Who Deserves to be a Google Plus Suggested User?

September 4, 2011 by admin  
Filed under Twitter News

Are you Google Plus enough? Google has unveiled a brand-new listing of “must-have” users to place within your various circles, borrowing a line from Twitter’s suggested followers list.

More than 100 different users grace the new “Suggested Users” feature on Google Plus, drawing from all walks of life and celebrity status. The various pundits, singers, artists, politicos, innovators, and former porn stars (just one) are split up into eight different categories for easier Google circling – an additional “Picks” category serves as a best-of-the-best recap for Google’s list.

There’s no indication from Google as to how a user might best find himself or herself on Google’s suggested list. It appears that you have to have at least a minor celebrity within the real world or the Internet in order to be considered for inclusion. As well, you have to post – hence the omission of the most popular user on Google Plus, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (and his Google Plus news feed which currently stands at a whopping zero public posts).

But does everyone on Google’s suggested users list really deserve to be there?

“More celebrities, as highlighted in the “Picks” category, will almost certainly help to draw mainstream users and media attention and shift the dynamic more away from the geekier early population of the platform, drawn as it was from Google and the tech blogosphere,” wrote O’Reilly Media’s Alexander Howard in a Google Plus post of his own.

“That said, such growth might come at the expense of whatever emergent dynamics have existed in these early months. It might be about to get quite noisy in here,” he added.

Had we a grand Google Plus editing brush, we’d digitally erase a few users from the Google Plus suggested users list for a variety of reasons. Taylor Swift? She just apparently started using the service in July, and her scant updates are written in the style of a marketing staffer filling Google Plus on her behalf. Playboy playmate April Summers? If humdrum announcements of new naked lady photos are now considered intriguing social content, she deserves a spot on Google’s list as much as anybody else. ESPN sportscaster and epic sideline reporter Erin Andrews? She apparently stopped using the service in late July, judging by her posting.

Who would we add instead? Where’s geek pundit Chris Pirillo on Google’s list? Or geek icon Felicia Day? Or badastronomy.com founder Dr. Philip Plait? Surely near-daily insight about the universe and the world in which we live is of more significant interest than Google Plus suggested user Richard Branson and his three mighty posts thus far: One about his birthday, one about helping Somalia, and one about a video of himself he saw on College Humor.

But we’re not the only ones fighting the good fight for proper popularity recognition: Some users on Google’s list are trying to remove themselves from the Internet spotlight.

“While I am an elitist I really hate systems that are not meritocracies and because I see people on this list that I believe shouldn’t be there, and because there are many people who should be there who aren’t that there is no way I can accept being on this list,” wrote tech enthusiast Robert Scoble.

What about you? Which celebrities (or D-list celebrities) have you been following on Google Plus? Who’s on your suggested user list?

For more from David, follow him on Google Plus: David Murphy.

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

Article source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2392435,00.asp

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2 Mexicans Deny Terrorism, Face 30 Years for Tweet

September 4, 2011 by admin  
Filed under Twitter News

Think before you tweet.

A former teacher turned radio commentator and a math tutor are imprisoned in southern Mexico, facing possible 30-year sentences for terrorism and sabotage for relaying false reports of an attack on schools. It may be the most serious set of charges ever brought against anyone using a Twitter social network account.

Prosecutors say the defendants helped cause car crashes, panic and overloaded emergency phone circuits as parents in the Gulf Coast city of Veracruz rushed to save their children.

Defenders say the charges are excessive at best. They say rumors spread because the government cannot prevent drug violence and does not adequately inform citizens about it.

Article source: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=14446448

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Actor Cheyenne Jackson Marries Longtime Partner

September 4, 2011 by admin  
Filed under Twitter News

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Glee, indeed!

Actor Cheyenne Jackson married his longtime partner, physicist Monte Lapka, on Saturday.

The handsome Glee and 30 Rock star, 36, made the announcement on Twitter, accompanied by a photo of the happy couple on the beach.

PHOTOS: Out and proud LGBT celebs

“It’s official, after 11 years together, Zora’s no longer a bastard,” Jackson wrote. The NYC-based couple share a dog, Zora, (whom they call their “daughter”) and took advantage of New York state’s recent legalization of same sex marriage to make their union official. “Married the best man I’ve ever known.”

