Showing posts with label social networks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social networks. Show all posts

Saturday, February 22, 2014

How to Draft Eye-catching Social Media bios


Drafting eye-catching social media bios may be one of the few things you have ignored in your product or service marketing strategy. Of course you already have accounts on a bunch of different social media, and you are using them to your advantage! Your bios on social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Google Plus is important part of how you’re represented on the Internet.
A great bio displays your personality and professionalism year-round, and it’s also a quick and easy way for you to garner interest from potential clients.Here are the most important things you need to know when writing different types of professional bios.

Draft Eye-catching Social Media bios #1

 Show, don’t tell: “What have I done” > “Who I am”  Lots of us are fans, enthusiasts, thinkers and gurus on our social media profiles. But might it be more powerful if we talked instead about harnessing ideas, wrangling revenue, obsessing over culture and shepherding our teams?
The “show, don’t tell” principle of writing means focusing on what you do, not who you are – and that means action verbs. Try this list of action verbs for resumes and see if any of them add a little power to your profile.
LinkedIn senior manager for corporate communications Krista Canfield says the more details, the better to add some show to your tell.
“Don’t just say you’re creative. Make sure you reference specific projects you worked on that demonstrate your creativity,” she says.

Draft Eye-catching Social Media bios #2

 Tailor your keywords specifically to your audience. “Your Twitter bio should position you as an expert in your field who serves a specific audience,”says Dan Schawbel, author of Promote Yourself.
According to a PayScale Inc. study Schwabel was involved in, 65% of managers want to hire and promote subject matter experts.
Skip the generalist route and focus on what you’re an expert at. Those areas of focus are your keywords, and they should be front and center in any professional bio. All social media profiles are searchable to some degree, so being specific positions you to be able to be found easily for what you’re best at.


Draft Eye-catching Social Media bios #3

Keep language fresh and avoid buzzwords like the following: It happens – a once loved and useful word stops being so useful when it’s overtaxed. In your professional bio, think over the language and make sure it feels fresh, not overused.

Draft Eye-catching Social Media bios #4

 Answer one question for the reader: “What’s in it for me?” No matter what feats you’ve accomplished, potential followers mostly want to know one thing about you: What’s in it for me?
In marketing, that’s known as a value proposition – the promise of value to be delivered. What can followers expect from you? What value do you bring?

Draft Eye-catching Social Media bios #5

 Get personal and hire a stand-up comedian to write your bio: That last little tidbit of the bio – usually where a funny quip or a more personal fact goes – often trips us up the most. Being funny is tough – that’s why social media agency owner Gary Vaynerchuk often hires stand-up comedians to write social media posts. And it’s tough to pick one element of a fully rounded personality to focus on.
The key again, is specificity. Lots of us love social media, coffee and bacon. But if you love llamas, jelly donuts and spelunking, you just might stand out and connect with some interesting new people. Tell a one-of-a-kind story. What hobbies and passions are uniquely yours?

Draft Eye-catching Social Media bios #6

Revisit often: As your skills, areas of interest and expertise evolve, so should your bio. Check it every quarter or so to make sure it still reflects you the best it can.“The very best practitioners of short writing on blogs, on social networks, are people who are working over their prose. They’re revising it, with the same care they would if they were putting it on paper,” says Clark.
Source: bufferappblog

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Facebook buys Whatsapp for $19bn


Facebook has agreed to buy the mobile messaging company WhatsApp for $19bn (£11.4bn), the social network has announced.
The company said in a statement that it would pay $4bn (£2.4bn) in cash and $15bn (£9bn) in Facebook shares as part of the deal.
The app's founders and employees will get $3bn (£1.8bn) of the shares as restricted stock that will vest over four years after the deal closes.
The purchase marks the largest single acquisition in Facebook's 10-year history.
WhatsApp is a real-time mobile messaging service with more than 450 million monthly users. The app has more than one million new registered users each day.
WhatsApp will "continue to operate independently and retain its brand" despite the acquisition, Facebook said.
"WhatsApp is on a path to connect one billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.
Founded by a Ukrainian immigrant who dropped out of college, Jan Koum, and a Stanford alumnus, Brian Acton, WhatsApp is a Silicon Valley startup fairytale.
"I've known (WhatsApp CEO) Jan (Koum) for a long time and I'm excited to partner with him and his team to make the world more open and connected."
He added that the service "doesn't get as much attention in the US as it deserves because its community started off growing in Europe, India and Latin America.
"But WhatsApp is a very important and valuable worldwide communication network.
"In fact, WhatsApp is the only widely used app we've ever seen that has more engagement and a higher percent of people using it daily than Facebook itself."
The acquisition will also see Mr Koum - a former Yahoo! engineer - join Facebook's board of directors.
"WhatsApp's extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide," Mr Koum said.
"We're excited and honoured to partner with Mark and Facebook as we continue to bring our product to more people around the world."

