Google Engineer posts apology for "Great-Granddaddy of Reply-All Screwups”
“Last week I accidentally posted an internal rant about service platforms to my public Google+ account (i.e. this one),” Google engineer Steve Yegge writes in his apologetic blog post. “Bagging on the company, even in an internal memo, was uncharacteristically unprofessional of me. So I’ve been feeling pretty guilty for the past week.”
So what was this muck up of sorts? Not too long ago, he posted a 5000 word update on his G+ account (intended for internal employees which ended up going public) which really slams Amazon on it's flaws and Google's inability to understand platforms.
Infographic of the day: Facebook by the numbers
You likely know that Facebook is the world’s largest social network with more than 800 million users. But what about how many people look at their ex's Facebook profiles? The amount of people that play Facebook? Or how many links about sex are shared?
Check out what makes Facebook and its users tick with our Infographic of the day. Thanks Mashable!
Facebook is better than sex.
We love it when social sciences do their best to make wild conclusions. A 'scientific' study by sociological journal Cosmopolitan says 20 per cent of women prefer Facebook over sex.
We've unanimously agreed that maybe this number sounds a tad low. Sex has always been about communication between two (or more, depending on how lucky you are) people to push the biological sensibilities to orgasm. The best times are never just the messing-around bit, it's the self affirmation, the aftermath and the conquest. If you were arguing before, that doesn't matter for anything anymore.
#Politics. UK Government turns to Social media to cut costs
David Cameron may well be joining in on the big discussion (hope he doesn't slip up and tweet #itsokaytocheatif), with a new government strategy for jumping into social media "to facilitate a two-way dialogue with citizens."
The plans come as part of yet another huge cost cutting proposal, to skim a cool £1bn off the budget as the Government implements a their new IT strategy.
'Take this lollipop' and realise what people can find out about you on Facebook
The words 'Facebook' and 'Privacy' cancel each other out, regardless of the myriad of Privacy controls the social network shows to you.
The fundamentals of the service are based around sharing information about you, and no string of content controlling options can stop that data getting out. If anything, they're adding a glaze to this bleak reality by adding the Timeline functionality.
MC Hammer launching his own search engine.
Don't type Hammertime into it, you could break the internet. News emerged at this week's Web 2.0 Summit that the rapper is crafting his own search engine.
Called Wiredoo, Hammer (Stanley Kirk Burrell) says his search engine "will not attempt to compete with mainstream browsers like Google or Bing" (even though people can't touch him, he isn't ready to take on that kind of a challenge). The differentiator is the service will "add keyword relationship information to search results."
Google+ to add pseudonimity and app support
Taking the Facebook initative of a developer community, and treading on the toes of Anybeat, SVP of Social Vic Gundotra has announced that Google+ will support pseudonyms and add compatability with the range of other Google apps.
Appeals by Facebook rioters rejected. Sentenced to 4 years
Jordan Blackshaw and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan had their appeals to the court rejected, as they were sentenced to 4 years at her Majesty's pleasure, for the incitement of rioting via Facebook. Lawyers claimed for this to be "Manifestly excessive," whereas the Lord Judge saw it differently
The brainier you are, the more Facebook friends you have
The bigger it is, the more you have. Puns aside, a study concluded with a correlation between the mass of your brain size and the amount of Facebook friends you have.
In the time people have argued between Facebook and Google+, Researchers at the University College of London donned the white coats and spectacles to investigate whether having a hissy fit over the Internet being bad for humans is really necessary.
Sean Parker at Web Summit 2.0
Spotify investor and ex-president of Facebook Sean Parker spoke out at the Web Summit 2.0 conference yesterday, raising interesting points about the music industry and social media as a whole.
Editorial: Why promoted tweets don't work
“That thing is working better than we could have ever hoped.” Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, claims about their advertising efforts. And the turnover doesn't lie. In response to a Mashable article.
Editorial: Why real-time social environments will never return.
"The technology is there and, at last, the right psychology is in place that will make these services explode. And I, for one, welcome our new avatar overlords." A formidable conclusion in a Mashable editorial on the subject.
But I, for one, sees some major flaws in this most vicarious of conclusions. The likes of Habbo Hotel in the late 90s became a success because we weren't aware of what social networking could be defined as. In that vain, we tried to recreate virtual worlds, go to virtual parties, take part in virtual diving competitions and spend our weekly phone credit on credits for virtual sofas (cool Habbo references bro).
The contradictions of Google+
One day the sources suggest the activity surrounding G+ is reducing, and then the Google quarterly earnings report suggests it's doing fantastically.
We'd say pick both, and that's what you're going to end up doing anyway. However, it's understandable that we want to see a competition between the two.
Study says Facebook does not affect your grades
“Facebook use in and of itself is not detrimental to academic outcome,” says study author Reynol Junco, a professor at the Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. “It depends how it’s used.”