PHOTOS: Hollywood’s biggest LGBT allies

Back in the fall, before the landmark marriage bill was passed in the Empire State, Jackson (who plays villainous Vocal Adrenaline coach Dustin on Glee and Danny Baker on 30 Rock) told WNBC New York about his dream wedding, which seemed to mirror the stunning casual TwitPic he posted Saturday.

“Something small. My dream wedding involves just close friends and good music,” the Broadway veteran mused.

PHOTOS: Love lives of Glee‘s stars

“And we’ll both be in tuxes. Unfortunately, nobody’s going to be wearing a dress, but that’s okay, too…Our dog would be there. Our dog, our daughter, Zora. … Pretty boring, but something just nice and on the beach.”


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Can a Spanish rival out-compete Facebook?

September 4, 2011 by admin  
Filed under Facebook News

98590925

MADRID, Spain — When Spaniards log into a social-networking website, they use one of two sites, both created and run by twenty-something American entrepreneurs. One of those Americans is Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook. The other is Zaryn Dentzel.

Born in Santa Barbara, Calif., Dentzel arrived in Madrid in 2006. He had his first taste of Spain eight years earlier, when he spent several months there as part of a high-school exchange program. In the intervening years, Dentzel graduated from Occidental College, worked for a time at Essembly, a California start-up, and watched as American social-networking sites like Facebook exploded in popularity.

Spain, however, had no equivalent. When some of Dentzel’s exchange-school friends started a rudimentary Spanish social network, then, Dentzel bought a place ticket to Madrid to join them.

More from GlobalPost: Why is China really going after Facebook?

Once there, Dentzel and Kenny Bentley, another Essembly veteran, redesigned the fledgling network—known as Who Is Who—with cash raised from family and friends. In January 2007, they re-launched the website under a new brand: Tuenti. (The new name, pronounced like the number 20, comes from “tu entidad”—Spanish for “your entity.”) Though it started with only 1,000 or so users—the remnants of Who Is Who’s user base—the new site grew rapidly. By the year’s end Tuenti had 350,000 users. It hit the million-users mark a few months later. At the time, that made it Spain’s most popular social network.

In the years since, Tuenti has emerged as Spain’s most successful young technology company, a dramatic success story in country wracked by unemployment. “They’re the big example,” said Rosa Jimenez Cano, a technology writer for El País who has covered Tuenti for four years. “They’re what every tech company in Spain would like to be.”

In spite of Tuenti’s success, however, the company can no longer claim to be Spain’s most popular social network. That distinction now belongs to Facebook, which attracts nearly double the number of monthly hits as its Spanish rival.

But Tuenti appears undaunted. Flush with cash after its recent acquisition by one of Spain’s largest companies, Tuenti has hired scores of new staffers this year, and the company is drafting international expansion plans. Even as Facebook’s reach grows, Tuenti’s executives are betting that their more intimate, privacy-minded social network can take on Facebook and carve out a niche in the countries around the world.

* * *


Last Week’s Winner

How about a story on the world’s biggest soveriegn defaults. What can we learn from them to put the current turmoil in perspective?

Last week’s winner looks to history for lessons on Europe’s debt crisis. Check the membership site in mid-September for a link to completed piece.


Tuenti’s main offices are located in an imposing stone building on the Plaza de las Cortes in Madrid, steps away from Spain’s Parliament and a five-minute walk from the Museo del Prado. Aside from the location — the rough American equivalent would be Facebook building its headquarters on the National Mall in Washington — Tuenti’s offices wouldn’t look out of place in Silicon Valley. Bright blue couches, glass walls with ideas scrawled on them in dry-erase marker, and rows of young people wearing T-shirts and flip-flops sitting at computers. For employees who come to Tuenti from Spain’s other, more buttoned-down businesses, the atmosphere can be a bit of a surprise, said Rosalba Mayo Galan, who works in marketing at Tuenti. “When I came for my first day at Tuenti, it was like, ‘Oh my God, where are your shoes?’” she said, laughing. Like many American technology companies, Tuenti’s vending machines dispense free soda, and employees can take PlayStation breaks.

