Archive for the ‘Social Networks’ Category
Social Media and Twitter icons are probably the most used in blogs and web sites, here we provide for all you two links for a very neat set of icons in an original black design.
The social media icons are provided by BlackSmith and you can find for Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube, digg, Reddit, Delicious, etc. Download the entire set from here.
And the black set for Twitter, provided by iconhive, is definitely my favorite ones; which are available for Windows and Mac. Download from here for the Windows version; and this link for Mac.
Dan Zarella is, as the blog says it, the social media scientist; and created a very interesting tool: “Most ReTweetable Words Finder” given a keyword, shows the most retweetable words.
The use is quite simple as well: enter a keyword and click analyze. The tool will return a list of words that were found to be related to that word and highly ReTweetable. It will also display the number of Tweets and ReTweets analyzed to generate the list. Here’s an example of “Microsoft” keyword:
We can find some words like “kinect”, “gaming”, “camera”, “ironruby” or even “fetish” (?).
The tool compares words found in ReTweets against non-ReTweet Tweets. Using the last 24hours, the tool analyzes up to 1500 Tweets and 1500 ReTweets per word.
If you are interested in retweeats, Dan created a report: “The Science of ReTweets”
As you probably know, Facebook reached the amazing number of 500 million users, all time record for a social network. But how are those users distributed around the world? What is the general adoption for Facebook in the entire population? The answer, right here:
In this map we can evaluate the number of population of each country shown vs the number of Facebook users.
Tableu software created a very interesting and simple report where we can find all of this answers. Take a look:
- The country with more users is the United States with 125 million.
- The United States has the higher rate of insertion 40%.
- In second and third place are: UK (26 million) and Indonesia (25 million).
- If Facebook were a country, it will be the second largest, just behind China.
Mark Zuckeberg once said that Facebook’s future is not a website, but people’s identity in the Internet. Getting closer Mark, getting closer.
Facebook is introducing, just for a few users, a new and outstanding feature: Face recognition. In the process of uploading photos, Facebook will automatically recognize the faces on each photo and you can start tagging from there.
This new feature appears right after Facebook acquired Divyshot, and the main idea (at least for now) is reducing the amount of clicking users have to execute whenever they are uploading pictures. But wait, if you don’t see this option available in your account, don’t worry; Facebook is kind of beta-testing this feature in 1% of the entire Facebook population.
The face recognition does simplify the uploading process, but it does not automatically tags any of the photos. That automation sounds like the next step, though.
Pick&Zip is another great and free web app to apply on your Facebook profile. Within just a few clicks you can automatically download pictures from Facebook’s profiles.
The usability is quite simple and the look-n-feel of this web app is very similar than the one we see when we are uploading pictures in Facebook. How to use Pick&Zip:
Access the Pick&Zip site- Login to the application using your Facebook account
- Browse your friend’s photos or your own.
- Select the pictures you wish to download.
- Click on “Review & Download” to get the pictures in PDF or a ZIP file.
The image quality is the same one that is shown on Facebook albums.
A great option in this web app is the possibility to select “Find my Pictures”, and retrieves all the images that you were tagged.
Yes, that’s right, you didn’t read “New”, it’s “Nude Social Network”. Skinbook uses the same basic stuff from other Social Networks, but the target is people who are nudist.
“The World’s No.1 Nudist Social Network (with over 8000 members)! Providing a safe, fun and friendly place for likeminded people to connect!” announces the web site.
Skinbook it’s a Britain social network site where people can load their favorite nudist pictures and share them with their friends. But wait; there are some ground rules which you cannot avoid:
- You cannot upload XXX photos. You know the type, those hardcore pics that could be offensive for others.
- You cannot upload photos where only your genitals are showing.
- Cannot comment or insult on someone else photos.
Even though it sounds like a bizarre site, if the regulations are in place, people can share their unique way of life with other peers.
Seems that people just can’t get enough about Twitter apps, and now TwitDates offers the dating service to all Twitter users.
There’s one thing for sure, wherever a lot of people gather around, a dating app appears. TwitDates is a free service where you just need to login with your Twitter account, add a few more data about you and that’s it, you can start find your date in Twitter.
Even more, before login in with your Twitter account you can make a quick search using the desired criteria from age and country. The site does not have many users just yet, but I guess there’s only a matter of time.
The service also provides you the way to exchange messages with other users, including photos, videos, links and etc.
Matt Mckeon prepared a very interesting report about the evolution of Facebook’s privacy regarding the contents on each profile. The cool thing about it is that we can analyze with pretty straight forward images.
(The site contains an animated image showing the report, which does not work with IE)
Should not surprise us that the largest social network site ever gets a lot of attention when there are some changes in their usability and how the information or content is displayed in the Internet; after all Facebook represents the identity of millions today, not only people but companies as well.
The report basically takes the changes introduced over the years in the default privacy settings for Facebook user’s personal information and Facebook Terms of Service. The type of “personal data” analyzed here are: likes, name, picture, gender, birthday, friends, networks, wall posts, photos and extended information (like school, college, family members, etc).
Cisco completed a very interesting report regarding social networking sites and companies. Taking several countries as reference, around 52% of organizations block social networking applications and collaboration tools; with the main differential in India, where the 96% IT administrators and decision makers block this content.
The complete study took 10 different countries around the globe, and the main reason for organization to block any of these applications or tools reside in security matters or in the “lack of education with these tools”.
But that’s not all, the study also shows that around 50% of the users actually ignore company policy and 27% of those admit that they usually get a workaround by changing some settings to get access to those sites and applications (I’m pretty sure that the 27% is a lot bigger).
Around 2023 users and 1021 IT administrators and decision makers completed this research.
What about your company? Do they block some content or applications to end-users?
A study made by health experts indicates that Facebook is linked to the raise and resurgence of sexually-transmitted diseases in a large area in the UK.
“Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex.” says Professor Peter Kelly, director of public health in Teesside. The study remarks that one of the diseases that increased lately in this area (Sunderland, Durham and Teesside) is syphilis. Professor Kelly said “Syphilis is a devastating disease. Anyone who has unprotected sex with casual partners is at high risk. There has been a fourfold increase in the number of syphilis cases detected with more young women being affected.”
The particularity of this area is that, shown in the report, people that live there are 25% more likely to use social networking sites that the rest in Britain.
Ok, I can see some kind of link between social networking sites and having “casual sex”, but still the decision for people to meet strangers and not having the necessary sexual precautions, still is a matter of the people involved and not the actual site.
