They surveyed teens in 30 countries. After extensive research, they were able to show that the number of teenagers claiming to be active on Facebook had dropped to 56% in the third quarter of 2013, from 76% in the first. And for sites like Facebook, a drop of 20% means millions, billions even. So, where are they going instead?
The selfie. Has it become an accepted means of self-expression – have we all decided it’s okay? Is it an art form? No one can really say, but it certainly seems that the initial disgust with the self-indulgent practice has been subtly swept under the carpet. Everybody’s doing it.
Blockbuster has been an American institution for well over 25 years. At the peak of it’s power, it employed up to 60,000 employees in 9,000 stores across America. Now, they’re moving online, and in so doing have closed all of their remaining 300 stores.
Afrikaans e-news website, the Pro Afrikaans Action Group (Praag), has been put under severe pressure, after Google has pulled the plug on all of its advertising. The site had been generating thousands of rands, but without it’s advertsing revenue it maybe forced to shut down.
This isn’t what we wanted, is it? Instead of making a dislike button, or a middle-finger button, Facebook have decided to fix something that wasn’t broken. They seem to like doing that.
‘Time’ is known for their world-class journalism, hard hitting analysis and classy magazine covers. Never one to take cheap shots at public figures, the world was shocked when they decided to make a fat joke on their most recent cover.
Justin Bieber may sing well enough to capture the hearts and minds of millions of teens, but we wouldn’t trust him to make sound business deals. He’s reportedly led an R11 million round of funding for RockLive – a San Francisco tech company that plans to launch a new social network this week.
If you recall, we posted a story last week about Kanye West’s showstopping proposal to Kim Kardashian. Later, we managed to acquire some actual video footage of the proposal – and it is that video footage that is now involved in a major court case, where Kim K is looking to sue YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley for posting a video of the proposal online at his new Internet venture MixBit.
It’s everyone’s dream job to work at Google, isn’t it? It’s one of the most forward-thinking corporations on earth – the pay is great, the benefits are out of this world, and the working environment is unparalleled anywhere else. Take the Swiss office, for example, where employees spend their days working inside old ski-lifts, and can take a breather in an aquarium equipped with reclining seats. So what’s the downside?
A while ago we broke the news that Instagram would soon be placing ads in your news feed. Many people were miffed, but many applauded Instagram for allowing users to close the ad once they’ve seen it, and for allowing feedback about how to make ads more aesthetically appealing and personally valuable. The first of what will be a long line of instagram ads appeared on users’ screens last friday, and it was an ad for American designer Michael Kors.
Well, ex step dad, now that Bruce Jenner has divorced Kim Kardashian’s mom, Kris. But that would be way to complicated to explain in a headline. Anyway, the drummer for the Black Keys is a guy by the name of Patrick Carney, and his Instagram account is one of the funniest shrines to plastic surgery […]
It seems like the more we worry about being monitored – the more we’re being monitored, especially on social media. If you want to use it – expect them to know everything. Facebook in particular is going the extra mile to monitor our precise activities on their platform. Sources say that they may be considering gathering data from even our most minute mouse-movements.
Those of you who’ve recently updated their Twitter app will have found a lot more visual imagery than you bargained for. Twitter decided it might be a better idea if images appeared directly on your news feed, without being hidden by links. Some like this feature – some despise it. If you fall into the second category, keep reading.
Okay – these various trivial forms of procrastination are hard to keep up with. First it’s the bitstrips, then its awkward profile pic week and now – out of the blue – everyone seems to be changing their profile photos to pictures of giraffes. This may not have reached everyone just yet, but rest assured this is out there, and people are going nuts for it.
To all of the social media managers out there, were sorry about this. We know your job is important and, without it, your companies “daily impressions to viral reach” ratio would be completely off. But you’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself sometimes, right? Please enjoy this hilarious picture of a new idea for a Halloween costume – it’s pretty scary.
“This website uses cookies – please press continue if you would like to proceed”. With any luck, this banner will soon be forgotten by the human race. Some of the biggest sites in the game are finding ways around using cookies – the little bitty pieces of code that marketers deploy to people’s browsers to track their online movements.