Tuenti had about 30 employees when it moved into the building three years ago, according to Erik Schultink, the company’s chief technology officer. Today, it employs 230 people, he said, with 60 of them hired in the last quarter alone. To house its growing workforce, the company opened a second office, in Barcelona, in March; a third one opened in July on Calle de Alcala in Madrid, a few minutes’ walk from headquarters.

More from GlobalPost: Business innovation books you’ll actually want to read

Along with Dentzel, Schultink — a soft-spoken 26-year-old in cargo shorts and flip-flops — is one of a handful of Americans in senior positions at Tuenti. (The company employs people in more than 20 different countries.) Originally from Michigan, Schultink earned his social-networking chops working at Facebook for a time in 2004, a few months after Mark Zuckerberg launched the site at Harvard. Three years later, he moved to Madrid to join Tuenti.

While Facebook has supplanted Tuenti as Spain’s most popular social network, Schultink emphasized that Tuenti is still growing rapidly, and data from comScore, an independent market-research company, bears this out. In January, comScore reported that Facebook received 14.5 million unique hits from users in Spain. By July, that number had risen by 1.4 million, to 15.9 million. Yet Tuenti’s numbers climbed as well, from 7.9 million visits per month to 9.7 million. The reason, Schultink said, is that many Tuenti users aren’t leaving the site for Facebook. Instead, they’re signing up for Facebook while continuing to use Tuenti.

Tuenti and Facebook are fairly similar, right down to their cerulean-themed web pages, but for many Spaniards they are not perfect substitutes. Unlike Facebook, Tuenti requires that aspiring users be invited to join. Each new user can then invite 10 additional people to the site. This system encourages Tuenti users to add only their close friends as, well, friends. “On Facebook, I have over 500 friends, and 450 of them I never talk to,” said Miguel Melgarejo, a 26-year-old Madrid native who works in sales at Tuenti. Spaniards, he added, tend to use Tuenti in the way North Americans might use LinkedIn — as a professional networking tool. On Tuenti, Melgarejo has only 70 friends or so, but he said he keeps in touch with many of them.

Tuenti’s exclusivity — along with its emphasis on users’ privacy, long a troublesome issue for Facebook — has emerged as a key selling point for the social network as it competes with Facebook for market share. Facebook has “more friends, more noise, more information from different people who probably aren’t your best friends,” said Sebastian Muriel, Tuenti’s vice-president for corporate communications. Someone who contacts you on it isn’t likely to be a childhood friend, he said. “It’s someone you met in a meeting.”

* * *

Still, Facebook has grown rapidly in Spain. In June, the company’s Madrid office issued a press release announcing that the site had reached 15 million users — a third of Spain’s population. (Tuenti claims about 11 million users.) More than 80 percent of Spain’s large businesses now maintain Facebook pages as well, the company claims.

If Tuenti is so appealing, what attracts Spaniards to Facebook? One appeal is the network’s international reach, which Tuenti cannot yet match.

“It’s obvious that as soon as you have friends living outside of Spain, you need to have Facebook,” Melgarejo said. He used to live in the U.S. and maintains both Facebook and Tuenti accounts. “Many people use Facebook for that reason,” he added.

Though Facebook has far more users than its Spanish rival, Tuenti can and does brag about the extraordinary amount of time users spend on the site. According to comScore, Spanish Internet users spent an average of 191 minutes on Facebook in July. They spent 470 minutes on Tuenti.

The two sites’ demographics may be responsible for some of that difference. Facebook’s Spanish users are often in their 20s and 30s, while Tuenti users are more likely to be teenagers. Many Spaniards first sign up in university, said Adolfo Álvaro Martín, a professor at Camilo Jose Cela University in Villafranca del Castillo who has studied social-networking sites. “The majority of students in the first and second year of university use Tuenti,” he said. “But by the third year, the majority of students are on Facebook.” 

The Spaniards who do maintain Tuenti and Facebook accounts may slowly start using Facebook more as they get older, said Rosa Jimenez Cano, the El Pais technology writer. She’s no exception. “I’m not really using Tuenti as much as I used to,” she said. “Right now I prefer Facebook and Twitter. But my sister uses Facebook all the time, and she’s 25. I’m 30.”

