Google Glass is still leagues short having the thriving developer community of Android, but at I/O Google began seeding that app ecosystems with the help of six big-name web and media brands. Read more »
In today’s world of work, companies that want to thrive need to shift from a business-process defined culture towards a more social network-shaped, cooperative one. Read more »
The battle of adults versus teens has taken on a new format in #followateen versus #followanadult. Read more »
As Path strives for growth, it’s more important than ever for the company to keep the trust of existing users. Read more »
The trend among social networks to produce original content often ends badly, as Tumblr’s shuttering of Storyboard showed. Here’s where other big services, from Facebook to YouTube, are going wrong – or, in the case of LinkedIn, going right. Read more at paidContent »
A correctly mobilized social network can find a random individual in just half a day, researchers say. Read more »
While much of the attention during and after the Boston bombings focused on how one Reddit thread got things wrong, there were other important parts of the community that were doing good — and even doing something approaching journalism. Read more at paidContent »
The big news events of today are increasingly becoming participatory, thanks to growing and hyper-connectivity. This new landscape means, the media and its process — but not its real job – has to evolve. Read more »
A startup called Blab has developed software for predicting conversations on social-media sties and news outlets. It’s another example of applications offering insights using unstructured data that previously was difficult to work with. Read more »
Springpad takes in a lot of loose information from the web and organizes it, but that information stays on Springpad. With its new Embedded Notebooks tool, however, Springpad plans to expose that organized content back to the web. Read more »
The biggest challenge for modern etiquette is that we have so many different forms of communication available to us now, but not everyone agrees on how or when it is appropriate to use them. Read more »
Everyone uses YouTube, but how exactly do people discover new videos? We asked both web video professionals like Amy Pham and Zadi Diaz as well as your average 12 year old girl to find out. Read more at paidContent »
I recently unfriended almost 80 percent of the people I was connected to on Facebook. Part of the problem was the way I was using it, but part of the problem was that Facebook has simply become a lot less relevant to me. Read more »
Facebook wants the first app accessed by new smartphone owners in emerging markets to be its social networking service. It’s working with Spreadtrum to ensure its software will come pre-installed in millions of inexpensive Android phones. Read more »
Facebook is set to launch a location-sharing service similar to Apple’s Find My Friends and Google’s Latitude, according to a report from Bloomberg. Read more »
In his annual letter to shareholders of the seed-stage incubator Betaworks, founder and CEO John Borthwick argues that while closed platforms can be valuable in the short term, open systems and services will ultimately prevail. Read more »
Do you ever wish you were just a number on a social network, and didn’t have to reveal your true identity to the people you chat with online? Meet Social Number, where all your social interactions can take place among numbers. Read more »
Even if we have the best intentions for keeping in contact with old friends, former colleagues and random acquaintances, as our social networks grow, it can be hard to follow through. Here are five apps that try to make it a little easier. Read more »
New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan says in some cases transparency by journalists can trump the principle of objectivity, although she still argues that reporters should refrain from expressing opinions. Unfortunately for the Times, that horse has already left the barn. Read more at paidContent »
Just when many people seemed to think it was dead, new ventures like Svbtle and Medium are trying to reinvent blogging by adding curation and other elements. How they plan to monetize their content, however, remains a mystery. Read more at paidContent »
The growth of apps like Snapchat, which allow users to set a time limit after which photos self-destruct, is seen by many as driven by “sexting.” But some users may simply be attracted by the idea of sharing content in a way that isn’t completely permanent. Read more »
A New York newspaper has come under fire for publishing a map with the addresses of registered gun owners — data that is legally public, but not often published. The incident raises a number of thorny questions about what personal information should be made public and when. Read more »
The sister of Facebook’s CEO got caught in a privacy snafu on Christmas Day after a private photo of her family was shared publicly. But this is about more than Facebook and its notoriously complicated settings — figuring out the boundaries of online privacy is not easy. Read more »
Startups have been insulated from the wider economic climate for years — but now they’re feeling the chill, and the focus is switching to revenue generating ideas rather than get-big-quick consumer services. That’s a good thing, says one serial entrepreneur. Read more »
Smartphones continue to enhance our lives, but all of the great apps, features and social connections can add stress. Is it time to cut back on smartphone usage or maybe we need smarter smartphones that route only the most important information to us. Read more »
Included in the changes that Facebook recently announced to its privacy and governance policies was an admission that it aggregates and shares data on user activity with advertisers — and Facebook says it plans do so not just inside the network but on external websites as well. Read more »
Critics of Apple’s social features have argued that it should buy Twitter, but former Apple engineer Patrick Gibson says the real value in such a deal would be that Twitter might be able to help Apple build web services that actually work. Read more »
Some prominent users of Facebook such as billionaire sports-team owner Mark Cuban are complaining that the social network wants to charge them to reach their users with marketing messages — but shouldn’t it be fairly obvious that this was part of Facebook’s plan all along? Read more »
When a friend or loved one dies, their online identity often continues for some time after their death, thanks to Facebook and Twitter and other networks. Is being reminded of them every time we sign into those services a good thing or a bad thing? Read more »
An article at Jezebel identifies high-school students who posted racist tweets in the wake of the election, raising a number of questions about what we consider to be an appropriate response to that kind of behavior, and when the cure is worse than the disease. Read more »
Crowd labor is outsourced information work that can be provisioned automatically. It’s ideally, inexpensive, on demand, and elastic. Platforms providing such services are on the rise in 2012, promising customers lower labor costs in the short term and higher-quality output in the long term. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
SpringboardIoT, a new accelerator program focused on startups working on hardware and the Internet of Things, has launched in the UK. The scheme’s founder joins forces with an experienced insider to explain why it’s a necessary and useful development. Read more »
A Twitter user named @ComfortablySmug has been held up as a villain for posting fake news reports to Twitter, and his identity has been forcibly revealed by BuzzFeed — but is that, and all that it implies, an appropriate punishment for his alleged crimes? Read more »
The purpose of the on-screen guide has shifted. By connecting the guide to content-recommendation engines and advertising platforms, service providers and connected-TV device manufacturers are using the EPG as an access point for understanding consumers and reaching out to them to own the living room. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Critics of social media like to focus on how much fake news gets circulated during events like Hurricane Sandy, but Twitter and other services are also quick to correct those kinds of reports, and have become part of an expanding ecosystem of real-time news. Read more »
In going global, Facebook forgot to think about local. Entrepreneur Brian McConnell says the behemoth—or a competitor—could quickly and easily make a hyper-local service to benefit both users and local advertisers too. Read more »
The folks at News.me closed their doors to future iOS downloads on Wednesday, saying they would no longer attempt to compete with Twitter in the curation space as the social network closes down on third-party requirements. In other words, another Twitter app bites the dust. Read more »
In the investor call following Yahoo’s third quarter earnings report, new CEO Marissa Mayer laid out her vision for the company going forward. “The best days lie ahead,” she said. “We intend to do great things and we intend to win.” Read more at paidContent »
Social media technologies continue to permeate marketing and enterprise collaboration, even if investors felt let down in the third quarter by their consumer-facing businesses like Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga. So B2B technology offerings in support of marketing and collaboration will soon steal all the social tech attention. This quarterly wrap-up analyzes these events, and provides a near-term outlook for trends, technologies and companies to watch in the next 18 to 24 months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says the most powerful feature of Twitter is the way it can show us what others watching the same event are thinking, and that the best use of this feature is as a companion to a televised event like the Olympics. Read more »
