Martha Stewart – probably one of the most famous names in the last fifteen years for her less than scrupulous past. The home-decor queen has now made even more waves by calling Facebook “dippy” and saying that she much prefers facebook.
In an interview she commented on how she has grown to dislike Facebook. This is the second major celebrity to do so in just two days – on Saturday Bill Gates admitted to abandoning Facebook.
She said that she like the micro-blogging platform because it’s easier, you can reach more people and it doesn’t take up too much time.
“I just love it so much more than Facebook … First of all, you don’t have to spend any time on it, and, second of all, you reach a lot more people. And I don’t have to ‘befriend’ and do all that other dippy stuff that they do on Facebook.”
She called Twitter the Walmart of the internet – hopefully referring to its success not its large stocking of canned goods which is far from plenty.
Twitter just keeps growing with thousands of celebrities now gathering huge followers.
Its official, Facebook, the social network that started out as a noting based at Harvard has now grown to have over 250 million active worldwide members. Astonishing.
The momentous figure was officially announced on the official Facebook blog by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Just a few months ago they celebrated reaching the 200 million mark by launching the non-profit organization Facebook for Good. Now however, they are changing tactics for what should be a huge blowout party –they’re doing nothing except carrying on with their work.
Apparently, they are now trying to make the service more accessible on mobile devices as the growth of Facebook is now largely coming from international countries where people are more likely to access the social network on their mobile devices like the iPhone or Blackberry.
“Today as we celebrate our 250 millionth user, we are also continuing to develop Facebook to serve as many people in the world in the most effective way possible,” Zuckerberg wrote. “This means reaching out to everyone across the world and making products that serve all of you, wherever you are–whether through Facebook Connect, new mobile products and the other things that we are building.”
As we have seen with Twitter, failure to keep the ball rolling can lead to growth rates dropping like a rock. Facebook seem to be doing a good job. The next six months will be a challenge because as a ball gets bigger, its harder to roll.
Here at Crenk we have been making a huge amount of changes with the site in the last week or so. Regular readers will notice that the design has had an upgrade which we hope now is a lot more reader friendly. Additionally, today I wanted to announce that we have a new Facebook group and we have added the new Facebook Fan Box to our sidebar within each individual post. The Facebook fan box and group aims to help our readers follow our articles via Facebook and build more of a community around the site. Here at Crenk we are really trying to provide our readers with what they want, but this is hard without a solid community around the site and a place for everyone to vent their opinions, this is what our Facebook group aims to do.
If you like Crenk and would really like to contribute to our community then please become a fan!
I’ve just recently started running for fitness and I had my eye on the Nike+ system to pair with my iTouch. Running is something a lot of us fear, perhaps some of you out there MIGHT enjoy it, but far more prefer other methods of exercise. Still, the Nike+ system is the device that is supposed to have revolutionized running as a sport and as a frequent user of this device, I have to say it’s upped my game, and helped me train harder.
This small device, running $30USD for the sensor, and approx. $75USD for the USB bracelet, sends information to your iPod and tracks your progress monitoring information like pace, distance, time, and calories burned. All the while you are able to run to your own music track and when you’re feeling run down, activate your own power song to push you those extra miles.
To add even more functionality to the device you are able to connect your device to your computer (both MAC and PC compatible) and upload your data to the Nike+ website, adding you to the mix of already thousands upon thousands of runners out there at all levels. You can monitor your progress, join challenges, track milestones, and join in a social network of sorts with other runners out there. It’s useful on so many levels, and allows you to buy Nike specific music tracks that they’ve put together for you, training modules that go further than what comes pre-loaded, accessories and gear, and even create a Nike+ animated character for a badge that can be placed on your own site or your Facebook account.
All in all, I highly recommend this device if you’ve not gotten it yet, and you’re running. Even if you don’t like running with music, that’s fine, leave it off, but keep the stats, once you calibrate it, it’s priceless.
While social networks are great at connecting people and bringing them together for various aspects, sometimes a nice site is what you’re looking for. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and such just don’t server your needs, and perhaps you’ve tried the Ning communities to no avail.
For those of you out there that are collectors of various things such as stamps, bottle caps, dolls, coins, or just about anything else, Colnect is for you. This social networks brings togethers collectors from around the world to buy, sell, trade, and share stories and locations with people. This niche specific network is amazingly popular, so if you’re a collector and missing that special, cornerstone piece to your collection, perhaps this network can help you complete your empire!
