Social Media Tag

Happy Birthday Facebook!

thefacebookOn February 4, 2004 Mark Zukerberg along with a few of his Harvard classmates created TheFacebook.com.  A social network which was exclusively for Harvard students.  It was so popular that 1,200-1,500 students joined within the first 24 hours of the site being launched. And in less than a month, more than half the students had joined the social network.  Zukerberg and his classmates decided to expand the network to other Ivy League schools, along with college’s in the Boston area.  Soon after it was an exclusive college social network.  The site later changed to invitation only registrants.  But in the fall of 2005, Facebook users were upset after the company had decided to open the site to everyone over the age of 13. 

In the past 6 years, Facebook has seen a number of face lifts.  Normally after any change there was an uproar from the community, but looking back at some of the designs on Facebook’s wikipedia page, the changes have definatly been worth it. (more…)

Social Media Viral Task Violates TOS

dweekIf you are one of the many 350+ million users on the social media site Facebook, you may have noticed a few of your friends have turned celebrities.  As part of Doppelganger Week, which started 2 weeks ago, Facebook users have changed their pictures to celebrities they’ve been told they look like.  I’ve even taken a part in this, posting a picture of Frankie Muniz, since I’ve even been stopped at the airport because they thought I was him (I personally don’t see the resemblance but you gotta go with the majority). And my friends apparently look a lot like Ellen, Taylor Launter, Daniel Radcliff, Niel Patrick Harris, David Archuletta, Aladdin, and Maya Angelou  just to name a few.

And while this latest viral social media task is fun and silly, CNet brought up the point, it’s actually against Facebook’s Terms of Service (TOS). (more…)

Twitter E-Mail Not Phishing Scam

twitterpasswordThis morning, several Twitter users woke up to e-mails from Twitter saying,”“Due to concern that your account may have been compromised in a phishing attack that took place off-Twitter, your password was reset,” which was then followed by a link to see what their new password was changed to.  To most smart internet users this looks like a phishing attack and scam.

However, the e-mail is indeed from Twitter, and the social network was taking precautions.  (more…)

Twitter Off The Twitter Plateau

twitterA few months ago, Twitter CEO & co-founder, Evan Williams talked at the Web 2.0 Summit about how Twitter’s growth was slowing.  Since then, Twitter’s growth had actually declined.  At least until this new year. 

Twitter’s numbers in January hit record numbers, meaning that Twitter’s growth could be continuing to climb very soon.  First the numbers of tweets was actually record breaking.  Twitter users posted more than 1233.8 million tweets  in January.  And as high as that number is, it’s not that surprising, since the number of tweets each month has been constantly growing month after month.  However, in January 2009 there were only 76.6 tweets posted.  (more…)

Obama & The Social Media World

obamaIt’s not really news that President Obama is for social media, since many say his presence on social media helped him get to the White House.  And although he maybe for it, he’s still just learning how to use it.  Last week, when the President visited the Red Cross headquarters to learn what they were doing in effort to help Haiti, the President hit the Twitter ‘submit’ button for the very first time.  Although he has his own Twitter account, he’s never actually personally used it.

Tonight, President Obama is expected to give his first State of the Union address to the nation.  And for the first time ever, social media has already begun to play a role in the president’s State of the Union speech.  First the Rethink Afghanistan organization has started a widespread war protest on the White House’s Facebook page.  What started as an effort to obtains 20,000 signatures on Rethink Afghanistan’s website, moved to the social media world after they had reached their goal.  (more…)

Even The Pope Knows To Blog

popesocialmediaI think, no matter your religion, if Pope Benedict XVI says something important, everyone listens.  Over the weekend And the 82 year old shockingly sent out a message to most specifically Catholic priests over the weekend saying they must no longer just have a website sharing the word of God, but they also need to blog and use social media. 

A few years ago, the 265th Pope of the Catholic Church started to embrass social media with his own YouTube channel, and most recently released both a Facebook and iPhone app(more…)

Getting Tweets Ranked In Google

gbird

A few months ago, both Google & Bing launched deals with Twitter that would allow tweets to appear in real-time search results.  And while many of us try to compete to get our websites ranked higher for the search engines, now we must also fight to get our tweets ranked higher too. 

Luckily Google is no longer keeping that a secret.  In a recent article, journalist David Talbot scored an interview with Google’s Amit Singhal.  Singhal admitted that like Bing, ranks are based on the number of followers you have, however, it’s not necessarily how many actually followers you have, it’s how reputable those followers actually are. (more…)

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