Facebook is known to make bold moves to thwart competitors - it famously bought Instagram for $1bn after a weekend of negotiations.
Source skynews

Monday, November 18, 2013

25 smart keyboard shortcuts that can improve your twitter experience




It is generally acknowledged by  that you can increase your productivity and accomplish more tasks by using the keyboard shortcuts. In other words, it’s easier and gets your job done faster.However, there are tasks that are much easier done with the mouse, take the example of browsing the web pages and clicking links but at the same time you can use the keyboard to navigate within the page or between tabs.Modern web have be designed in a manner that incorporates use of keyboard shortcuts.Twitter is a web app used by millions of individuals all over the world and following below are some cool and smart keyboard shortcuts that will improve your experience while using the app.


B = Block User


F = Favorite


J = Next Tweet


K = Previous Tweet


L = Close Open Tweets


M = New Direct MessageImage courtesy of Kristel Hayes

N = New Tweet


R = Reply


T = Retweet


U = Unblock User


GA = Activity Page


GC = Connect Page


GD = Discover Page


GF = Favorites


GH = Home


GL = Lists


GM = Messages


GP = Profile


GR = Mentions


GS = Settings


GU = Go to a Profile


Space = Page Down


Forward Slash = Search


Period = Load New Tweets


Question Mark = Load Shortcut Menu

Sunday, November 3, 2013

How to Block irritating Friends and Apps on Your Timeline


how-to-block-irritating-friends-and-apps-on-facebook-timeline

Your friends are having a fun time with some trendy new Facebook app and you don't want to be the cranky curmudgeon that complains, but you also don't want to see their posts. What do you do? Block the app of course.
While this feature isn't particularly new, it can prove very handy if you're one of the growing number of people who don't like to see certain apps. To permanently end the flood of posts from a particular app, here's what you need to do:

  • Click the drop down menu attached to the post itself.
  • Select "Hide all from [app name]." (Note: if you're using the new interface, you may have to select "Hide" and then choose to block all from that app.)
  • Have fun.
 If you ever need to unblock the app for whatever reason, you can undo it by going to your Facebook Settings and, under Blocking, removing the block on the app. Though, in certain cases, you may never even want to.This trick works for people too, as we've mentioned before, but we thought this was worth revisiting with the rise in certain apps.


Source: Lifehacker

Saturday, October 19, 2013

7 incredible uses of Facebook Graph Search


Facebook has just given its Graph Search another boost, and those who have been upgraded are now able to search post history as well as photo history. This has made many people wonder just what sort of uses they might put this to in everyday life. We’ve previously covered some cool Facebook Graph searches, but what sorts of searches might be useful or interesting to a regular Facebook user on a more daily basis? Let’s take a look.

Chat About Your Favourite Topic
Try a search like “Posts about Breaking Bad by my friends” and you’ll be presented with all sorts of opinionated comments by your friends. It doesn’t matter if they wrote them a few weeks ago or just yesterday. If you comment and add your voice to the conversation, it will revive the thread, no matter how old it is.

Find That Old Post
So, you made a comment the other day on some link a friend of yours shared. Now you want to share the link for some reason, but you can’t seem to find it in their timeline. You may not even be searching the right friend’s timeline. Sound familiar? This is where a Graph Search comes in really handy. Search for “Posts by my friends about xyz” or “Posts I commented on” and you’ll find it.

Revive Memories
If you are procrastinating on Facebook and want a trip down memory lane, try checking out “My posts from last year” or “My photos from last year”. This will allow you to mull over your own posts. Or if you just want to get all nostalgic, try the infallible “Photos of my friends I like” or “Photos of my friends and me”. Those will keep you going for days. Memories…

Catch Up With Your Friends
If you’re more interested in your friends and family, check out things like “Photos of my family”, “Photos of my friends from the last month”, or even “Posts by my friends from last month”. Checking out “Photos of my friends from my hometown” will also lead you into a nostalgia-filled haze.
If you want to find out who has been doing interesting things, try a search like “Posts written at The White House”, or limit it to your friends and something that interests you, like a recent festival. For example, “Posts by my friends written at PukkelPop”.

