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Startup Launches TV Show Based on Your Facebook Timeline

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February 28, 2013

Los Angeles and Israel-based startup Social Studios has teamed with actress Noa Tishby to produce an “Entertainment Tonight”-like show featuring videos, status updates and photos from users’ Facebook timelines. “Your Show,” which launched Monday night, gets information from a Facebook app that collects data from news feeds, mixes it with pre-produced segments with Tishby and creates seven-minute episodes. Continue reading Startup Launches TV Show Based on Your Facebook Timeline

Yahoo Streamlines Social Sharing with Homepage Redesign

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February 27, 2013

Yahoo has redesigned its homepage with a greater focus on becoming “more intuitive and personal,” according to CEO Marissa Mayer. The redesign keeps Yahoo’s core of Mail, News, Finance and Sports on the left side of the screen, but has given the logos new looks. The homepage also eliminated its old links-in-boxes format and has replaced it with an infinite scroll format. Mayer hopes the changes will help return the brand to its place as an online leader. Continue reading Yahoo Streamlines Social Sharing with Homepage Redesign

Book Readers Find Social Networking Home on Goodreads

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February 19, 2013

Book fans are finding an online community in Goodreads.com, a social media site for discovery and sharing that already has 15 million members. The site has become immensely popular and is rivaling Amazon.com as a new platform for promoting books. On Goodreads, users can post reviews and ratings publicly or privately within self-selected networks of online friends. Continue reading Book Readers Find Social Networking Home on Goodreads

Pew Research Breaks Down Usage Statistics for Facebook

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February 7, 2013

About two-thirds (67 percent) of American adults currently use Facebook according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The research also indicates that 61 percent of current Facebook users have voluntarily taken a break of at least several weeks from the social network in the past, and 20 percent of the non-Facebook using adult population (or about 5 percent of the total adult population) once used Facebook and now do not. Continue reading Pew Research Breaks Down Usage Statistics for Facebook

Oreo Goes Social for Spontaneous Super Bowl Advertising

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February 6, 2013

The 34-minute Super Bowl power outage caused a Twitter uproar, but while many fans used social media to make jokes, Oreo seized the opportunity to launch a viral marketing campaign. Oreo’s 15-person Super Bowl social media team reacted quickly to the blackout, tweeting an ad that read “Power Out? No problem.” The Tweet was accompanied by the image of a single Oreo in a half-blacked out setting with the caption, “You can still dunk in the dark.” Continue reading Oreo Goes Social for Spontaneous Super Bowl Advertising

Facebook: Struggling Graph Search Feature May Be Improved

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January 28, 2013

Facebook’s new Graph Search feature may benefit from upcoming upgrades. When Graph Search was first released, the feature relied primarily on “likes” and check-ins to provide results, but these are ineffective tools since most people do not check-in when they go to places they like, and others like pages ironically rather than honestly. But bringing in further analysis of comments of posts could help improve the accuracy of Graph Search. Continue reading Facebook: Struggling Graph Search Feature May Be Improved

Do Employees Have the Right to Discuss Work on Social Media?

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January 23, 2013

Employees sometimes take to Facebook and Twitter to discuss work-related matters — and employers usually don’t like that. But according to federal regulators, employers don’t have a say in the matter. In fact, regulators are passing down orders indicating employers have to scale back on policies that limit what their workers can say online. Continue reading Do Employees Have the Right to Discuss Work on Social Media?

CES 2013: DISH Introduces New Second Screen App for iPads

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January 15, 2013

DISH unveiled a second screen app at CES complete with remote control, discovery and a programming grid. The app will challenge competitors like Zeebox and Peel, and unlike the third party competitors, DISH has the built-in advantage of working as the supplier of both first and second screen content. This eliminates some of the complications third party developers must overcome and could give DISH a leg up. Continue reading CES 2013: DISH Introduces New Second Screen App for iPads

New Feature: Conference into Google+ Hangouts with Free Voice Calls

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December 6, 2011
  • Google may directly challenge Skype with a new feature that enables free voice calls to the U.S. and Canada within Google+ Hangouts.
  • “To activate the feature, simply start a Hangout, click the Invite button at the top, select ‘Phone,’ and enter a phone number. If the recipient picks up, they’ll be instantly connected,” reports TechCrunch. “The free offer is supposed to last through 2012.”
  • This allows people who don’t have a Google account or even a computer to join a G+ video chat. It also enables free 1-on-1 calls, much like Skype.
  • The service has the potential to be used for conference calls, in making group decisions or serve as a a draw simply for casual use.
  • Google hopes the free calls will attract people to Hangouts, which has been “a bit sparse due to the social network’s low current user count.”

