National Guard

So yesterday, I decided to go to the movies for nice cheap matinee.  I got there a little early because I enjoy the previews.

Well no sooner did they start, I was bombarded by a 2:30 min ad for the National Guard.  Normally not an issue until the very last second of the ad, when a huge “Find us on Facebook” logo popped up on the screen.  I instantly thought in my head ” why the F**k would they use Facebook.”

So I went on to their Facebook fan page.  They have 173,082 fans and what looks like a very active page too.  Fans post on the groups wall and often times receive a reply within the hour.

Not only do they have a Facebook account, but the National Guard also has  a Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube account.  It seems to me that the Guard has adapted to the times and are looking to reach their target market through social media.  Kudos to them, I’m not sure how well it is working but it seems like a good idea.

Here’s the video if you care to watch:

matinee

Gingervitus

CNN reported today that a Facebook site may have led to beating of 12-year-old.

Here is what they said:

“The beating of 12-year-old boy by a group of classmates at a Southern California middle school may be linked to a Facebook posting encouraging kids to target redheads …

A Facebook page stating that Friday was “Kick a Ginger Day,” referring to redheads and possibly inspired by an episode of the “South Park” series, may have sparked the injuries at the middle school, authorities said.”

Here’s a look at a clip from that South Park episode that people are blaming.

more about “Gingervitus – Clips – South Park Studios“, posted with vodpod

Facebook site may have led to beating of 12-year-old

It’s scary that young kids these days are CRAZY enough to do this. Now I highly doubt that this was because of South Park, merely a group of parents looking to blame their kids action on TV rather than their lack of ability to parent their kids properly (this coming from the kid who grew up on South Park).

CNN: Can the law keep up with technology?

While surfing the web looking for something to write about, I came across CNN’s Technology page.  They had a great front story titled, “Can the law keep up with technology?”

It focused on 5 different legal cases that deal with new technology, twitter, facebook and google maps.  Half the cases were about first amendment rights and twitter and the other half was about privacy and facebook and a streetview on google maps.

These cases are mostly ongoing and the identify huge issues in our 200+ year old legal system.  The current system is not set up to deal with 21st century technologies where 200 years is fossils, 10 years is ancient, and 5 minutes ago is old.

The following comes from the article and tries to explain how why the law is so far behind

“Generally, it is at least five years behind technology as it is developing,” said Andrea Matwyshyn, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, who tracks the intersection of law and technology.

There are several reasons why the law tends to play catch-up, experts said.

The first is that it’s typically difficult to predict or anticipate technology innovations. Think of the music-sharing battles that began — and are still going on — after the advent of Napster.

Another reason is that it’s difficult to handle cases that deal with the Internet and the Web because it confronts a fundamental schism: Is the Web a unique, separate space or is it really an extension of real space?

I think that this is a great question, and will play out in the courts for years to come. This is a very important topic for everyone to follow because your next tweet could land you in court.

Wait.. Obama doesn’t Twitter?

“I have never used Twitter”

That’s what Obama said in a Q&A session at a town hall event with Chinese youth that was held in Shanghai on Nov. 15.

But Mr. President, don’t you have that inspirational twitter page, with 2,678,499, wait make that 2,678,500, I had to follow him just to make it a round number.

But really, Obama has a ghostwriter(s) for his twitter page.  Part of me was like, “well DUHHHH” and the other part was, “I kinda wish it was him.”

Obama was asked by US Ambassador Huntsmans a question that was generated through the US embassy website, “In a country with 350 million Internet users and 60 million bloggers, do you know of the firewall?”  And second, “should we be able to use Twitter freely”

Obama responded to this question by saying, ” Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter.  I noticed that young people — they’re very busy with all these electronics.  My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone.  But I am a big believer in technology and I’m a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information.”

Okay….. so does Obama even know what twitter is? Because last I checked –not wanting to get to technical here– twitter was a service, not the next new smart phone, mp3 player electronic. Earth to Obama, you can use twitter on a computer, it’s not strictly for phones.

I would love to really love to see what Obama would really write on a Sunday morning, maybe it would go a little something like this:

Layin in bed w/ Michelle and the kids enjoyin a fam b-fast in bed. God I love a good plain bagel w/ cream cheese. Bo wont stop beggin though

10:26 AM Nov 22nd from TwitterBerry

But the world will never know. Instead we will just be stuck with some White House Staffer who just graduated from Columbia with a masters of Journalism who has never met the president, posting interesting stuff like:

Pleased and grateful to learn that the AARP & the @AmerMedicalAssn are supporting the House health reform bill. #hc09 3:15 PM Nov 5th from web

Twitter: ‘We Own You B*tch’

“We’re f*cking Twitter, CNN takes what people say on our site and reports it as actual news.”

That was said by Twitter Spokesman Mark Logan.  Well, kind of.  Mark was recorded while he answered some of the most common twitter complaints he gets.

Here is what he said:

So in all fairness it was done as a spoof, and I can only assume that this is the real Mark Logan from twitter, I couldn’t find confirmation from anyone other that a few blogs, TechCrunch being one of them, that this is in fact a Twitter spokesman.

But still it’s pretty damn funny.

In conclusion, “we own you b*tch, re-tweet that”

The Average Web American

What does 87, 2645, 68, and 57 have in common? Come on it’s not that hard.  Take a guess.  While trying to find some interesting information about twitter and facebook to blog about I found that the Nielsen Company recently reported data for the Top Parent Companies/Divisions and Top Web Brands, as well as average Internet usage for September 2009.

So you want to know what those numbers have in common?

