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via Christophe Justeau, Forbes Who would expect today to pay the full price for a mobile phone, when subscribing to a new wireless plan with a Telecom service provider? These days for example, if you live in the US and select Verizon, you may get the serious Blackberry Curve 9330 for $0. If you select … Continue reading
via P. Solomon Banda, The Huffington Post The wave of uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East that have overturned three governments in the past year have prompted the U.S. government to begin developing guidelines for culling intelligence from social media networks, a top Homeland Security official said Monday. Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary … Continue reading
via Pete Cashmore, CNN As we enter the final months of 2011, the thoughts of tech watchers like me are turning to what we can expect in 2012. Voice recognition in all our devices? Touch control replacing the mouse and keyboard? The death of the wallet as mobile payments become mainstream? Maybe. But what I’m most … Continue reading
via Chris Taylor, Mashable Television is broken. I know it. You know it. Steve Jobs knew it. I have a pretty state-of-the-art 2011 Sony LED TV, complete with Hulu Plus, Netflix and YouTube apps. Yet it still usually takes me about a dozen clicks on a button-rich remote to get to what I want … Continue reading
via Michelle Conlin, Business Insider Only a few months ago, Groupon was the Internet’s next great thing. Business media christened it the fastest growing company ever. Copycats proliferated. And investors salivated over the prospect of Groupon going public. Today, the startup that pioneered online daily deals for coupons is an example of how fast an … Continue reading
via Todd Wasserman, Mashable All those hours you spend on Facebook may be adding grey matter, signifying greater density, to the part of your brain linked to social skills. Or, perhaps, people with larger areas of the brain for social skills may just have higher than average Facebook friend counts. That’s the chicken-and-egg problem researchers … Continue reading
via Frederic Lardinois, Silicon Filter Last night, high-profile Google engineer Steve Yegge mistakenly posted a long rant about working at Amazon and Google’s own issues with creating platforms on Google+. Apparently, he only wanted to share it internally with everybody at Google, but mistaken shared it publicly. For the most part, Yegge’s post focusses on … Continue reading
via David Karnstedt, Crain’s Chicago Business As a guy that has been in the digital marketing space for 20 years, I’ll admit that it was at first difficult to believe that social media marketing is that much different than all other forms of online advertising. Understanding how it is different, and thus measuring its value, … Continue reading
In July, KDNuggets.com, an online newsite focused on data mining and analytics software, ran an unusual listing in its jobs section. “We are looking for Predictive Modeling/Data Mining Scientists and Analysts, at both the senior and junior level, to join our department through November 2012 at our Chicago Headquarters,” read the ad. “We are a multi-disciplinary team of … Continue reading
via Jennifer Preston, The New York Times What began as a small group of protesters expressing their grievances about economic inequities last month from a park in New York City has evolved into an online conversation that is spreading across the country on social media platforms. Inspired by the populist message of the group known … Continue reading
Sesame Street has a new muppet who is hungry for more than just cookies. The iconic kids show is set to unveil a new impoverished puppet named Lily, whose family faces an ongoing struggle with hunger issues. Lily will be revealed in a one-hour Sesame Street primetime special, Growing Hope Against Hunger, which is being sponsored by … Continue reading
Facebook has overhauled its Pages Insights analytics tool and added a new metric to gauge the health of a page: “People Talking About.” That statistic, which users will see on Pages below the total number of “Likes,” will be one of four tracked by Pages Insights. The idea is that users will understand a Page … Continue reading
You can’t spell “NPR” without “PR,” as in “disaster,” as in what that particular media organization had more than its share of in 2011. Former CEO Vivian Schiller resigned last March in the wake of the Juan Williams firing and James O’Keefe undercover video fiascos. Now that position has been filled by Gary Knell, a … Continue reading
[Editress’ Note: Normally I wouldn’t mention something like this, but it’s one of my all-time favorite shows. Seriously, you should watch it.] At a panel at the New Yorker Festival featuring a conversation with the cast of the much loved and missed television series “Arrested Development,” the show’s creator, Mitch Hurwitz, provided updated information on … Continue reading
Facebook has gone a half step to putting the Poke out of its misery — but I don’t see why they don’t kill it off completely. Would we really miss it? Last week, when launching the new Facebook subscribe button, the social network hid the much-maligned “Poke” button behind a settings menu, making it pretty … Continue reading
Facebook took a huge step toward ubiquitous sharing with its new timeline and sharing features. And it rightfully creeps some people out. Not everybody wants to share their life story on their profile, see their friends’ activities in real time or have their preferences in music, movies and reading shared as they’re consuming media. But … Continue reading
The rumor that Facebook will suddenly start charging users to access the site has become one of the social media era’s perennial chain letters. While Facebook prominently advertises that its service is “free and always will be” on its homepage, it hasn’t stopped false rumors of a pay scheme from going viral on numerous occasions, … Continue reading
Facebook has said that it has “fixed” cookies that could have tracked users after they logged out of the site. The issue was brought to light by an Australian blogger who has conducted a year-long analysis of the social network’s use of cookies. He concluded the company might still be able to track members’ web … Continue reading
New data from Experian Hitwise show a dramatic increase in traffic over the week since the service opened to everyone. Visits to Google Plus increased by 1269% last week. The site received 15 million U.S. visits, up from 1.1 million the week before. Google Plus went from ranking 54th in Hitwises Social Networking and Forums … Continue reading
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg summed up the social network’s big F8 announcement this way: “We’re adding verbs.” What he didn’t say was: We’re subtracting privacy. At last year’s F8, Facebook announced the “like” button. One year later the “like” button looks like the work of cave men. Starting today, Zuckerberg announced that you won’t be … Continue reading
Over the past decade-and-a-half a variety of social-networking sites have risen only to fall shortly thereafter. Friendster is shorthand for this cycle but it’s not alone: Geocities, SixDegrees, MySpace, and LiveJournal followed similar trajectories. After a period of dominance, their empires ended with the barbarians at the gates. Some of those communities still exist today, … Continue reading
Twitter, which just got into the advertising business last year, will start selling political ads this week. An example of a promoted political tweet, from Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The ads will appear as Promoted Tweets, which come up under certain search terms or in the timeline of Twitter users who follow a political campaign. … Continue reading
On Friday, hackers broke into the main Twitter account for NBC News and reported a terrorist attack on Ground Zero. Twitter acted fast, pulling the accounts of NBC and the Script Kiddies, the LulzSec-lookalikes that took credit for the attack, but the tweet stirred some anxiety in the days before the tenth anniversary of 9/11. This is … Continue reading
The Brandt Standard 