There is no doubt that the market is becoming overrun with social networks. While there is value in a great number of them, after awhile they all starte to look the same. With only slight variations it makes a person wonder why one would be different from the rest if they are all so similar. That being said, the grand-daddy of the social network medium, MySpace, might be on the endangered species list.
It’s no surprise that during an economic crunch that “re-structuring” is inevitable, but recently we’ve seen a large number of the U.S. staff released from the company, and now the wave appears to be hitting Europe. After reading an article on TechCruch it got me thinking if MySpace is even relevant anymore.
It’s become a marketing ground for new bands, comedians, and other entertainers. The playground to the 15 and below crowd, it fails to reach the depth that other social networks like Facebook have reached in recent years. Much like AOL was a pioneer and has slowly been phased out of importance, is the same happening to the social networking pioneer MySpace?
Do you still use MySpace? If so for what? Do you find it relevant in your life, why or why not? I’d love to gauge the readership of Crenk and find out if MySpace is even a blip on the radar in terms of connecting with people.
He is quite sure that the real value from the web platform resides in multiple websites and applications across the Internet, and Facebook it’s not going to try to centralize all that; even better, Facebook will represent the entire platform that any user will need as for identification, business, relationship, etc. etc.
Here’s the interview with the whole concept that Mark gave it to Robert Scoble:
Augusto talked yesterday about Facebook and the launch of their vanity URLs. I was wondering exactly what time on Saturday I had to get up and select my vanity URL (no chance in hell I’m getting up to do this), but then I came across a great world map that now tell me when exactly I need to be awake.
Facebook, the largest social network in the planet, has just announced that they are introducing a very cool feature for all users: including your name/nickname to the Facebook URL.
Meaning that whenever you want someone to visit your Facebook profile you don’t need to copy/paste that awful undescriptive URL, you will only need to choose an available name for you and your profile will be http://www.facebook.com/john.smith
This sounds like an option that could be published earlier, other important social networks already has this feature available (like Hi5). But anyway, it would represent a huge change for the network, making your profile easier to share; or even including the URL in your mail signature.
Have you ever wondered what social networks are dominating in what parts of the world? Well over at Vincos.it they have put together a great map that illustrates which countries are using what, and it seems as though Facebook is easily in control of the world!
With updates to Flock, Firefox, Opera, and even IE, browsers are becoming key factors in how we choose to integrate our online experiences with our daily lives. Each of the above mentioned browsers have key factors that stand out and make them useful to someone, all depending on our tastes. What if you could find a search engine that learned, adapted, and showed you extra content that you would not have found otherwise?
Worio is the social search that has somehow found a way to intelligently learn from your search habits and adapt itself to your likes and dislikes. Worio creator Ali Davar focuses on the search as a form of discovery. He comments that Worio will show you things that you perhaps never even thought of, but are related to your initial search.
The idea of discovery is key to Worio, and information is collected and saved on your habits. The mechanism can be turned off and it will simply function like any other search engine, but the uniqueness also comes in being able to share your favorite links and sites right from the search, without having to rely on social bookmarketing efforts or emailing people. Anyone within your network can see your habits and you can see theirs. Taking this concept a step further, Worio now supports Facebook connect. Now you can directly share your passion, your searches with friends in Facebook and open people up to a whole new world of discovery.
The search looks very promising and has a bright future, we’d love to hear what you think.
Here at Crenk we are testing out a new product called Wibiya. Wibiya provides a tool bar in which you can see at the bottom of the Crenk, which easily allows our readers to navigate through our site and share articles they think are news worthy. Currently, Wibiya is in private beta testing but we thought we would preview their toolbar and see what our readers thought of their product.
Once you head over to Wibiya and get accepted into their beta program you are able to easily and quickly setup your toolbar.
You can first select the style of toolbar in which they have an option of about 20 to choose from. After that you can choose which additions you want to to add to the toolbar itself, twitter, facebook, recent posts, random posts, etc.
Once you have setup your toolbar you can simple add it to your wordpress, typepad or any other site with only one line of code. This is great for the blog owners who dont know too much about php or html.
Once everything is setup and your toolbar is running then Wibiya also provide some great stats on usage of your toolbar.
We are only testing the toolbar on Crenk for a limited time, and because it is in private beta we wanted to provide everyone a chance to see it and even use it. Any feedback would be great!
Its official, 
Who said it? Mark Zuckeberg, Facebook’s CEO.
Facebook