• 87- the average number of web domains a person visited during September
• 2645 – the average number of web pages a person visited during September
• 68- the average number of hours people spent behind a computer during September (68 hours and 58 seconds to be exact)
• 57- the average number of SECONDS people spend on any given page during September

Yea! its scary.  57 seconds, as one of my professors would say, we have the attention spans “of a flea!”

But what does this have to do with Facebook? It was the number 4 web brand in the U.S.  Facebook had 105,449,000 Unique visitors for the month.  That is roughly 1/3 of every American, plus every resident of Connecticut and North Dakota, I know random, according to the US Census

Now even scarier, Facebook was the number one brand in terms of time spent.  Americans spent an average of 5 hours, 24 minutes, and 38 seconds in September.

Now if only I could stop spending that time on Facebook and apply it to my blog, I could have a solid post every week.

I know where you’re tweeting

Back in August, Twitter announced on its blog that they would begin developing an API that would allow developers of twitter apps, like Tweetdeck, Tweetie2 and Twitterberry, to add the longitude and latitude to their tweets.  Well the Twitter folks have quietly released the API to a few developers this week according to Mashable.  They cited a post from Twitter’s Raffi Krikorian, that Twitter has begun to implement geolocation in apps. Krikorian says that this is the first step before a site-wide rollout, “just to lay out a timeline — we’ve deployed for internal testing, and soon we’ll be turning this on for the general audience.”

So how does this work you may ask…

Twitter’s Ryan Sarver gave an overview in Twitter’s Development Talk Google Group:

“The Geolocation API will give us the ability to attach geographic metadata to tweets to provide additional context with your update. Along with the option to tag updates, we will be able to search for nearby tweets and view the geo metadata in user timelines. The additional context allows for us to deliver more meaningful and localized experiences to users.”

Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone said, “If people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.” Stone also wrote in the Twitter blog, “For example, with accurate, tweet-level location data you could switch from reading the tweets of accounts you follow to reading tweets from anyone in your neighborhood or city—whether you follow them or not. It’s easy to imagine how this might be interesting at an event like a concert or even something more dramatic like an earthquake.”

Now I see this going even further one day.  I mean how hard is it to take your gps coordinates and plug them in to a map and find out that, “oh john just tweeted ‘not such a good burrito’ from the Student Union bathroom — Yea a harsh example but kind of funny. But seriously there could be great advertising to come out of this.  Say Joe Celebrity was approached my High Scale Restaurant, and said tweet that you just had the best meal of your life at our place, and attach the coordinates so people can find us.  I see it as a great advertising opportunity.

It also works as a great stalking tool.  But I won’t go into how I follow your every step.

ON A SIDE NOTE,

Hopefully next week I will get to go off the twitter and facebook beat a little and talk about googlewave, IF I get an invite.

I want $100 Million

I want money, and so does twitter.  I read on TechCrunch (I swear, I go to other blogs) that twitter has raised close to $100 million.  They reported last week that,

“Fast growing startup Twitter will soon be joining a select group of startups with private venture round valuations of $1 billion, we’ve heard from multiple sources. CEO Evan Williams disclosed the round to employees at a recent all hands meeting.”

They initially reported that twitter was only looking to raise a measly $50 million.

Well today the Wall Street Journal posted breaking news that number was closer to $100 million.  WSJ reported

“The investor group includes mutual fund giant T. Rowe Price and private-equity firm Insight Venture Partners, which are new investors to Twitter.”  There were also other smaller investors in this round including venture-capital firms Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners.

The big question though, is why are people investing in a company that makes no real revenue.  Executives at twitter told the WSJ that they are discussing ways to get some real income, “including advertising and premium services targeted at businesses.”

Twitter need to be careful though not to make their users mad by putting ads next to their tweets.  They may have to deal with an outburst similar to yahoo and their flickr users.  Yahoo got ripped a new one by users after all they did was brand something that they already own.

the facebook user name

So back in back on June 9,  facebook announced on their blog that instead of having a url with and id number at the end like “id=592952074,”  users could sign up for a username.  This was great and dandy and they said it would make it easier for friends and family to get to your profile, I was fine with them combing the web to try and find my hidden profile.  They said

“Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names. Your username will have the same privacy setting as your profile name in Search, and you can always edit your search privacy setting.”

Well, they finally added some more functionality to the username idea.  They posted on the blog today,  “Beginning today, you also will be able to log in to your Facebook account with your username from any Web browser, mobile phone or Facebook Connect-enabled website.”

FANTASTIC because now I don’t have to remember that I need to put @uconn.edu at the end of my name.  Instead, I can just write some obscure username that I had to pick because some highschooler named Bryan from California already took alexzurita as a user name (yea just a little bitter).

TechCrunch, one of my favorite tech websites, pointed out one very important downside though, “this may make it slightly easier for hackers to crack open your account as usernames are public while most email addresses probably weren’t. “

But really, this does make log-in much easier.  ESPECIALLY from a blackberry, iphone, or any mobile device that has a keyboard the size of a matchbook.  So give it a try, it saved me .76 seconds and that was enough time for me to harvest an extra pumpkin patch on Farmville.

First post since the last one…. Duhh

So with the advent of a new semester here at UConn, my last one hopefully, I once again have to write a blog for Rick’s class.(not a bad thing)  Hopefully this semester I will kick ass at it and do them on time, I’m supposed to be a journalist for Christ sake, I live on the trill and die by the deadline.  So this blog will change up a little since this is a new class.  It will go from all things techy to all things tecchy about facebook and twitter.  I love seeing how these two social networking platforms tweak their technology daily to improve the users experience.   Soooo let the blogging begin…..