs to demonstrate Twitter’s potential for attracting and retaining readers. With the new design, embedding and watching videos in tweets will be much simpler and pages for brands will have more space for content. As of now, the company has no plans to charge for this additional space, but it’s only open to Disney, Pepsi, American Express, and Dell. Twitter said brand pages would be available other users later on.
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http://allthingsd.com/20111208/your-ad-here-twitters-big-brand-friendly-makeover/
“Bias-Riddled” Facebook Comments Attributed to NYPD Officers Surface
December 7, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
In September, Benjamin Moore, a Brooklyn attorney defending Tyrone Johnson from gun possession charges found “No More West Indian Day Detail,” a then-public Facebook group whose members were, presumably, actual New York City police officers venting about Brooklyn’s annual West Indian American Day Parade. The comments made by the group were vitriolic and openly racist. The group disappeared a few days after Moore encountered it, but he had already made a copy of the postings that went on for 70 pages.
Sgt. Dustin Edwards, the officer responsible for Tyrone Johnson’s arrest, belonged to the group. Subsequent journalistic fact-checking showed that group members’ names had a 60 percent match with those of registered police officers. After wielding his social media findings to acquit his client, Benjamin Moore gave a copy of them to the New York Times, arguing that the comments “raised broad questions about police attitudes.”
The disturbing commentary included statements like “Let them kill each other,” in reference to parade participants. With ominous echoes of last century’s and this one’s painful war history, one commenter declared: “I say have the parade one more year, and when they all gather drop a bomb and wipe them all out.” “Filth,” “savages,” “animals,” and “ghetto training,” were part of the documented hate speech.
Social media encourages casual, personal, and private conversations, but it really constitutes a new public record of everyday people’s lives and thoughts. The officers in question are now being investigated by the N.Y.P.D.’s Internal Affairs Bureau.
Above, women participate in the 2011 West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn, NY.
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Photographer Chris Floyd Takes Twitter Avatar to Next Level
December 5, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Chris Floyd, a popular photographer from the U.K., decided he wanted to meet his Twitter followers and take their mug while he was at it. The result is an exhibition that showed at the Foto8 Gallery in London last month. Tallied up, there are 140 subjects and the exhibit’s aptly titled “One Hundred and Forty Characters.”
Among these it’s possible to find some high-profile personages, including Lily Allen and Harry Potter’s Tom Felton. The portraits are in black and white. Stark, blank white is the only backdrop to Floyd’s Twitter followers, who were shot dressed in everyday clothes — simple dresses, slacks, and wrinkly button-downs or form-fitting tees. There are many group portraits and most individuals come out looking relaxed and goofy.
While chatting with the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes, the London-based shutterbug gave his take on the marvelous, and the not-so-marvelous, of social media: the ability to crowdsource, banter, form friendships, and keep-up appearances, for better or worse. Nevertheless, the photographer has massive love for Twitter. He likens it to a “huge, massive, endless free-flowing conversation with lots of interesting, witty people,” and asks, “What’s not to like?”
The photograph shown is part of the exhibit, and in it one can see: @sarahdrinkwater, @isabelleOC, and @carolineno (hidden).
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Twitter: Turning a Penny With Self-Service Advertising
December 2, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Twitter is making its way to big-time advertising, and the company is already demonstrating that it’s capable of turning a pretty penny. Jack Dorsey’s jaunty whale of a baby recently launched self-service advertising on a small scale, but it’s prepping the groundwork for a larger, well-executed, and calibrated lineup.
News of the ad service came from the lips of Adam Bain, Twitter’s Chief Revenue Officer. Bain said that for now, only a small group of businesses were being offered the service. Self-service advertising is a huge deal because that’s one of the avenues Google used to reach its gigantic proportions. According to reports by eMarketer, three-fifths of Facebook’s $3.8 billion grand total of advertising revenue in 2011 came from self-service ads.
Back at Twitter, Bain himself gave out two interesting numbers: Less than a year and a half ago, Twitter had six advertisers; today, it has 2,400. To tackle the added golden bulk, Twitter hired around 100 new staff. By eMarketer’s estimates, Twitter should be pulling in around $399.5 million in ad profits by 2013; that’s up from 2010’s $45 million showing.
That Twitter is stepping out thoughtfully bodes well for its future capacity to deal with spam and ad fraud. Above, Adam Bain grins for the camera.
Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/02/BUHO1M726N.DTL
Facebook Increases Status Update Limit to 63,000 Characters
December 1, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
On Facebook, the company team posted an image whose graphic text announced a new limit for status updates: 63,206 characters. It’s rather staggering if compared to Twitter’s or even Facebook’s own from a few years back. Nevertheless, Google weighs in as the heavyweight champ in this matter; it currently boasts a peerless 100,000 character limit.
It’s still a very nice try from Facebook. The graphic also displays a nifty timeline of Facebook’s rapid progression into the character limit stratosphere with shaded box visualizations and all to compare the limit increases. Originally, FB’s updates could not exceed 160 characters, but that changed in 2009 to 420 characters. This past July it reached 500; two months later 5,000, and less than three months afterwards it’s at 63,206. Is there a reason for the accelerating limit?
There’s no clear info on that besides Mark Zuckerberg and Co. not wanting to let Google out-edge it in any important factor. If that’s solely the case, then another value increase may be in the works. Although, the final value seems to not have been completely random. According to Bob Baldwin, the software engineer who “chose” the number, he reached it through the following “nerdy” way: “Facebook … Face Boo K … hex(FACE) – K … 64206 – 1000 = 63206.” Go figure.
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