Destination Ideas
If you want to see who’s been holidaying, try something like “Photos of my friends taken in London”, “Hotels in Berlin visited by my friends” or whatever other destination you want to check out. Since you can search public check-ins, Facebook suggests you can also do sneaky searches like “Restaurants in New York liked by graduates of the Culinary Institute of America” or “Cafes in Paris, France, visited by people who live in Paris, France”. If you know your local culinary school name you could probably find the upcoming new restaurants in your area before they get big.
You could even try to find your kind of hangout place by cross-referencing places people go with movies they like. So, if you are looking for a hipster hangout, try searching for something like “Cafes in New York, New York visited by people who like The Perks of Being a Wallflower”. If you’re more into geek culture, try something like “Restaurants in London, United Kingdom visited by people who like The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

Meeting Local People For Fun
Don’t forget that Facebook can be easily used to connect with people who like the same things as yourself. I’m sure that was the whole point of Facebook, once.
If you want people to hang out with for the weekend, try searches like “My friends who live in my city”, “Friends in my city who like camping”, “Friends of friends who live nearby and like playing tennis”. If you want to find hyper local Facebook groups, try a search like “Groups people who live in my city are in”.

Find Media Recommendations
If you need a new TV series to get sucked into, here’s a great search for you. Try “TV shows liked by people who like the TV shows that I like”, or even better, try “TV shows liked by friends who like the TV shows that I like”. Thanks to this search, I’ve just added “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” to my Amazon wishlist.
Finding new things to check out just keeps getting easier and easier. Don’t forget, this same search is extremely useful to find music, movies, books and apps. You can even mix it up a little. If you’re not much of a reader, search for books liked by people who like the same movies you like, or TV shows, or whatever.

Facebook Graph Search Privacy
Don’t forget that what you see (and what others see) in Graph Search is only what is visible according to the privacy settings of the individuals. If you want to ensure your privacy settings are sufficiently locked down, check out our guide to Facebook Graph Search privacy. Also, check out how people might use Facebook as an interpersonal weapon and how you can see and hide all of your “likes”. You especially want to do this if you’re looking for a job at the moment!
Source: Makeuseof

Have any cool Graph Search ideas to share? Tell us in the comments.

Monday, January 21, 2013

How to optimize your Facebook business Page for Graph Search

With Facebook’s introduction of Graph Search on Tuesday, businesses are naturally curious to find out how they can take advantage of the tool, even though it’s currently only in limited preview for English audiences. Facebook has naturally made it a point to explain what businesses should be doing.
Facebook says Graph Search will make it easier for people to discover your Page and learn more about your business. Whether that will indeed be the case remains to be seen, but if you want to stay ahead of the game then you should take the new feature seriously.

Aside from doing the usual maintenance to ensure your Page is complete and up-to-date, Facebook recommends the following:

The name, category, vanity URL, and information you share in the “About” section all help people find your business and should be shared on Facebook.
    If you have a location or a local place Page, update your address to make sure you can appear as a result when someone is searching for a specific location.
    Focus on attracting the right fans to your Page and on giving your fans a reason to interact with your content on an ongoing basis.

The first two points are pretty straightforward: the more information, and the more accurate information you put on Facebook, the more likely your Page will show up in a search. The third one shows that Facebook will be taking growth into account when surfacing Pages, not just current popularity.

Facebook gives a few examples of queries it expects its members to use with Graph Search: “sushi restaurants that my friends have been to in Los Angeles,” “hotels near the Eiffel Tower,” or “TV shows my friends like.” The second one is your typical Google search, but the first and third are clearly meant for Facebook, and that’s an important thing to remember here.

There’s SEO and then there’s Facebook SEO. If Graph Search takes off, the latter will become a big business.
Source: WSD blog

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Facebook Employees Now Billions Richer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It's the day some Facebook employees have waited years for: Their paper wealth now has an official cash value, to the tune of $5.2 billion.
Before this week, those employees were rich only on paper. That's because Facebook used a special form of equity compensation called "restricted stock units" that become actual, tradeable stock only after a liquidity event -- in this case, Facebook's May 18 IPO.
Facebook's current and past employees hold about 225 million of those so-called RSUs. They will officially be converted into stock on Thursday, using Wednesday's closing price of $23.23.
The shares will remain locked up for a few days. On Monday, October 29, their owners can cash in by selling them on the stock market. Adding together the RSUs and other stocks and options that are also being unlocked, a total of 234 million shares will be newly eligible for sale that day.
The employees' RSUs are worth around $5.2 billion, based on Wednesday's closing price.
It's less than they might have expected earlier in the year, because Facebook shares have plummeted since May.
Facebook's stock rose more than 19% on Wednesday after the company's earnings report the night before. That was the biggest single-day gain since Facebook's May IPO. Wall Street responded well to Facebook's growing ad sales and efforts to monetize its growing pool of mobile users.
Facebook's employees won't take home every penny of their stock haul. They have to pay Uncle Sam first.
Unlike stock options, which traditionally carry a "strike" price at which recipients can purchase shares, restricted stock units are granted outright at zero cost to employees. The IRS taxes RSUs as ordinary income on their full market value as of the day they vest.
Employers are required to withhold taxes when they settle RSUs. For many at Facebook -- whose windfalls can easily reach into the millions -- that will mean paying taxes at the top income tax rate. That's 35% this year for federal taxes. California, where most Facebook employees live, levies an additional 10.3% tax on individual income over $1 million.
Facebook says the tax rates will average around 45%, so it plans to withhold 101 million of its employees' 225 million shares to cover the bill. Instead of selling those shares on the open market, Facebook will hang on to them and dip into its own cash stash to pay the estimated tax bill of nearly $2.3 billion. The maneuver essentially functions like a stock buyback and reduces Facebook's outstanding share count.
For Facebook's rank-and-file employees, Monday will be the first chance most have had to sell off some of their stock holdings and turn their paper wealth into actual cash. If a large number of them decide to sell immediately, the stock could suffer a drop.
That's what happened in August. Shares fell 6% on the day that some of Facebook's investors and earliest executives first had the chance to sell off their shares.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Tumblr to feature ads