New Homepage: YouTube Goes Social with Focus on Google+ and Facebook

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December 2, 2011
  • YouTube is redesigning its homepage and channel pages to incorporate “better personalized video discovery and viewing, with a notable emphasis on social features,” reports TechCrunch.
  • A new default Subscriptions feed on the homepage offers users content based on what videos they watch and which channels they subscribe to (the feed can also be filtered). Users can share videos using Google+ or by opting-in on Facebook, both located on the navigation bar.
  • Channel pages have four new templates that come with a Feed tab showing the channel owner’s activity (highlighting features such as commenting on a video and subscribing to a channel).
  • “These additions, which are more analogous to template options in Tumblr or MySpace rather than Facebook’s one-size-fits-all style, let producers promote their works in the most natural style for what they offer,” suggests the post.
  • The homepage and channel changes are the first significant updates, but TechCrunch adds that YouTube is “also introducing a site-wide design upgrade to all the elements — typography, iconography, etc. It’s separately adding new versions of its Xbox and Google TV applications, that feature magazine-style tile interfaces showing various channels. Finally, the company is touting the success of its advertising platform, saying that it’s seeing strong demand for its new cost-per-click style of video ads.”

Facebook Phone: Social Networker Taps HTC to Manufacture Buffy

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November 23, 2011
  • Facebook has selected Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC to build a smartphone code-named “Buffy,” after the television vampire slayer.
  • Ironically, the device will run a customized OS from its main competitor, Google’s Android, and integrate a number of Facebook’s services, many of which will run as HTML5 apps.
  • “Facebook only recently chose HTC, after also considering at least one other potential hardware partner — Korea’s Samsung,” reports AllThingsD. “That means the products themselves are still a ways from hitting the market, potentially as long as 12 to 18 months.”
  • According to a Facebook spokesperson: “Our mobile strategy is simple: We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.”
  • Although other companies have released phones with dedicated Facebook buttons, Buffy is expected to provide deeper integration, “bringing friends and social activities deep into the mobile interface.”

Facebook Stats: Average User Age on the Rise and Females Take the Lead

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November 22, 2011
  • A 2011 study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project discovered some interesting statistics regarding current Facebook users.
  • The average age of the Facebook user rose to 38 in 2010 from 33 in 2008.
  • On an average day, 20 percent of users commented on another’s picture, 22 percent commented on another’s status, 15 percent updated their own status, 10 percent sent a private message and 26 percent selected “like” for another’s content.
  • The average user has 229 friends: 22 percent from high school, 9 percent from college, 10 percent from work, 8 percent are immediate family, and 7 percent are people they’ve never met (see infographic for further breakdown).
  • Daily engagement on Facebook by social networking users accounted for 52 percent compared to Twitter’s 36 percent, Myspace’s 7 percent and LinkedIn’s 6 percent. Another noteworthy figure: “Social media users are ‘disproportionately female,’ notes Pew, with women making up 56 percent of social networking sites, 52 percent of email users, and 55 percent of instant message users,” reports Huffington Post.
  • The complete 85-page Pew report is available online.

Measuring Tweet Rate: TweetTV Joins the Ranks of Social TV Guides

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November 10, 2011
  • TweetTV is a social TV guide that ranks available shows based on what people are tweeting about.
  • Users enter their zip code and TV provider, which makes the search more personally specific. You can view the tweets of certain shows (filtered by “experts” or cast members) or break it down by trending network.
  • Additionally, you can launch private or public video chats for each show.
  • “Not only does TweetTV empower TV viewers, but we think this creates a fantastic opportunity for networks and brands to engage with their social audience in a very direct way,” founder Bradley Markham said.

Giving Presentations: Seven Ways to Impress the Tech-Savvy Crowd

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November 8, 2011
  • Fast Company presents seven new guidelines for public speaking in the era of social media, especially for execs who deliver presentations to tech-savvy audiences.
  • Don’t assume attendees have drifted off if they’re pecking away at their iPads, suggests the article. They’re most likely tweeting your comments, fact-checking in real time or even trying to start a conversation with you.
  • “It’s fun to respond to a tweet when I am on stage, and it personalizes the interaction with the audience,” Citibank exec Frank Eliason says.
  • Common ground for today’s best speakers: “First, none of them depend on word-laden PowerPoint presentations. Second, most are good storytellers and use humor, often self-deprecating, to connect with their audiences. Finally, each of them manages to keep their presentations short enough to allow time for a healthy Q&A.”

Mind Your Facebook Comments: Soon Accessible via Google Search

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November 7, 2011
  • Google has developed a new indexing plan that marks a shift in its traditionally passive approach.
  • “Mind what you say in Facebook comments,” reports Wired, “Google will soon be indexing them and serving them up as part of the company’s standard search results.”
  • “Google’s all-seeing search robots still can’t find comments on private pages within Facebook, but now any time you use a Facebook comment form on other sites, or a public page within Facebook, those comments will be indexed by Google.”
  • The article suggests the new policy may upset developers and users alike.
  • “There are two primary requests you can initiate on the Web,” explains Wired. “GET requests are intended for reading data, POST for changing or adding data. That’s why search engine robots like Google’s have always stuck to GET crawling. There’s no danger of the Googlebot altering a site’s data with GET, it just reads the page, without ever touching the actual data. Now that Google is crawling POST pages the Googlebot is no longer a passive observer, it’s actually interacting with — and potentially altering — the websites it crawls.”

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