Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Yes, Ello still exists and it’s getting ready to reintroduce itself Rene Alegria, the first chief marketing officer of Ello, a social network that debuted last year. Image: Rene Alegria By Seth Fiegerman2015-02-19 19:21:11 UTC For a few glorious weeks last fall, Ello, once dubbed the anti-Facebook, had the kind of media coverage that many…
I just finished reading “More Awesome Than Money” by Jim Dwyer about the rise and “fall” of Diaspora as a viable alternative to Facebook. I’ve often thought of Diaspora* as something that “came and went”; much of the story had passed when I heard about it, but while the project started in 2010, the story…
coins metadata inserted by kblog-metadata At some point Thursday, the title of Jon Ronson’s essay changed from “How One Stupid Tweet Ruined Justine Sacco’s Life” to “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life.” The change helps, because while “blew up” is figurative language—and thus, obviously not to be taken literally—the statement that Sacco’s life was…
At the heart of the media’s chattiest technology is a hollow sharing economy. A personal investigation into just how little traffic Twitter’s maelstrom actually contributes to websites. Dado Ruvic/Reuters In January, I deleted Twitter from my phone. The app was a charming distraction, I decided, and 2015 would be a year of productivity upgrades. Three…
A security researcher recently made a seriously startling discovery. With just four lines of code, he says he could delete any photo album on Facebook. Zuck’s wedding photos? Zap. Your high school graduation album? Lost forever. Lucky for you, he decided to report the bug to Facebook, which promptly cut him a check. Let’s back…
Judging by trending social media #hashtags, the world is nearing an apocalyptic Battle Royale waiting for the Four Horsemen to post an Instagram selfie. Just today, I watched #GazaUnderAttack, #Ukraine, #EbolaOutbreak, #BorderCrisis and #BIEBERvsBLOOM. Ongoing global political crises sparked vigorous, international debates …sadly taking the form of incendiary tweets, dueling hashtags and Facebook grandstanding. Alongside…
Photo Credit Photo illustration by Andrew B. Myers. Prop stylist: Sonia Rentsch. close shareTools As she made the long journey from New York to South Africa, to visit family during the holidays in 2013, Justine Sacco, 30 years old and the senior director of corporate communications at IAC, began tweeting acerbic little jokes about the…
With 288 million active users sending around 500 million tweets each day, Twitter offers plenty of opportunities to grab attention. Sometimes that attention is positive, as it was when semi-employed comedian Justin Halpern started the account Shit My Dad Says and found himself on the receiving end of book deals, mentions on The Daily Show,…
If you want to criticize Facebook on Facebook, good luck — and don’t be surprised if your grievances fail to go viral. Thanks to a little-known guideline that restricts references to its brand in boosted posts, Facebook Inc. may decline to give greater visibility to posts that reflect negatively on it. Call it Facebook’s own…
Twitter user Jeffry van der Goot says he was questioned by police after his Twitter bot made what appeared to be death threats. In a series of tweets first spotted by Fusion, van der Goot explains that his bot, which takes random words from his feed and jumbles them into new tweets, got him in what could…