Yoh – residents of the suburb of Glenwood in Durban are getting angry. They’re so fed up with the prostitutes that stand on their streets, they’re going the extra yard to identify their clients, name them on Facebook, thereby disrupting business as usual. The concerned residents wrote to the local community paper to announce that they would set up “surveillance cameras and a registration service on Facebook for free”.
Platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook that were developed alongside the smartphone have birthed a new creative class – the phone-tographers. Some phone photography enthusiasts are good, composing neat shots of their family, their pets and their holidays. Some of them, however, should never have been handed anything capable of taking photos. If you fall into the latter group of individuals, you’ll be happy to know that we have a little how-to guide in the form of an infographic called ‘Phone-Tography 101’
This piece of hosiery is equipped with BlueTooth, so every time there’s an unclasping of the clips, the bra communicates wirelessly to your Twitter account, triggering a tweet that reminds women to go for a medical examination. By extension, everyone will know that you have your bra off.
In lieu of the Edward Snowden inspired paranoia about online privacy, Adam Penenberg, a journalist for Pando Daily, challenged a hacker to try to get as much information about him as possible, simply by using a PC. The man he challenged, Nick Percoco, considers himself a “white hat hacker” and has been breaking into companies (at their request) for some years now. The journalist in question had no idea what he was in for.
Slowly, surely and inevitably, our social media spaces are becoming commercialised. We all knew it was coming – it’s just a matter of coming to terms with it, getting used to the new layout and trying to make the best of it. This time, it’s Instagram’s turn to start earning some cold hard cash.
Cerebra, a brand-focused South African strategic communication agency, recently did a massive survey of how the best African companies utilise social media. Ever since the advent of sites like Facebook and Twitter, everyone wanted to know how these sites could work in business, and whether more followers really does mean more money.
This just in. Rumours are abound that YouTube is planning on starting an on-demand music service that works kinda like Spotify – but with music videos. In a bid to keep up with the times, they’re pitching the new service to mobile users specifically. What’s more, they’re going to offer the service in two forms – a free service, and a premium one.
Facebook’s suits are losing their minds over a small app developer in the States who developed a service with a unique selling point of limiting a user’s time on the social network. Break Your Facebook is a self-help tool of sorts, which aides in weaning otherwise-busy GenY-yuppies from social media addiction, freeing up time for work or, you know, real life.
Woah! Instagram just got serious. No more selfies. No more sunsets – we’re talking guns baby. Instagram has made no official rule outlawing the sale of guns on their platform, so guy buyers or sellers can just scroll away on their smartphones, and they might as well be in Steve Hofmeyr’s basement.
The name “Jack Dorsey” ring a bell? Nope? Well, if haven’t happened to come across his name in the media, you should know that this guy is soon to be named the chairman of a publicly-traded Twitter. And what’s more, we happened top find a whole lot of his old poetry, from his days as a rebellious back-alley hacker. The following is not suitable for those scared of bad poetry.
While Twitter prepares to go public, founders Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Noah Glass are pulling together to drive their future share price higher, despite suffering multiple messy divorces over the course of the last seven years.
“I wasn’t going to write this letter, but today i’ve been dodging phone calls from various industry blogs who wished me to remark upon your having said your career was designed to be similar to mine … So this is what I need to say … And it is said in the spirit of fatherliness and with love.”
Facebook is partnering with San Francisco development firm St. Anton Partners to build a 394-unit housing complex, most of which will be filled with Facebook employees. The development – called Anton Menlo – will sprawl over 10 acres of land in Menlo Park, California. The 630,000 square-foot Facebook town will be walking and biking distance to […]
Miley, being the embryo that she is, replied to Sinead’s slightly unhinged but nevertheless relavent open letter by posting a screenshot of tweets posted by O’Connor over two years ago, in which she pleads for medication in order to avoid a mental breakdown. Miley went to compare O’Connor to Amanda Bynes, who recently suffered a public mental unravelling. So, naturally Sinead wrote another open letter to Miley on her Facebook page.