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.
Read More:
https://www.facebook.com/schrep/posts/203969696349811
Facebook to Settle with the Federal Trade Commission Regarding Broken Privacy Promises
November 29, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
In a press release, today, the Federal Trade Commission gave news that it had reached a settlement with Facebook regarding charges of consumer deception and broken privacy promises. Although the document noted that the charges fell under the umbrella category of “administrative complaint,” and did not constitute a ruling with respect to the violation of the law, the commission believes that Facebook transgressed federal law when it told users that their information would remain private and unavailable to third parties like advertisers or the general public, which was not the case. The FTC called Facebook’s claims “unfair and deceptive.”
With the settlement, which is open to public comments until December 30th of this year, Facebook will agree to henceforth give “clear and prominent notice and obtai[n] consumers’ express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established.” Another part of the deal is that for the coming twenty years, Facebook will undergo regular audits, about every two years, to assess its privacy practices.
Jon Leibowits, the FTC’s chairman, said that “Facebook is obligated to keep the promises about privacy that it makes to its hundreds of millions of users,” and that “Facebook’s innovation does not have to come at the expense of consumer privacy.” Adding, “The FTC action will ensure it will not.”
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http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/11/privacysettlement.shtm
Kansas Teen’s Tweet of Dissent Goes Viral
November 28, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Most people know that one’s social media presence must be well managed, lest potential employers, college admissions officers, or would-be beaux got the wrong idea. But what if your state governor was the one who got the wrong idea about you? That’s just the question Emma Sullivan, an eighteen-year-old high school senior from Kansas, had to grapple with last week.
Shortly before Thanksgiving break, Sullivan went to the Kansas state Capitol for a Youth in Government program. While there, she tweeted “Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.” The “he” in the tweet’s hashtag refers to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, who’s a conservative Republican.
The governor’s sharp-eyed social media sleuths spotted the tweet and, rather quickly, the administrators at Emma Sullivan’s high school, Shawnee Mission East, issued a request that Sullivan address a letter of apology to the governor. The plucky teenager refused and her plight garnered mass media attention. A big spectacle was created and today the governor himself released a letter of apology to Sullivan, declaring: “My staff overreacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize. Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms.”
Sullivan currently has 12,436 Twitter followers. For anyone who’s wondering, the governor has 3,285 followers.
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IBM Uses Social Media to Look at the Future of High Heels
November 25, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
It seems that every news cycle brings with it a trend piece about women’s fashion and what its latest manifestations portend, or reveal, about the current state of the broader economic climate. This cycle’s trend piece is here, and it comes courtesy of IBM — yes, that IBM.
IBM may not be the first brand that springs to mind when one thinks of fashion, but the famous technology firm took it upon itself to analyze, with the help of its analytics software, naturally, four years’ worth of social media content to gauge the winds of change in the height of women’s shoes, a pop economic indicator that sits right alongside red lipstick sales in econ books.
An IBM press release about the investigation stated that the social media posts analyzed numbered in the billions. Because their analysis suggests that heel height is declining, IBM’s cultural forecasters are also positing that people may be preparing for long-term austerity. The latter is on account of the observed heel height increase during economic downturns and flattening out during boom times.
But IBM had another aim in mind with its experiment: the promotion of its analytics tools. According to the same press release, the point of the investigation was to “highligh[t] the predictive capabilities of social media analysis as a source of valuable insight that can help drive business strategies and results.” IBM believes it has the tools marketers need to incorporate quantitative social media data into their business decisions.
Read More:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/35985.wss
Britney Spears Beats Larry Page as Google+’s Most Followed Person
November 23, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Tonight, Katy Perry may be “giving thanks” in grand style with a free concert in L.A.’s Staples Center, but this Thanksgiving Eve, Britney Spears received an unexpectedly special gesture of thanks from her own fans. As of today, they’ve managed to propel her to the very top of Google+ popularity, which means she’s wrested the top spot from Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and CEO. And, that’s not to pile on faint praise on the often controversial singer. Larry Page himself had to contend with taking the top spot from Mark Zuckerberg, his social networking nemesis, a few months ago.
