social media

Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. SUBSCRIBE Twitter is embracing its role as a news platform with a slate of product updates that will personalize the stories users see. Twitter announced on Wednesday that users will soon begin to see personalized breaking news notifications at the top of their timelines, along with tweets and video that add more context to events. The feature provides a way for users to see the best tweets on breaking news events without having to follow hashtags or search for relevant users. Twitter will also bring personalization to the breaking news alerts it sends to users. “This is a long-term strategy for us to make Twitter easier to use and to see what is happening,” Keith Coleman, vice president of product at Twitter, said. “This is the first of many experiments and changes in this direction.” Users can expect to start seeing the news alerts around events at … [Read more...] about Twitter introduces personalized news alerts ahead of the World Cup

Ever said something really horrible in an online chat? Like, I’m talking a statement so lip curlingly uncomfortable that, as soon as you pressed ‘send,’ you felt shame dribble down your neck like a raw egg made of pure parental disappointment? Luckily for some of us, Snapchat now lets you delete messages you’ve sent directly to friends or in a group chat. It’s a pretty intuitive system. You press and hold on the message, at which point an option menu comes up and you can select ‘delete.’ See it in action here: This new feature – which is rolling out globally over the next few weeks – also notifies others in the chat when a message is deleted. Snapchat itself says the function is so people who have “accidentally sent a movie spoiler” or want to “clean up a message that contains a typo,” can rectify their mistake. Hopefully, it won’t be a tool for people to abuse each other and then claim they … [Read more...] about Snapchat now lets you clear chats to save face

The dust hadn’t even settled in the arena before David Leavitt’s first ill-advised joke. After an explosion killed 22 people, including children, and wounded 59 others at a Manchester, England arena, Leavitt didn’t hesitate. Being first matters, even in tragedy, and especially on Twitter. With a click of the send button, the tweet landed, with a thud, to the disbelief of nearly all who saw it. But Leavitt, a freelance writer with bylines at “CBS, AXS, Yahoo, Examiner, etc.” was oblivious. MULTIPLE CONFIRMED FATALITIES at Manchester Arena. The last time I listened to Arianna Grande I almost died too. Anyone who uses Twitter knows it isn’t exactly a wholesome place. Its alumni consists of Milo Yiannapoulos, a man who once defended pedophilia, David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and Martin Shkreli, the infamous “pharma douche” who raised the price of a life-saving drug by over seven thousand percent before later being sent … [Read more...] about Twitter troll David Leavitt teaches a masterclass in how to be an asshole

Photographs uploaded to social media have been analysed by researchers to calculate London’s cultural “health” — and help predict the rate of gentrification. Data scientists looked at millions of images taken by people at arts, music and science culture events across the capital over the past decade, which they said can help measure prosperity. Software examined variables in the pictures such as smiling people eating, different types of arts events and even content-looking dogs. The data collected was “directly tied to the growth of certain neighbourhoods, rising home values and median income”, researchers said. The study, published in the Frontiers in Physics journal, used public images uploaded to Flickr in London and New York. They were taken by people at cultural events, such as festivals, cinemas, art exhibitions, music shows, plays, museums and tech demonstrations. Pictures of people buying papers at newspaper stands and visiting the library … [Read more...] about Social media is being used to map London’s culture hotspots

Facebook said a software bug led some users to post publicly by default regardless of their previous settings. The bug affected as many as 14 million users over several days in May.The problem, which Facebook said it has fixed, is the latest privacy scandal for the world's largest social media company.It said the bug automatically suggested that users make new posts public, even if they had previously restricted posts to "friends only" or another private setting. If users did not notice the new default suggestion, they unwittingly sent their post to a broader audience than they had intended.Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said the bug did not affect past posts. Facebook is notifying users who were affected and posted publicly during the time the bug was active, advising them to review their posts.The news follows recent furor over Facebook's sharing of user data with device makers, including China's Huawei. The company is also still recovering from the Cambridge Analytica … [Read more...] about Facebook says privacy-setting bug affected as many as 14M

Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. SUBSCRIBE Conspiracy theorists have found a new outrage to respond to, this one in Tucson, Arizona. An armed group called Veterans on Patrol is demanding that authorities recognize a homeless camp they found on private property to be a child sex-trafficking camp. Authorities have found no evidence that there was a child-sex camp on the site, even though they have brought in investigators and a police cadaver dog to search the area. But the lack of evidence has done nothing to prevent these claims from catching on among far-right online conspiracy theorists. The speed at which these accusations have spread is yet another example of how fringe beliefs, nurtured in dark corners of the internet, can blossom in a deeply polarized era. On Thursday, a video was posted on Veterans on Patrol’s Facebook page in which the group’s leader, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, said he … [Read more...] about Arizona veterans group finds homeless camp — and fuels a new ‘pizzagate’-style conspiracy

Facebook recently announced that it will add a dating app feature to its offering. This will join its portfolio of messaging, event marketing, blogging, instant photography, gaming and a digital marketplace, to name just some of its services.The extensive data profile that Facebook stores of its members may allow it to tailor dating interests better than any comparable services. It is this level of information that the tech giant has on its users that is making lawmakers nervous. Not least because of the huge amount of power Facebook holds.Hence, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently appeared before the European Parliament, he was asked to convince one lawmaker why they shouldn't break up the "Facebook monopoly".When it comes to earning money, Facebook is really only in one industry. As Mark Zuckerberg put it to US senators: "We run ads." And not just a few.The many services that Facebook offers means it has vast amounts of data on its users' lives, as well as the habits of non-users by … [Read more...] about Why the EU should dismantle Facebook

New algorithms. New ad tools. Brand new ways to watch video. Fuelled by intense competition between networks to capture advertising dollars, social media tools and tactics continue to evolve at a breakneck pace. For companies already fatigued by the onslaught of new technology and strategies, the rate of change can be overwhelming. But for those that can keep up, social media promises bigger audiences and more return on investment than ever.Here’s a glimpse at five trends currently reshaping how businesses use social media (and how to stay ahead of the curve):Goodbye free reach on social media (for real). For years, companies’ organic reach on Facebook (the percentage of their followers who see company updates that aren’t “boosted” with ad money) has been dwindling, dipping as low as 2 per cent. The dust has yet to settle on the impact of Facebook’s big decision in January to revamp its news feed—prioritising “meaningful … [Read more...] about Five social media macro-trends all businesses need to know about

Schoolchildren are suffering from “comparison burn-out” and are exhausted by judging their lives against other people’s.   Sara Milne Rowe, who taught in secondary schools in London and is now a performance coach, said sites including Instagram and Facebook leave children feeling worthless and distracted. She now trains teachers to give children the skills to withstand comparison pressure and have confidence in their own life decisions. She said: “Children now have instant access to other people’s lives. They can be looking at hundreds of people on Instagram, when previously children would have only had their class at school to compare with.  “People are exhausted by it and end up looking at these sites compulsively. This constant distraction is impacting our productivity and self-belief.” People who decide to cut down on social media need strength to follow their decision through, she added. By concentrating on personal routines such … [Read more...] about Schoolchildren ‘burned out’ from comparing lives on social media

I’ve never bothered to ask my dogs about their political leanings. Gun to my head, right now, I couldn’t answer whether my beagle was for or against capitalism. I’m not sure how she feels about trickle down economics, or if she’s even aware of who Saint Reagan is. Or, maybe I just don’t give a damn. As a writer who routinely covers some of the dumbest shit in existence, I may have met my match in a Twitter account where each of its 8,000 members presume to know the political leanings of their dogs. And these dogs, according to their owners, are red, white, and blue-wearing, gun-toting, god-fearing conservatives. #MAGA Started earlier this month, Conservative Pets is the ultimate eye roll to the partisan world we live in. It’s easy to believe it’s satire, but at this point we just don’t know. We live in weird times. It could be cheeky commentary, but it’s just as likely to be a middle finger to snowflake liberals triggered by a dust … [Read more...] about Twitter account says ‘no liberal pets’ allowed in its conservative safe space