 Tumblr, a microblogging platform and social networking website owned and operated by Tumblr, Inc, will feature ads directed at users as early as May 2.
Two years ago, Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp said the thought of advertising “really turns our stomachs.” Oops.
The blogging platform announced yesterday it will begin featuring paid advertising in May, according to Ad Age. At Ad Age’s Digital Conference, Karp said Tumblr will offer space on a user’s dashboard—and admitted he was probably an “idiot” to have made his earlier comment.
Though Tumblr has partnered with companies before on various marketing projects (think Warby Barker and the Hunger Games spinoff Capitol Couture), this will mark the first time brands pay for advertising space on the platform itself.
To date the company has made money by taking a cut from custom blog theme sales. The social media company raised about $85 million in September, bringing its total funding to approximately $125 million, Ad Age reports.

Friday, April 6, 2012

Pinterest: the third most popular social site.

Pinterest, launched on March 2010, is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies and more. Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, 're-pin' images to their own collections and or 'like' photos.
Now it's the third most-visited social-networking site in the United States, according to a report released Thursday by Experian Marketing Services, a digital marketing firm.
Pinterest, which lets its users "pin" photos and info from the Internet onto virtual boards, ranks behind only Facebook and Twitter in terms of total visitors, according to the analysis, titled "The 2012 Digital Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report."
The ranking is based on the total number of U.S. visitors during March and does not include mobile traffic, according to Experian spokeswoman Jennifer Marshall.
Last month, Facebook had more than 7 billion total visitors; Twitter had 182 million; and Pinterest had 104 million total visits from people in the United States, according to data sent to CNN by Experian.
That ranking puts the newbie site ahead of heavyweights such as LinkedIn, Google+, MySpace and Tumblr.
"The site has really just rocketed," said Matt Tatham, another spokesman from Experian. "It's just been tremendous since (Pinterest) took off around October and then in the last few months. With Pinterest, it's kind of a new take on an old thing. Social networking is great. Pinterest is great. The way people are sharing on Pinterest is new."
One caveat: Since the data doesn't include mobile traffic, sites such as Twitter, which sees much of its traffic from smartphones and tablets, may take a hit in this ranking, Tatham said.
Pinterest's traffic jumped 50% between January and February. The report calls the site "the hottest social media start-up since Facebook and YouTube."
Those stats add momentum to a site that already had become one of the hottest topics of conversation on tech blogs and was known to be one of the fastest-growing networks.
In February, Pinterest was the third-fastest-growing site on the Internet in the United States, with 17.8 million unique visitors that month, compared with 11.7 million in January, according to a report from another Internet tracking company, comScore.
Plus, it can't hurt when the U.S. president joins your website.
Pinterest launched in March 2010, but it has grown rapidly only in the past six months. Unlike many social-media darlings, tech bloggers in Silicon Valley largely ignored the site until they noticed that it was growing like mad.
The site's co-founder, Ben Silbermann, sounds somewhat surprised by the growth.
"It's a really humbling feeling that all these people are using something that you helped make," Silbermann said in an on-stage Q&A at last month's South by Southwest Interactive conference.
At that conference, he announced that an iPad app and new pinboards were coming soon.
Those boards -- where people pin photos of products they'd like to buy and other interesting bits of info they find while trolling the Internet -- are key to Pinterest's success, he said.
"To me, boards are a very human way of seeing the world," he said at SXSW. "The site is about helping people to discover things they didn't know they wanted -- things that feel like they've been handpicked just for you."
Some other Pinterest-y stats for you to chew on:
The site skews female -- about 60% of users are women -- and to the middle of the country, according to the report from Experian. Pinterest is most popular relative to other social networks in Missouri, Utah, Alabama, Oklahoma and Kansas, the report said.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Mischievous Chrome extensions capture Facebook accounts

