Yesterday, the internet was all about Invisible Children’s #stopKONY campaign and video, but while Americans get themselves into a froth about a country they don’t even know the location of, and a man they only know through rumours, we take a closer look at the organisation behind the hype. And as a number of commentators look closer, the cracks in Invisible Children’s premise, promises and their presentation become anything but invisible.
“Probably not,” is the answer. It seems as if things have returned to normal on the Facebook servers around parts of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The outage earlier affected facebook.com, as well as apps for mobile phones and tablets. Facebook has thus far put the incident down to “technical difficulties.”
This might turn out to be the most inspiring documentary you will watch all year. A serious campaign is underway to bring down Joseph Kony, the infamous leader of the Ugandan guerrilla group: the Lord’s Resistance Army. The LRA is responsible for an unquantifiable number of atrocities across Uganda. Human trafficking, brutal rape, and child soldier deployment are commonplace. This is KONY 2102.
Another alternative to Apple’s iCloud popped up this week, with Google has announcing that it will be combining the Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore into a new cloud-based service called Google Play, allowing users to access all of their media across all of their Android devices.
Has Facebook just been hacked? A short while ago, tweets began to start flowing eluding to the fact that Facebook was reportedly down in many regions across the world including Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. We searched a little, and Facebook is indeed inaccessible to many. What will they do?
Who would’ve guessed that Facebook, the time-stealing, secret-revealing social forum would ever be more than a place to share funny videos of crazy cats and post pics of your latest meal? A recent infographic put together by the Criminal Justice Degrees Guide shows 20 crimes that Facebook assisted or helped to solve.
We were quite stunned by this little diatribe that appeared on the Facebook page of respected local political scientist, Prof. Steven Friedman, yesterday, where he calls into question the integrity of Proteas captain, AB De Villiers.
For the first time ever, researchers will now be able to access extensive historical Twitter data. Previously, only the preceding 30 days of tweets were available for companies to search. The new move means that trend analysts and companies looking for specific insight will now be able to access tweets dating back two years.
Capetonians: on Janssens Road, in Tableview, near the bike shop, this traffic light is sporting a new “green” signal. Apparently, this isn’t the first traffic light that’s been sporting this kind of “green” signal either.
[Thanks, Jake R]
Did you know that Shrien Dewani’s lawyer used the previous advert to try and convince a court that South African jails were dangerous and that he shouldn’t be extradited from Britain to face trial for allegedly killing his wife Anni? The sequel, which aired last night for the first time, is bound to instil yet more fear in drunken drivers’ minds.
We’ve told you a lot about the shenanigans of SA’s Big Four banks recently. Yesterday a Twitter storm erupted around Standard Bank and FNB, with the former accusing FNB of misleading advertising. The irony? The mud-slinging quite quickly turned in the direction of Standard Bank, with Tweeters taking FNB’s side. Here’s a snapshot of what happened.
This week, the Catholic Church begins its annual Lenten cycle, culminating in the holy days associated with Easter in just over a month, and given the flagging interest many young Catholics around the world are apparently showing in sticking to their Lenten vows, the Pope is taking his fight for their pledges to the Twittersphere.
Yesterday’s 46th Superbowl in the States, which saw the New York Giants eke out a last minute 21-17 win over the New England Patriots, also saw an unprecedented surge in activity on social messaging phenomenon, Twitter. To the tune of 10 000 tweets per minute, that is.
Facebook is expected to file for an IPO later today – Wednesday morning stateside – raising $5 billion. This is a fair deal less than the $10 billion previously rumored. Folks figure Zuckerberg wants to start with a conservative base at first. Because he can’t be sure this “Face-book” thing is going to take off.
Ah Facebook, the digital realm where artificial friendships are born and destroyed quicker than tequila’s ability to turn a good night to regret. Everyone’s been there, you’re scrolling through your newsfeed when suddenly you realise that you’re no longer receiving Susan’s pictures of her adorable new puppy, or William’s hilarious updates. You don’t even have to make the effort of checking, you’ve been unfriended. With Mashable’s clever new script you’ll be spared the pain of similar discoveries and find out the moment someone decides to cut the cord.
Man, look, I know the successive restriction of online liberties is something we should be fighting tooth and nail, but I can’t be the only one who heard about last Saturday’s ‘Twitter Blackout,’ in protest of Twitter’s new censorship policy, and failed to care.
Facebook, the world’s largest social-networking service, could file for its initial public offering as early as Wednesday this week. It’s a move that has been on the cards for some time, but the rumour pot is now starting to boil more consistently.
Not even 24 hours ago, a user of the popular user-generated news link website, reddit, asked if readers wouldn’t mind helping out with a donation for an orphanage in Kenya. Humans went over and above what was required, by a long way. This is awesome.
Facebook’s new Timeline feature, that up until now has been an optional switch for its more than 800 million users, will very shortly become compulsory for everyone using the social networking platform. Facebook began the forced switch in some regions yesterday, and will continue to do so in the next few weeks.
Yesterday the popular file-sharing site, MegaUpload was taken down by the US government. In response, hackers aligned with the global cyber-collective known as Anonymous took down at least six prominent websites, including those of the US Department of Justice and Universal Music Group.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has today written a letter published in The Star newspaper asking that we no longer refer to Johan Kotzé, the Limpopo rape and murder accused, as “the monster from Modimolle”. He says Kotzé is still one of God’s children “with the capacity to become a saint.”
Wikipedia joined a number of other websites by going offline for 24 hours in an attempt to protest against proposed anti-piracy laws in the US. Users see a black screen and a political statement: “Imagine a world without free knowledge,” but if you really need to access the website, just hit the ‘Esc’ key when you land on your desired Wikipedia page.
On Sunday a second set of nude pictures of Khanyi Mbau appeared on Twitter. The Film and Publication Board said yesterday that the police would be asked to help with investigations. They also warned that people who post such pictures on social networks might be held criminally liable. OFFICE WARNING: Nudity may appear after you click.
Following his opening address for the International Knowledge Conference at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, former president, Thabo Mbeki voiced some concerns about Twitter as “a great conveyor of reliable knowledge,” pointing to Gaddafi’s overthrow as a consequence of “false knowledge,” rather than the social media. Mbeki immediately started trending on Twitter.
This year Facebook will go public and start to sell shares on the stock exchange. Thanks to all of us, the social network is now worth $100 billion – more than giants such as Google, Disney, Amazon, and McDonald’s. But who is going to pocket all this money? Check out this infographic, detailing which Facebook friends will be getting pieces of the pie, as well as some other interesting facts:
Tired of peoples’ phones hogging the dinner table ambience? Here’s a nifty little social exercise fresh out of America that puts a high price on handling your handset at the dinner table. It’s called the phone stack, and here’s how it works.
Whether you love it or hate it, Facebook’s new Timeline feature is here to say. Rather than jump on the bandwagon condemning the new feature, an Israeli ad agency used it to send a powerful anti-drug message.
2011 may be remembered as the year that news and social media tied the knot. Check out a great visual recap of the 2011, as seen on Twitter, after the jump.
Despite rumours of his resignation as SA’s test cricket captain, which spread like wildfire yesterday in social media channels following the Proteas’ resounding defeat to Sri Lanka, Graeme Smith is not resigning. While a comment on Twitter alluded to him possibly stepping down as skipper, he has confirmed that this “is not the case at all”.
Social media feeds, especially Twitter feeds, started buzzing with a rumour that Nelson Mandela had been admitted to hospital a few hours ago. It appears a DJ just happened to watch a programme airing on E-TV about the year that’s passed, and saw old visuals that prompted him to think Madiba had in fact been hospitalised.