Although this remains good news for Britney, it’s spelling out even better news for Google’s honchos, including Page. As industry writers have been diligently pointing out, riding the high popularity crests of Google+ had been limited to consummate tech-ists like Page and Zuckerberg for a while. Sure, these folks are celebrities, but they’re mostly extolled by the extant and proudly persnickety gaggles of technophiles out there. That these divergent groups are growing at astounding speed no one doubts, but it must be pretty reaffirming for Google that its social network is finally becoming, as some put it, “normal,” thanks to the stronger showing of mainstream celebrity following. Snoop Dog currently occupies third place on Google+.
Read More:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/11/britney-spears-best-thing-happen-google/45374/
Facebook Researchers Say It’s 4.74 Degrees of Separation, Not Six
November 22, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Facebook teamed up with the Università degli Studi di Milano to revisit Stanley Milgram’s 1967 experiment concerning the number of social connections separating any two people. The results from the new investigation point to there being a separation of 4.74 degrees between individuals instead of six. The Italian and American team’s conclusions were published Monday on Facebook. The two research papers can be read at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4503 and http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4570.
During the original Milgram experiment, data obtained from a mere 296 volunteers was used. By comparison, Facebook and U. degli Studi di Milano looked at data from all 721 million of Facebook’s users. As everyone is mentioning, that number is more than one-tenth of the entire world’s population.
The notion of “six degrees of separation,” has had a long history. It first appeared in 1929 in the Hungarian short story “Chains,” by Frigyes Karinthy. More recently, the idea was popularized in United States by the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which players attempt to connect anyone within the movie industry to the Footloose actor. The premise is that anyone can be connected to Bacon within six degrees.
Via Twitter, Bacon himself agreed with those opining that the new figure lacks the sonorous ring of the old one.
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On Facebook, Rihanna’s Entire New Album is Streaming for Free
November 21, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Shakira and Barack Obama may currently be besting Rihanna in Twitter rankings, but the Barbadian songstress is doing her part on the social media scene to change the status quo. Last week, RiRi, as she’s known to her fans, let pop music lovers everywhere get a compete earful of her newest album, “Talk That Talk,” through her Facebook page. The free Facebook streaming came four days before the official November 21st release date.
Today, you can head over to the most impossibly retro-cool record shop around to get your hands on the disc, download it from iTunes, or continue streaming it for free to save some money for Thursday’s feast. The pre-release Facebook streaming of Rihanna’s sixth album was part of “Unlocked,” a big publicity campaign that so far has proved successful.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that since “Unlocked” began, Rihanna has gained a million new Twitter followers and over 700,000 Facebook fans. The campaign, which got underway in September, involved delegating “missions” to fans; upon their completion, information about Rihanna’s new studio material was revealed.
As of this writing, the first single off “Talk That Talk,” “We Found Love,” is at the top of Billboard’s Hot 100. On the left is the cover of the album’s deluxe edition.
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/11/rihanna-streams-talk-that-talk-on-facebook.html
Demi Moore Makes Public Her Intention to Divorce Ashton Kutcher; He Confirms News Via Twitter
November 18, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Ashton Kutcher, who last week handed over the management of his Twitter account to an editorial team, reacted via that same account to the public statements made by Demi Moore, his wife, concerning her decision to file for divorce. On Ashton’s Twitter feed appeared the following message:
I will forever cherish the time I spent with Demi. Marriage is one of the most difficult things in the world and unfortunately sometimes they fail. Love and Light, AK
As it’s been extensively reported here and elsewhere, Kutcher, a TV and film actor, has been a very visible proponent of social media; he was the first person to reach a million followers on Twitter. The couple’s individual Twitter feeds were enormously popular. Kutcher and Moore said their marriage vows in September 2005. Demi Moore, who was previously married to Bruce Willis for almost 13 years, made her statements through the Associated Press.
“It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I have decided to end my six-year marriage to Ashton. As a woman, a mother and a wife there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life. This is a trying time for me and my family, and so I would ask for the same compassion and privacy that you would give to anyone going through a similar situation,” were Demi’s words.
Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/11/17/national/a132757S69.DTL#ixzz1e6pwYEfC