Cybercriminals are uploading malicious Google Chrome extensions which hijack Facebook accounts to the official Chrome Web Store. The rogue extensions are advertised on Facebook by scammers and claim to do things such as “Change the color of your profile” or “Discover who visited your profile” or “Learn how to remove the virus from your Facebook profile.”
Once you install one of the rogue Chrome extensions, it gives attackers complete control over your Facebook account. The scammers then use your account to spam your friends with a tempting message suggesting they also download the malware. Furthermore, the malware also automatically Likes certain Facebook Pages as part of a pay-per-Like scheme.
That’s how the scammers make their money: they’re in the business of selling Likes, and once they accumulate enough Facebook accounts, they can give companies quite a boost on users’ News Feeds by Liking corresponding Facebook Pages. In one example, scammers offered packages of 1,000, 10,000, 50,000, and 100,000 Likes, for R$ 50 ($28), R$ 450 ($248), R$2,115 ($1,164), and R$3,990 (2,196), respectively.
As you can see in the screenshot above, one such rogue extension masqueraded as Adobe Flash Player. Before it was reported to Google so that the search giant could remove it from the Chrome Web Store, it had already been installed by almost 1,000 users. Unfortunately, when such malicious extensions are taken down by Google, new ones quickly take their place, along with new Facebook spam campaigns. The result is thousands of compromised Facebook accounts.
“We reported this malicious extension to Google and they removed it quickly,” Kaspersky Lab Expert Fabio Assolini said in a statement. “But we noted the bad guys behind this malicious scheme are uploading new extensions regularly, in a cat and mouse game.”
The security firm says it has seen a sudden increase in such attacks originating from Brazil. This might be because of two Internet milestones that happened late last year: Chrome surpassed Internet Explorer to become the most popular browser (according to StatCounter) and Facebook became the most popular social network (see Facebook finally overtakes Google Orkut in Brazil).
Since the scams, which have been around for weeks, are written in Portuguese, they are mainly confined to Portuguese-speaking Chrome and Facebook users. It wouldn’t take much, however, to have them translated into English and other languages. Both Facebook and Google will have to work to fight this one.
Malicious browser add-ons and extensions are not a new strategy for scammers. That being said, leveraging the official Chrome Web Store is a smart move, because users are more likely to trust an extension that looks like it was approved by Google. It doesn’t help that many legitimate Chrome extensions exist for altering Facebook (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
Furthermore, few users know that browser extensions can intercept everything they do through the browser. This means changing your password won’t help you if an extension is performing unauthorized actions on active sessions while you browse the Web.
“Be careful when using Facebook,” Assolini warned. “And think twice before installing a Google Chrome extension.”

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Twitter to sell users' old tweets to marketers

For years now, companies have been combing through Twitter postings, trying to glean any information that may help them improve their products and services.
But with more than 250 million tweets sent every day, it would take an enormous staff to analyze the data.
That task gave rise to hundreds of social media-monitoring companies, but they were still limited to the tweets that could be accessed by individual users.
Twitter, however, has decided to make it easier for these companies to mine billions of messages for valuable marketing data. The company will open its archives and sell its old tweets.
One of Twitter's new customers, DataSift, has formed an alliance with the social network to get access to tweets going back to January 2010.
"Twitter has really become an incredibly valuable information source," said Rob Bailey, DataSift's CEO. "There are a flood of companies wanting to get more use from it."
Starting next month, DataSift will launch a cloud-based service that will allow other companies to analyze these two-plus years of tweets to learn more about their customers.
According to its website, DataSift promises customers will be able to "unlock trends from public tweets" and "access the full Twitter firehose."
Users will pay DataSift for only the data it retrieves. DataSift will then share part of the revenue with Twitter.
The company emphasizes it won't have access to deleted tweets or users' direct messages.
Twitter also has partnered with Gnip, a Colorado-based online data-mining company, to license its historical tweets.
Because Twitter is a public forum, privacy watchdogs may face difficulties raising objections.
"We welcome the privacy debate," said Bailey, who is based in San Francisco.
Twitter so far is not commenting publicly about its new partnership.
CNN

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Google Plus users spent just 3.3 minutes there last month


