From the category archives:
Social Media
by Techsplosive on March 16, 2009
…and no, this does not mean they want the cliche MySpace user’s nudie pics plastered everywhere.
Social network dominator FaceBook has always had fairly flexible privace controls. Today, the decided to loosen them up a bit more. Previously, users were mostly restricted to sharing things withing their current networks and with their friends. Other personal information like phone numbers and email addresses was subject to network or friend customization depending on what they user wanted.
Today, the FB released the option for users to make their profile and information available to anyone and everyone who wants to see [click to continue...]
by Techsplosive on March 15, 2009
After the second major “upgrade” to the FaceBook system in about a year, FB has many users wondering what’s next and how far off it is.
FB has always been its own social network. The main source of FB’s likability was the simple AJAX driven user interface. FB unveiled their New Facebook recently which sported a bit more of the “feed” aspect. In the past two weeks, FaceBook has gone all out making it out to be a sort of closed network iGoogle/NetVibes/Twitter service. User profiles [click to continue...]
by Techsplosive on March 10, 2009
Seth Godin’s startup Squidoo.com is not just another revenue sharing content website. They allow their writers to donate all or a percentage of their lens earnings to charity. Squidoo has also turned out a few charitable campaigns on quite a large scale, one via Twitter. The basic concept let users choose a charity from a list and tweet a link with a special hashtag. Squidoo donated $2 for each tweet. The concept worked beautifully, and $80,000 was given away via voting on Twitter.
Yesterday, Tim Ferriss decided to take to turn Twitter charitable again. Tim’s Tweet to Beat campaign aims to benifit public school students in the United States by bribing people to follow him on twitter for $3 each. [click to continue...]
by Techsplosive on March 8, 2009
Instinctively, my answer is no.
The growing popularity and virility of Twitter has confirmed my answer. While personal interaction with content and medieval forms of social media have existed since the early days of the internet, it was the debut of networks like Blogger, Xanga, and MySpace that fueled the social media revolution. These networks allowed users to have their own space on the internet. They provided a platform for people to show themselves off to the entire universe. Given such a large audience, it is no wonder why everyone has the desire to be widely known and recognized. This drove many to add hundereds and thousands of [click to continue...]
by Techsplosive on March 6, 2009
People do search for jobs outside of economic recessions, however loss of a job and unemployment make job searches even of a necessity. Many job hunters don’t really know how good they have it. Rather than letting the local paper scam you into working for a CutCo Knives distributor or a Kirby Vacuum dealer, the job searcher might want to employ technology to find some work worth doing.
The greatest piece of technology available to the job hunter, is the internet. A significant number of websites whose sole purpose is to find jobs for job hunters are at your disposal. I’m not talking about the big names like Monster or CareerBuilder either. As far as I know, these sites “job listings” are more or less just a different form of consumer advertisements, and provide little value. A few people may have found favor at these places, and perhaps a helpful resume tip or two as well, but it is unlikely that your next (enjoyable) job will be found there. Outlined below are a few great websites, ideas, and tips designed to help the job hunter utilize technology to find employment. [click to continue...]
by Techsplosive on March 3, 2009
Flickr.com shouldn’t be new to the internet user who has used the web for more than a month. Flickr is a photo sharing website that operates on much the same principles of Twitter. A user uploads photos, and the photo stream is shared with followers, and in the public stream.
Flickr has done much more in its relatively short life than just spark the web 2.0 revolution of forgetting the last vowel in the suffix of the URL keyword. Flickr has grown into much more than just a photo sharing website. [click to continue...]
by Techsplosive on February 24, 2009
12Seconds.tv is not anything new to anyone who even remotely follows technology, social media, and applications. 12seconds.tv is basically a twitter for videos. Videos posted by users are only 12 seconds long (hence the name) and are shared to all friends and followers.
12seconds success to date has been decent. Their current Alexa ranking is much higher (worse) than most other social networkinga and media websites. 12seconds rates about a 100,000 on the Alexa scale, finding itself outranked by many blogs, and some relatively undeveloped websites. With Twitter number 360, 12seconds.tv has some serious ground to make up. Alexa ranking doesn’t mean everything though, but there really is not much else to highlight about the website. Sure, it was a creative idea and has had some success, but llacks the main feature of pracitcality and simple lifestyle integration. [click to continue...]
by Techsplosive on February 23, 2009
This post was made by fellow blogger Dot Com Dud, you can check out his Twitter profile @dotcomdud.
While you’ve no doubt heard of blogging platforms such as Wordpress, you may not know about Twitter which is a little different because it’s a micro-blogging platform. What is micro-blogging exactly? The best way to answer this is to learn how Twitter works. By allowing it’s users to blog messages no longer than 140 characters, Twitter users can provide as many of these updates, or “tweets” as they are commonly known, to be read by anyone who follows them. You can choose whose tweets you want to follow and others will choose to follow your tweets too, especially if you keep your updates interesting. [click to continue...]
by Techsplosive on February 21, 2009
I was listening to a friend talk a week ago about how much he hated online social networking. I asked if he wouldn’t mind writing down his thoughts so that I could publish them here. He gladly obliged, and so here they are for you to read. Feel free to openly agree or disagree, I look forward to the discussion that follows.
It used to be that the term “social networking” was defined as the activity of social interaction in a personal and intimate setting. Social networking played a big part one getting where they wanted to go, and getting what they wanted to get. Social networking was a valuable time where people interacted and got to know each other on a more personal level.
Social Networking has a new face now. Say social networking in public and 9.9 out of 10 people’s minds will immediately shoot off in the direction of the internet and popular sites like MySpace, FaceBook, bebo, Hi5 – the list really is endless. Due to these new trends and fads, social networking has turned into an informal and sloppy system of constant communication. Intimate and personal interaction has been traded for whole lives being exposed online. Rather than using social networking as a way to promote oneself, we have all seen the stories of how “social networking” has ruined people’s reputations and lives. Personal meetings have been traded for [click to continue...]
by Techsplosive on February 16, 2009
The end of the traditional newspaper is near. Many large news corporations cut thousands of jobs this year, and traded in their current newspapers for thinner ones. While readers can expect print media to stick around, it is about time for it to find a new dynamic. The growing popularity of the internet sparked a gradual shift in media and readership. Readers dumped their subscriptions for free access to news information online. Advertisers dumped print media for cheaper internet ad rates. The free nature of Craigslist managed to take quite a large bite out of the classified ad revenue that newspapers counted on.
Online news and media are not intrinsically better than print media, however they meet the needs of customers quite a bit more extensively, and are integrated into the readers lifestyle much more easily. Online media is instant. It is no secret that the current world society feeds off of instant gratification. Print media (such as newspapers) are released daily, and the information contained in them, aside from editorials and creative pieces, is already common knowledge by the time it is delivered to the reader. Why wait for something to be delivered, when the contents are already known? [click to continue...]
