Friday, March 29

Tag: Social media

World is Shrinking, We are Just 3.5 Degrees Apart: Facebook
News

World is Shrinking, We are Just 3.5 Degrees Apart: Facebook

NEW YORK: You must have heard about the famous "six degrees of separation" theory that everyone on the planet is connected to everyone else by six other people. Facebook has just upended this theory, saying that world is more closely connected than you might think. After studying 1.59 billion people active on the social networking website, the team determined that the number is actually 3.57 -- meaning thereby that there is actually "three-and-a-half degrees of separation" where each person in the world is connected to every other person by an average of three-and-a-half other people. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is 3.17 degrees of separation from all Facebook users. According to researchers, our collective "degrees of separation" have shrunk over the past five years. In 2011, ...
WhatsApp Scam – A New Digital Scam in The Social Media
News

WhatsApp Scam – A New Digital Scam in The Social Media

The Independent Reports that WhatsApp has reportedly been the target of a new scam which deceives users into disclosing personal information. In the scam, the links appear to come from your friend but instead lead you to a discount page which then asks for your personal details. Unassuming users are then led to a fake website which infects your phone with malware, allowing the scammer to obtain sensitive information. WhatsApp's popularity has exploded in recent years. It now has nearly one billion users worldwide and has become a key target for scammers. Speaking to This Is Money, David Emm, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, an internet security and anti-virus software company, says the scam operates in a range of languages. "We have noted that this WhatsApp sc...
Twitter suspends over 125,000 accounts for ‘promoting terrorist acts’
News

Twitter suspends over 125,000 accounts for ‘promoting terrorist acts’

Twitter Inc has shut down more than 125,000 terrorism-related accounts since the middle of 2015, most of them linked to the Islamic State group, the company said in a blog post on Friday. Twitter has said it only takes down accounts when they are reported by other users, but said that it has increased the size of teams monitoring and responding to reports and has decreased its response time "significantly." Twitter's announcement comes as many tech companies – led by Facebook – have taken stronger steps to police controversial content online in the face of threats from legislators to force the companies to report "terrorist activity" on their sites to law enforcement. Silicon Valley has been wary of engaging with government officials, concerned about endless demands for similar ac...
Chinese Twitter-like Platform Sina Weibo Will Also Lift 140-word Limit
CHINA

Chinese Twitter-like Platform Sina Weibo Will Also Lift 140-word Limit

Chinese Twitter-like platform Sina Weibo will cancel its 140-word limit, a move Twitter is reportedly considering. Sino Weibo management team has sent a letter to its developers on Wednesday. However, Weibo users have always been allowed to write posts longer than 140 words. But previously they were required to type the extra content on a different site and link back to Weibo. Launched in August 2009, Sina Weibo is China’s largest social network with 222 million monthly active users as of the third quarter of 2015. The platform will start a trial with some of its microblog users in about a week on January 28, and lift the word limit for all users a month later on February 28.The new word limit is 2,000 words. The platform will only show the first 140 words on the feed, but readers...
Facebook launches real-time sports platform
News

Facebook launches real-time sports platform

Facebook Inc is tackling the sports arena with a new platform called Facebook Sports Stadium, which the social media site said will provide real-time updates on games, popular posts from fans, statistics and commentary from experts. "With 650 million sports fans, Facebook is the world's largest stadium," it wrote in a post on Wednesday announcing the feature. Facebook, which said it had an average 1.01 billion active daily users as of September, reports its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, Jan. 27. The new service appears to be an effort to encroach on Twitter's territory. The micro-blogging site has long been a popular destination for so-called "live-tweeting" games. MichaelAaron Flicker, president of XenoPsi, a New York City-based marketing firm, said the new product is ...
Facebook has blocked some of our ads: Hike Messenger
News

Facebook has blocked some of our ads: Hike Messenger

New Delhi, Jan 10: Home-grown Hike Messenger has accused Facebook of blocking an option in its advertisements which lets people visit the chatting application’s website. Run by Kavin Mittal, son of Bharti Enterprises Chairman Sunil Mittal, Hike competes with Facebook-owned WhatsApp. Hike is owned by a joint venture of Bharti and Japan’s Softbank.”Advertisers have, among other options, the option to ‘Send people to your website’. A few weeks back we were suddenly blocked from using this option, while we were able to use other non action-led options,” a Hike spokesperson told. The spokesperson further added that initially, they assumed it was a technical glitch, but when the team wrote to Facebook, the social networking giant said Hike will not be able to run the ads. “There are specific ...
White House, Silicon Valley to hold summit on militants’ social media use: Report
USA

