Tag archive: Social

Thanks to social networking, we all stand a chance to fall victim to a condition called FOMO, or Fear-Of Missing-Out. Induced by the influence and pervasiveness of social networking, FOMO is a person’s anxious reaction to the unavoidable flood of friends posting pictures from events, checking-in around town, and describing their busy, fulfilling lives. It’s generally the nagging feeling that you’ve regretfully misused your time. A new startup… Read More

Pinterest has become entirely unavoidable. In its mere 23-month existence, the site has managed to create (or rather, curate) a cult-like following of devoted, pinning-obsessed users. It was recently reported that Pinterest drove more referral traffic last month than Google+, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, and MySpace combined. While there are plenty of users ready to worship at the Pinterest alter, skepticism remains. Isn’t the site, at its core,… Read More

Rabid sports fans like to talk. They like to trash rivals, they like to hype fellow revelers, they like to argue with Charles Barkley and John Madden from their living rooms and scream at referees from the safety of their seats. And that’s why it’s only natural that legions of sports fans have taken so enthusiastically to social networking. Fantasy leagues and sports-centered social apps have continued to thrive, thanks to the insatiable need of… Read More

The original Twitter was incredibly sparse, which is saying a lot for a site that still remains rather singularly-focused. The site was nothing but its constant stream of tweets. Eventually, developers began creating tools to build on top of the site, like URL shorteners and image uploaders. As Twitter has risen in popularity, so has its platform for developers. In the beginning, the site’s constant outages were a plague for those trying to… Read More

Geo-social has proven to be somewhat tricky territory. While it appears that many users want to interact with their location, how and how much remains undecided. Privacy implications arise at every turn, and what exactly crosses the line into over-sharing in this segment is an important and unanswered question–all while developers are reinventing how we broadcast our whereabouts.  Manufacturing serendipity Location apps have been trying to… Read More

When Google+ first launched, it was keeping out more people than it was letting in. The site notoriously throttled early subscriptions, creating ample hype from users clamoring to get their hands on an account.  Even after Google opened up registration, there were still some restrictions on who got to be a part of the site: there were no business pages, celebrity profiles were subjected to intense scrutiny, aliases were banned, and anyone under… Read More

The Facebook vs. Google war has been brewing for quite some time—its origins can likely be traced back to Facebook’s launch, when Google was put on notice that it needed to jump on social and soon. Things have only escalated since, with both companies chopping at the bit to control as much consumer data as possible and taking measures to keep the other from doing exactly that. So it’s no surprise that Facebook–and others–are fighting… Read More

According to a new study conducted by sociologists Hui-Tzu Grace Chou and Nicholas Edge at Utah Valley University, research showed a correlation between a Facebook user's disposition about their life and the amount of time spent on the social network. Approximately 425 students were asked to identify how much they agreed or disagreed with statements like “Life is fair” and “Many of my friends have a better life than… Read More

Trying to carve out a space on the Internet is becoming difficult. A visual image of the Web is like globe with its seams literally bursting from the onslaught of content we’re producing. Retweets and reposts and likes and +1s are all virtually pushing against the surface and generously spilling over. So social platform creation comes with its pros and cons. On the plus side, you will always find a user base – even if it’s a (relatively) small… Read More

By now we know that Google+ takes itself a little more seriously than other social networks. Since the site’s beginning, it has taken the path less traveled and held itself to a different standard than competitor applications. It took an anti-alias stance (which has since been reformed), heavily policed celebrity profiles, and kept out anyone under 18. Google+ has also tried to keep things PC. The site has made no qualms about keeping the… Read More

Google can be a difficult thing to define. The company has its hands in numerous markets–mobile, operating systems, social, search–but above all, Google is an ad company; make no mistake about that. When it comes to its many, many products, it has a tendency to dip its toes in nearly every digital industry imaginable, a move that has been criticized. When Facebook debuted its Skype integration, CEO Mark Zuckerberg notably pointed out… Read More

AT&T and Causes are teaming up to launch a new social giving platform called Connect for Good. The application is layered on top of Facebook’s social graph and when users spread the news about certain causes via the social network, AT&T will donate to non-profit organizations tied to these ideas. “The Causes Connect for Good platform enables consumers to take action around important issues, giving them opportunities to support non-profit… Read More

Since location-based deals first appeared on the horizon, a new wave of e-commerce companies have been making a play for small businesses' business. The likes of Groupon, Google Offers, and LivingSocial (and the endless amount of clones) have been leveraging their assets to convince local retailers that they have what it takes not only to increase sales but to add a little social flare to the companies in question. How effective this is… Read More

Now that Facebook has acquired location-based social service Gowalla, the site will be better able to outfit its Timeline feature with location updates. The deal is almost entirely a talent acquisition. Facebook has been struggling with Timeline’s release and is likely building a strong supporting cast to help perfect the application. So while we know that more attention is being given to the new evolution of the Facebook profile, what’s going… Read More

When Color was first introduced last spring, it was with ample fanfare and altogether too much hype. We watched the app flounder, witnessed closeted attempts at a rebuild, and mostly forgot about it. Now, Color is back and it’s trying to repackage the remains of its project. Cnet has gotten an early glimpse at the new app, which has scaled back its original purpose to attack the status update instead of the social network as a whole. Color wants… Read More