Does Social Media Curb Or Promote Terrorism And Violence?
This article was originally published on Smedio.
I often say that social media is a powerful monster and with power, comes responsibility. If you use it for constructive means, it pays off. If you don’t get it right, you pay for it. Though it’s hard to believe, social media has been directly or indirectly associated with a large number of incidents related to violence, terrorism and uprisings all over the world.
Whether it’s the revolts in Egypt and Libya, the recent riots in London or the more recent ‘Twitter Terrorism’ in Mexico, social media is now the de-facto trigger for such events across the world. On one hand, it has freed nations from dictators but on the other, it has promoted looting and served as a medium for communal violence.
I don’t think anyone could have imagined that social media would play such an important role in global peace or the lack of it. In this post, I pour my heart out and present my opinion on whether social media curbs or promotes terrorism and violence.
read moreFacebook to delay IPO again, report says
When it rains, it pours.
With Groupon and Zynga delaying their IPOs, Facebook has joined the mix, according to a Financial Times report. Citing people familiar with the company, a "late 2012" IPO seems likely now, with something sooner appearing implausible.
While Groupon and Zynga's delays seem to be related to the continued market volatility (and possibly Groupon's constant bad media coverage of late), Facebook's looks to be about employees: the company wants staff to focus on building great products and not cashing in shares, the report suggests. Market chaos is probably a factor nonetheless.
Facebook is seeking a valuation upward of $100 billion, a number deemed grossly high by most critics and mathmeticians.
Facebook becomes more like Twitter and Google+ with new Subscriptions feature
Facebook is adding a new key feature called Subscriptions, which is a one-way follow model remarkably similar to that of Twitter and Google+.
With Subscriptions, user will see buttons on peoples' profiles. Clicking these lets you "subscribe" or follow that person, whose information will appear on your news feed. Thing is, they don't need to be friends, or even friends of friends. They can be pretty much anyone. Each person can select what information is distributed to their "subscribers."
read moreSocial media account for 22% of the time we spend online: Study
Social media is the number one category in terms of how we spend our time online, according to Nielson's “State of the Media: The Social Media Report." It accounts for a whopping 22.5% of Americans' online time.
This statistic is powered largely by Facebbok, which reaches 70% of the country's population. The report revealed that Americans spend over 50 billion minutes on Facebook every month, not even including time spent accessing it via mobile devices. Given that Canadians are even more addicted to social media than our southern neighbours, it's safe to say we clock in it at least 5 billion minutes monthly.
Other popular time consumers were Blogger (720 million minutes monthly), Tumblr (620 million), Twitter (565 million), and LinkedIn (325 million).
Facebook on pace to generate over $3 billion revenue this year, $1 billion net income
Facebook, with its one trillion monthly pageviews, has generated $1.6 billion in revenue through the first half of 2011, with roughly $500 million of that winding up as net income, according to Reuters.
This is up from a reported 2009 revenue of below $800 million and net income of $200 million. It's about double what the social network earned last year, but still falls below analyst estimates of $4 billion in revenue for the year. It's still possible, but would require an accelerated rate of revenue growth.
The company is expected to file for an IPO in 2012, though controversy is in abundance over how valuable Facebook is. It's been valued as high as $90 billion, an insane amount given its current income, but not entirely out of the norm these days when looking at companies like Groupon and Zynga, both of which recently postponed their IPOs.
Ontario Provincial Election gets Twitter Tracker Boost From Nexalogy Environics and Toronto Board of Trade
As Ontario’s provincial election campaign heats up, there’s no doubt that social media will play an incredible role in determining the outcome. Four years ago, during the last provincial election, social media was still in an infancy stage. In the spring, the late Jack Layton led the NDP to official opposition status in a campaign that quickly caught “orange fever”. There is much lasting evidence of Layton’s impact as thousands mourned the death of Layton in a rare state funeral usually reserved for politicians that did actually come into power two weekends ago.
With the realization that elections can be influenced due to social media, the Toronto Board of Trade has partnered with Nexalogy Environics, a leading Canadian provider of social media research technology and consulting services to track Twitter trends during the month-long election campaign. The VoteOntario 2011 project will use the company’s software to create maps of the Twitter conversations under these hashtags: #onpoli, #ondp, #pcpo, and #olp.
read moreFacebook updates iPhone app with overhaul of privacy settings (again…)
Facebook has released version 3.5 of its iPhone app, which features an overhaul to its privacy settings mirroring the alterations done on its website.
3.5 lets users tag friends and places in posts and share external links. Users also gain superior control to which friends can see which posts. Facebook also redesigned Profile and Group walls, and fixed minor bugs.
Still no sign of an iPad app for the popular networking site, though.
Filefly: Free and easy file-sharing via Facebook
Creating waves since its release a few months ago, a new Facebook app by Andrew Mawer and Tory Jarmain of the University of Western Ontario allows Facebook users to share, transfer and store files using the social utility itself. The catch? A limit of 2GB. But you can share literally any type of file that you use on a daily basis.
Think of it as something like Dropbox, only via Facebook, so this time you don't need an excuse to keep feasting your eyes on Facebook's blue-and-white colour scheme.
Techvibes recently sat down with co-creators Andrew and Tory to do a deep dive and explore the concept of the app itself.
"Filefly was inspired by the shared experiences of students working to complete group projects within very tight deadlines." quips Andrew, "we're talking 48-hour group projects with dozens of files exchanging hands very frequently. It's often very hard to keep track of them, especially if multiple updates are being made to them in a short period of time."
Says Tory, "It's hard to teach Dropbox to people who aren't very technical by nature. However, we noticed that in many cases, group members tend to add each on Facebook as a way to collaborate, so we thought, why not tap into that and make it easier for everyone?"
Thus Filefly.
read more