White House, Silicon Valley to hold summit on militants’ social media use: Report

Senior White House officials and U.S. intelligence and law enforcement figures will meet with Silicon Valley executives on Friday to discuss how to counter the use of social media by militant groups, sources familiar with the meeting said on Thursday. In an escalation of pressure on technology firms to do more to combat online propaganda from groups such as Islamic State, the meeting follows attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, that underscored the role played by social media companies such as Twitter Inc, Alphabet Inc's YouTube and Facebook Inc. Invited participants include White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, presidential counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey, National Intelligence Director James Clapper an...
Facebook fights for free Internet in India, global test-case
News

Facebook fights for free Internet in India, global test-case

Reuters: India has become a battleground over the right to unrestricted Internet access, with local tech start-ups joining the front line against Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg and his plan to roll out free Internet to the country's masses. The Indian government has ordered Facebook's Free Basics plan to be put on hold while it decides what to do. The program, launched in around three dozen developing countries, offers pared-down web services on mobile phones, along with access to Facebook's own social network and messaging services, without charge. But critics say the program, launched 10 months ago in India in collaboration with operator Reliance Communications, violates principles of net neutrality, the concept that all websites on the internet are treated equally. It wou...
Facebook introduced a looping video as a profile picture
News

Facebook introduced a looping video as a profile picture

World's leading social media network Facebook has announced that it has added some new features and controls for your profile which, allows you to use a looping video as your profile photo. Facebook in a press release share, People visit Facebook profiles more than four billion times per day, and we’re continually looking for ways to make profiles the best place for people to curate their online identities and connect with others. Today, we’re unveiling some new, mobile-friendly features for Facebook profiles. (more…)
How I Used Social Media to Save My Business and Build My Brand – Matt Sweetwood
BLOGS

How I Used Social Media to Save My Business and Build My Brand – Matt Sweetwood

It was 2007 and our business was in trouble. Unique Photo®, during the 20 previous years, had been one of the largest distributors of photographic supplies including film (35mm, 120/220, Polaroid, Kodak, Fujifilm, etc.), cameras, photo paper, chemistry, and accessories. At one time, we represented 5% of all rolls of film sold in the United States. Our customers were primarily small retail outlets such as camera stores, photo labs, tourist shops, pharmacies and professional photographers. They relied on us for low prices, quick delivery and stellar customer service. (more…)
8 Key Rules for Starting a Business on a Shoestring – Martin Zwilling
BLOGS

8 Key Rules for Starting a Business on a Shoestring – Martin Zwilling

A few years ago, before the Internet was pervasive, before everyone carried a smartphone and before do-it-yourself software tools were available for free, it was difficult to reach a critical mass of new customers without spending a million dollars on a website, custom software and television advertising. Now you can match a big company with worldwide reach for a few thousand dollars. It’s a new age for aspiring entrepreneurs, where anyone with a dream or a hobby should be turning it into a business. The bad news is that many are already doing it, with competition growing, so the longer you wait, the less chance you have of getting there first. The good news is that most haven’t learned the new rules, so there is still room to surge ahead of the crowd. Here are some of the key new ...
How Timing Can Make or Break a Startup – Brandon Watts
BLOGS

How Timing Can Make or Break a Startup – Brandon Watts

What comes to your mind when you think about companies like Webvan, Dodgeball, Pets.com, Kozmo.com, and WebTV? All were pioneers in their markets in many ways, but all were—in some respects, anyway—failures. In the business world, it's the unlucky fate of certain companies to serve as proof, or even punchlines, about how ambitious technology companies can implode in sometimes spectacular ways. But while it's easy, and occasionally instructive, to critique a company once it’s gone and dissect the reasons why, it's important to remember there's one tricky element that all startups face and few manage to fully control: timing. TIMING TRUMPS (ALMOST) ALL Startups like to tell themselves that execution beats everything. That idea is widely endorsed within the tech world, but it's probably ...