 A new report by comScore  states that  users spent just 3.3 minutes on Google+ in January compared to 7.5 hours for Facebook.
The gulf between usage on G+ and Facebook has always been large, but comScore's numbers show a downward trend for Google's fledgling social network. Users spent 4.8 minutes on the network in December and 5.1 minutes in November, the report said.
The usage figures come after Google has trotted out some impressive stats outlining Google+'s growth. In a call with analysts last month, Google CEO Larry Page said Google+ had 90 million users compared to 40 million in October.
Reps from Google could not be reached for comment on the report. In the past, Google has taken issue with third-party reports about Google+, noting that they don't track users who access the site remotely, among other factors. (ComScore doesn't include mobile users in its data, though it plans to soon.)
Google is putting a huge amount of emphasis on Google+. Last April, Page told employees that 25% of their annual bonuses would be tied to the company's social strategy that year, which primarily involved the yet-to-be-announced Plus. The company also integrated Google+ results into searches in January, a program it calls "Google Plus Your World."
Despite the latest report, though, there's some encouraging news for Google: Website-Monitoring crunched the numbers this month and found that Google+ is getting less male dominated and is catching on big in India, where 13.69% of Plussers now originate.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Football coach resigns after posting a nude photo on Facebook

A longtime high school football coach in Maine has resigned after one of the more embarrassing and bizarre social media snafus in recent memory (if not of all time) when he accidentally posted a nude photo of himself on Facebook. The lewd photo was viewable by the general public and was recognized by a parent of a player on his football team, leading to the coach's self-imposed departure.
As reported by the Bangor Daily News, Associated Press and a handful of other Maine media outlets, South Paris (Maine) Oxford Hills Comprehensive High football coach Paul Withee tendered his resignation as both a football coach and math and science teacher in the Oxford Hills School District on Monday, days after he inadvertently sparked a major scandal by accidentally posting a completely nude photo of himself on his publicly viewable Facebook page.
Withee allegedly claims the racy photos were only intended for his girlfriend, but the coach -- who has led Oxford Hills' program since the 2009-10 school year -- posted them to his general Facebook profile instead.
While Withee has refused public comment on the incident, Oxford Hills Superintendent Rick Colpitts told Portland ABC affiliate WMTW that the photo was only online for approximately 10 minutes before it was removed. Despite that brief air time, Withee's rather bare photo was seen by a football parent, who immediately reported the incident. It has not been divulged whether Withee removed the photo of his own accord or whether he was told that the shot could be seen by his entire Facebook network and then took it down.
Either way, the brief nude incident raised flags for the Oxford Hills School District because of a general policy stance that allows for teachers to be friends with students on Facebook. That means that students could have possibly seen Withee's nude photo in their own timeline, even if there is no indication that any did.
That concern of exposure to Oxford Hills students motivated the school district to open its own investigation into the incident, though WMTW reported that investigation had since been closed because of Withee's resignation.
While there are any number of common sense lessons that Withee's former students can take from their teacher and coach's fall (never post naked photos of yourself anywhere on the Internet chief among them), the need for strong privacy settings on social media sites is certainly likely to sink in at this point. If that does, perhaps Withee's departure won't be for naught, even if it has brought on one of the strangest justifications for a coach's departure in recent memory.

Myspace Resurrects


Myspace, the social network  that surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States  in June 2006 has risen up once again.From 2005 until early 2008 Myspace was the dominant social-networking site but the rise of Facebook lowered the popularity of the site.According to the company, Myspace added   1 million new users over the past month.
"The numbers tell an amazing story of strong momentum and dramatic change for Myspace," said Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Myspace. "And the 1 million-plus new user accounts we've seen in the last 30 days validates our approach."
A team of investors bought out Myspace in June for the fire-sale price of $35 million. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. paid (many would say overpaid) $580 million for it in 2005.
The new owners, most notably pop star/actor Timberlake, have effectively stopped trying to compete with Facebook and other social sites, instead focusing on Myspace's superior platform for posting and listening to music.
Monday's release from Specific Media credited the site's new music player, with access to more than 42 million songs, as offering the Web's biggest collection of free music.
By comparison, Internet darling Spotify, which launched in the United States in July, was claiming 15 million songs at that time.
"Myspace is building meaningful social entertainment experience around content, where consumers can share and discover the music they love," Vanderhook said. "Consumers are getting excited about Myspace again -- a testament to a great music product."
The new Myspace player offers unlimited, on-demand listening to both established and unsigned artists, personalized radio modes, a recommendation engine and easy integration with Facebook.
Obviously, it remains to be seen whether the resurgence (which has amounted to roughly 40,000 new sign-ups a day) will continue. But with Spotify beginning to limit the number of songs users with free accounts can play, it seems possible there could be space for a new online music player serving up similar content for free.
Well, there competition in the social network arena is high considering the fact one can still post and listen to music in the other social networks.Let us wait and see what Myspace can offer.


Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Teacher reprimanded for "improper" comments on Facebook


A teacher has been reprimanded after comments about drinking and parties appeared on her Facebook site and were viewed by pupils.
Elizabeth Scarlett was disciplined by the General Teaching Council for Wales.
But Mrs Scarlett, 50, who used to teach at Trinant Primary School in Crumlin, Caerphilly county, claimed her former partner posted sexual comments.
Because the panel could not be sure she had written them, it disciplined her because of her other posts.
After the hearing a social media expert said teachers should set up separate sites to be friends with pupils.
Mrs Scarlett, who has now left the school, did not appear at the hearing.
Presenting officer Louise Price said the teacher portrayed herself as a "very different person" from the one she was at school and ex-pupils responded to this.

"She discussed being 100% naughty and liking to party hard," Ms Price said.
"She used Facebook to freely discuss her favourite pupils, she talks about the best site to buy sex toys, her sexual preferences and talks about alcohol with an 11-year-old."
Using the site, she told a former pupil: "You should pop up to see me or even better we can go out for a drink or clubbing, I'm a very different person outside school I like to party hard - life is for the living.
"I'm not a teacher on here. I'm just like anyone else, I drink, swear... but don't tell anyone."
Another comment read: "Ms Scarlett's back from the pub. Had a diet coke. If you believe that you will believe anything."
'Very addictive' Head teacher Graham Phillips said he thought her comments were "inappropriate and improper".
He added: "When you become a teacher I think you agree to uphold a certain set of standards to behave in a certain way and act as a role model."
In a statement, Mrs Scarlett said she turned to the website after a relationship ended.
"I found it very addictive," she said. "I was consoling myself after breaking up with my partner and the daily visits to Facebook were a welcome distraction.

"As far as I was concerned I had a Facebook profile which was locked to the highest possible setting. I didn't realise everyone could see my comments."
The hearing in Cardiff was told Mrs Scarlett had 81 friends, including 32 former pupils, 12 of whom were aged between 11 and 17.
An official reprimand will remain on her records for two years and will have to be disclosed to future employers.
Disciplinary chair Gareth Jones said: "She is guilty of being naive about how Facebook works."
Speaking after the hearing, Hadyn Blackey, from the University of Glamorgan, said it was common for people to lose perspective while using networking sites.
"People are less aware of who's able to see the site," he told the BBC Wales News website.
"They claim to being 'friends' with people, but how many of them actually are?"
Mr Blackey has been working with schools to inform teachers on how to offer children guidance on how to safeguard their privacy online.
"But sometimes it's the teachers themselves who need guidance," he said.
"I would recommend that, in terms of pupils, you set up a separate account."

Facebook and Google remove 'offensive' India content

Indian Communications Minister Kapil Sibal
Communications Minister Kapil Sibal has taken a strong line on the issue









  

Facebook and Google say they have complied with an Indian court directive and removed "objectionable" material.
They are among 21 web firms, including Yahoo and Orkut, facing a civil suit in Delhi accusing them of hosting material that may cause communal unrest.
A criminal case of similar allegations is due to be heard next month.
Judges have threatened to block sites that fail to crack down on offensive content, but many firms say it is impossible to pre-filter material.
Late last year, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal met officials from Google, Facebook and other websites and said the government would introduce guidelines to ensure "blasphemous material" did not appear on internet.
The Delhi High Court last month asked Facebook and Google India to "develop a mechanism to keep a check and remove offensive and objectionable material from their web pages" or "like China, we will block all such websites".
'Constitutional issue' The civil case being heard in Delhi on Monday was filed by Muslim petitioner Mufti Aizaz Arshad Kazmi, who alleged the companies were hosting material intolerant to religious sentiment.
Google and Facebook told the court they had complied with an earlier order by a Delhi district court judge to take down certain material.
Communications Minister Kapil Sibal has taken a strong line on the issue
Google said: "This step is in accordance with Google's longstanding policy of responding to court orders."
Facebook India said it had also filed its compliance report.
Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others all argued that no action should be taken against them.
But the judge insisted the 22 firms should provide a written reply within 15 days detailing the removal of the material.
A second, criminal case - brought by Hindu journalist Vinay Rai - is scheduled to be heard next month, with leading company executives summoned to appear.
However, a Delhi High Court judge will rule next week on an appeal by the firms involved for the case to be quashed.
A spokesman for Microsoft said it had "filed an application for rejection of the suit on the grounds that it disclosed no cause of action against Microsoft".
Google India has argued that it is not feasible to pre-monitor material posted by "billions of people across the globe".
Google lawyer, NK Kaul, said in an earlier court hearing that the issue also related "to a constitutional issue of freedom of speech and expression, and suppressing it was not possible as the right to freedom of speech in democratic India separates us from a totalitarian regime like China".
Facebook says policies are in place that enable people to report abusive content.
In December, Mr Sibal said: "My aim is that insulting material never gets uploaded. We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue. [The companies] will have to give us the data, where these images are being uploaded and who is doing it."
Mr Sibal was angered by morphed photos of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, as well as pigs running through Islam's holy city of Mecca.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Worm steals 45,000 Facebook passwords, researchers say

