social-media

Twitter announces new features at Web 2.0 summit

Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter announced new features for Twitter at the Web 2.0 summit where the biggest names in the technology industry meet to share their vision on the future of the internet.

He said there three times as many users were signing up for Twitter since the launch of Apple’s new mobile operating system iOS 5 which allows users to link their Twitter account to everything that they do through iDevices, meaning that the user can tweet directly from Google maps, web pages or even from a camera.

He also confirmed that following the introduction of Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends they plan to launch photo and video based advertising into users timelines which will strengthen Twitter’s commercial capability.

Costolo mentioned the possibility of getting to the point where users can access old tweets as well as old direct messages without having to scroll through the long list of data to retrieve it. No time frame was given for this development.

He also stated that a t present there are 250 million tweets per day which a 67% rise since January is this year with over 50% of users being active.

Twitter is now valued at $8 billion

Why Facebook can be bad for you

More and more people worldwide are connecting to Facebook. It is a fantastic way to stay in touch with friends and family and share photos and gives the opportunity to rediscover old friends. But what are the down sides of Facebook?

Safety

Facebook unlike earlier social networking sites like MySpace requires you to use your true identity and personal information instead of remaining anonymous. You will post photos on your site, they can be accessed by others and sometimes they get edited and used on porn sites. Pictures you would not want to be posted could be posted by others which can harm your image.

With addresses and phone numbers displayed many are the burglaries that have occurred due to a person writing on his status that he is out of town.

Predators on the site have even lured unsuspecting young adults abusing them and in some instances murdering them.

Addiction

With all the features available many people are not aware of the time spent on it. This has resulted in people having trouble keeping a job and having relationship problems. There was a case where a young mother’s addiction left a toddler severely neglected and starved and subsequently removed from her care.

The downside of using Facebook

Facebook is one of the most fast growing social network sites in the world and it is almost impossible to find a person who is not registered with Facebook. Though people use this on a daily basis and it has its many advantages, no one stops to think bout the negative effects of Facebook.

Privacy considerations

When you open a Facebook account, there is always the possibility that some of your personal information will be exposed despite the privacy settings offered. This is a serious concern considering the cases of identity theft reported. You will also not have control over the use of photographs and comments you have posted. Take precautions when posting pictures and comments.

Addiction

Without realizing it many people have become addicted to the Facebook culture that they spend hours on it. If you do not set limits you will be wasting valuable productive time. Excessive time spent on Facebook has created many problems at work and home.

Used to lure victims

There are many instances where unsuspecting youngsters have been lured by predators on these sites and been abused. Facebook, when used by children should be very carefully monitored and have the risks explained to them.

MySpace Music Wants Money

MySpace Music is in trouble. The service is not making money like it used to and that, even at the best of times, was not much. MySpace owners News Corp appear to have finally thrown in the towel on the issue of advertising revenue supporting the music service.

Chairman of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, has always been critical of free online services. He appears to have got his way with Hulu (which he also owns) and now it seems that the tottering MySpace will be subjected to that will as well. The problem here is that what works (subjective) for Hulu may not work at all for MySpace.

The social networking site has been steadily hemorrhaging users ever since Facebook showed up. A telling factor is that before Facebook became big, Google entered into an advertising deal with MySpace. The value? $900 million. Now Google isn’t even bothering to renew the deal for a lesser price. Finding a replacement is going to be hard and definitely will not be found at that value. This is worrying because in the last five years, running MySpace has cost News Corp $500 million. So it’s little wonder that they are trying to scrape any sort of revenue from wherever they can.

At the heart of the matter is the issue of losing that all important demographic of 18-35 year olds. With no real prospect of them coming back and with rumors about Google Me ever increasing, it maybe that MySpace will have to go the way of GeoCities.

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