social media

Lexus ads are the latest auto spots to dis social media

While there's a lot of attention paid to how much technology is being built into new cars, Lexus has at least three ads going in the other direction. 

The ads, which were unveiled this week, don't want you to sit around at home doing social media, but encourage you to hit the road. Preferably in a Lexus.

One ad, embedded above, makes fun of hitting the Like button:

This December, remember: you can stay in and "Like" something or you can get out there with your family and actually like something.

The ad below takes … Read more

Pew study: Parents of teens online worry about ads, strangers

Parents are more worried about advertisers having access to their children's online data than about their children talking to strangers online, according to a report published today.

The Pew Internet Project and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University collaborated on the report, which is based on a survey if 802 parents of children aged 12 to 17 with questions about social-networking sites, namely Facebook. As more and more teens and pre-teens use social media as a part of their every day communications , the study finds that parents worried about a variety of online dangers -- … Read more

Freaked out by Mideast militarization of social media? Don't be

Let's not act so shocked if Frankenstein's invention is on the loose.

A couple of days ago the Israel Defense Forces began live-tweeting as the newest round of hostilities broke out along Israel's already hot border with Gaza. The IDF Twitter stream included the video recording of a missile attack that killed Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari, along with an in your face taunt: "We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead." For its part, the military wing of Hamas used its … Read more

Twitter takes new steps to be even more like Instagram

With a flurry of new features unveiled this afternoon, Twitter appears to be aiming more than ever at mimicking some of the most visual elements of Instagram and Facebook.

The most interesting new feature is one that adds a palette of "top" photos and videos to search results. So, for example, if you search for "sunrise," you see a group of photos above the resulting column of tweets, as well as a row of video thumbnails off to the side.

Clearly, the idea here is that Twitter wants users to see more information than ever before, … Read more

Jack Dorsey: Twitter was built in two weeks

Rome may not have been built in a day, but Twitter was built in just two weeks.

During an onstage interview at a Twitter off-site meeting today, co-founder Jack Dorsey (who is also the founder of the mobile payments company, Square) recalled how long it took him to build the first version of the microblogging service: two weeks, according to a tweet from Guy Yalif, a member of Twitter's product marketing team who was present at the event.

.@jack: The first version of @twitter was built in two weeks and was SMS only #MakingHistory twitter.com/gyalif/status/...

— Guy … Read more

Kids get 100,000 Facebook 'Likes,' get dad to cough up cat

News flash: Facebook users like cats. They also like feel-good stories. And precocious children. Put those all together and you get the story of two clever kids and their social-media campaign for getting a cat.

Remi Urbano, a 7-year-old, is the marketing genius behind the campaign. He wanted a cat, but his father Dan refused to get him one. Little Remi kept asking, and eventually "No" turned into "Only if you can get 1,000 Facebook Likes."… Read more

8 social-media changes since the 2008 elections

In social media, as in politics, four years is an eternity.

That's an example of a tweetable thought -- pithy and likely to be shared -- that you find sprinkled throughout social media these days.

The mild pressure to come up with re-tweetable posts is just one of the ways things have changed for me social-media-wise since the 2008 election, the first U.S. presidential election where social media was part of the equation.

Here are eight developments worth noting:

1. Facebook: 2008 was, indeed, a long time ago. At the end of that August, Mark Zuckerberg announced that his service had crossed 100 million users, … Read more

Twitter nabs yet another high profile ex-Googler

Twitter has hired former Google associate general counsel Nicole Wong, making her the latest in a growing string of ex-Googlers to join the microblogging company.

In a tweet this afternoon, Wong wrote, "New nest. Excited to #jointheflock." Moments later, Twitter general counsel Alex Macgillivray responded, writing, "So excited to be working with Nicole again!"

Wong's hiring marks the latest by Twitter of a former Googler. Others who have switched from the search giant to the microblogging company include Macgillivray, former Google associate litigation counsel Amy Keating, former corporate counsel Bakari Brock, and several recently hired … Read more

Tweet failures plaguing Twitter's official apps

Twitter users are reporting problems receiving tweets in their official Twitter apps this afternoon.

In a post to its official status blog, Twitter acknowledged the issue, saying: "Some users may be experiencing a delay with new tweets in their timelines. Our engineers are currently working on this issue."

A search for "Twitter app" reveals a lot of unhappy people, though people using clients like TweetDeck seem to be having no problems.

In recent days, there's been much talk of the end of the so-called "fail whale" in light of Twitter's performance having … Read more