A computer worm has stolen 45,000 login credentials from Facebook, security experts have warned.
The data is believed to have been taken largely from Facebook accounts in the UK and France, according to security firm Seculert.
The culprit is a well-known piece of malware - dubbed Ramnit - which has been around since April 2010 and has previously stolen banking details.
Facebook told the BBC that it was looking into the issue.
The latest iteration of the worm was discovered in Seculert's labs.
"We suspect that the attackers behind Ramnit are using the stolen credentials to login to victims' Facebook accounts and to transmit malicious links to their friends, thereby magnifying the malware's spread even further," said the researchers on the firm's blog.
"In addition, cybercriminals are taking advantage of the fact that users tend to use the same password in various web-based services to gain remote access to corporate networks," it added.
'Viral power' Social networks offer rich pickings for hackers because of the huge amount of personal data that is stored on them. Increasingly malware is being updated for the social networking age.
"It appears that sophisticated hackers are now experimenting with replacing the old-school email worms with more up-to-date social network worms. As demonstrated by the 45,000 compromised Facebook subscribers, the viral power of social networks can be manipulated to cause considerable damage to individuals and institutions when it is in the wrong hands," said Seculert.
According to Seculert, 800,000 machines were infected with Ramnit from September to the end of December 2011.
Microsoft's Malware Protection Center (MMPC) described Ramnit as "a multi-component malware family which infects Windows executable as well as HTML files... stealing sensitive information such as stored FTP credentials and browser cookies".
In July 2011 a Symantec report estimated that Ramnit worm variants accounted for 17.3% of all new malicious software infections.
For Facebook users concerned that they have been affected by the worm, the advice is to run anti-virus software.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Dropbox adds auto-import from your camera


Dropbox, a web-based file hosting service operated by Dropbox Inc, is trying out a neat new feature that will give it magical Photo Stream-like abilities. Everybody's favorite cloud-storage app has added photo and video import.This is an important step considering the fact that preservation of our photos has become a top priority for many industry players as of late.

In a new "Experimental Forum Build" of the app for Windows, Mac and Linux, photos and videos will be slurped up from any memory card or camera connected to the computer. These will then be sent spinning off to the DropBox servers, ready for access by all your other Dropbox-connected devices.There have already been some well reasoned complaints over in the Dropbox forums. For instance, some people might take so many photos that they don't want them all clogging up their limited cloud storage. 

This feature also adds complexity to the Dropbox application itself, when it's already pretty easy to have a third-party app store selected photos inside your Dropbox folder.However, at the moment it's an all-or-nothing affair; you can't select individual photos within your camera roll to import. A mini-preview of the content being added to your Dropbox is displayed as the progress meter moves along, with both images and videos supported.Adding such functionality seems like a logical step for Dropbox, which itself has become nearly synonymous with the very concept of data sync and most importantly — particularly when it comes to irreplaceable photos — has established a longstanding reputation for reliability.

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Google+ Users Estimated at 62 Million










Paul Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com,  predicts continued adoption of Google+, Google Inc.’s recently launched  social network. According to Allen, Google+ is on path to reach 100 million users by the end of February this year. He  penned this forecast as part of a post on Google+, where he also released an independent estimate that the site now has 62 million users worldwide.
Allen, whose verified name on Google+ lists him as founder of Ancestry.com and "unofficial Google+ statistician," has reportedly been tracking the number of new users who sign up for Google+ and adjusting how he and his team count when Google releases official statements on the number of members. On October 1,2011 Allen said his estimates pointed to about 38 million users; not two weeks later on October 13, Google pronounced the figure at more than 40 million.
Google+, which first appeared as a beta social network in late June of last year and finally opened up to the public in September, garnered a lot of early attention for its potential to become an alternative to Facebook. However, despite the numbers, activity on the social network hasn't lived up to expectations. While a small number of users seem to be use the site fervently, Google+ doesn't have as much social activity or connectivity as its primary rival—so far.
Another one of Allen's predictions for Google+ in the year ahead is that the Network Effect will take hold, meaning the more people use Google+, the more valuable the site will become for everyone on it. However, there's a big difference between using the site and joining, which has been the primary reason for lackluster response to date.

 

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