More from GlobalPost: Behind Egypt’s revolution: youth and the internet

Alvaro is working on a follow-up study, but he said he thinks Spain’s young people will continue to use Facebook and Tuenti as they grow older. “Personally, I think it is possible that they can use both networks,” he said. Facebook may be better for connecting with other professionals, he added, but Tuenti “is more private for us to connect with our friends.”

* * *

In 2010, Telefonica, the Spanish telecommunications conglomerate, announced that it would acquire a controlling stake in Tuenti for 70 million euros (about $100 million). Writing on his blog on Aug. 4, shortly after the deal was announced, Zaryn Dentzel emphasized the “financial muscle” of Telefonica — the world’s fourth-largest telecommunications company — as well as its “expertise in communications.” Tuenti has drawn on both of these over the past year as the company has begun drafting plans to take on Facebook in Spain and around the world.

The company’s strategy appears to rest on two planks, the first of which is a mobile-network based around Tuenti that officially launched in June. Called Tu, the network — known as a mobile virtual network operator — piggybacks on top of Telefonica’s Movistar network. “We sell these SIMs,” Schultink told me as Muriel pulled a blue-and-white SIM card emblazoned with the Tuenti logo from the back of his phone, “and now we sell phones as well.” Tu is designed to allow its users to chat and message their friends on Tuenti for free, making Tu a cheap alternative to buying a smartphone for Spain’s cash-strapped youth. (The unemployment rate for Spaniards under 25 is about 40 percent.)

Tu may enable Tuenti to take on Facebook in Spain, but the company also looking to expand into the rest of the world. In May, Tuenti took its first step in this direction by allowing users to list a residence outside of Spain on their pages. In the coming months, however, the company will map out a strategy to expand more directly into other countries.

“It’s a worldwide approach,” Muriel said, though he implied that Tuenti would most likely focus on a few countries in particular. Which ones? Muriel wouldn’t say, but he allowed that Tu would be a part of any expansion effort. Because Tu is based on Telefonica’s Movistar network, it seems likely that Tuenti will choose to expand into countries where the network has a strong presence. Movistar operates in, among other places, about a dozen Latin American nations.

In Spain, Tuenti has a created a social network distinct from Facebook — invitation-based, more mindful of privacy, and with a young user base that spends a huge amount of time on the site. But is Tuenti’s model distinct enough for it to take on Facebook in Colombia or Argentina? Right now, it’s far from clear. Facebook has an enormous user base around the world, and Tuenti’s invitation requirement could make international expansion difficult.

Schultink, however, remains optimistic. “I don’t think it’s necessarily clear that Facebook is [always] going to be the globally dominant social network that they are right now,” he said. Google would seem to agree. In June, the company launched Google+, its new social network, which comScore reported received 7.8 million unique U.S. visitors — and 537,000 Spanish ones — in its first full month of operation. Maybe Google+ will overtake Facebook.

Or maybe Tuenti will.

Article source: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/spain/110823/spanish-rival-for-facebook

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VMware CEO: Facebook will also have to fight a patent war soon

September 4, 2011 by admin  
Filed under Facebook News

Relatively new Web companies such as Facebook don’t hold many patents and could soon face data-center-related legal battles. VMware CEO Paul Maritz, who has witnessed a number of patent skirmishes in the 1990s when he was at Microsoft, believes that many patent confrontations are coming, and Facebook may find itself in the midst.

Quickly-growing services like Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, LinkedIn, and Groupon have so far avoided becoming casualties in the ongoing patent wars, which have centered on mobile devices, but the honeymoon may not last. “When the continents shift and new players come into a space, it results in an unstable situation,” Maritz told Business Week. “If you want to be a permanent fixture of the landscape, you better get some defense.”

Social media websites have weak patent portfolios: Facebook has only 12 patents to its name, while the totals for the other guys range from zero to two each, according to filings with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Google was in a similar position earlier this year: it had far fewer mobile-related patents than its competitors. Last month, the search giant ended up buying Motorola Mobility and its 17,000 patents for $12.5 billion.

Martiz believes newer Web companies may ultimately have to do something similarly drastic as well. Older technology companies such as Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft maintain rich patent portfolios covering essential technologies used by the new guys, including database and file-management applications. Facebook and its other smaller cousins have so far been using free, open-source software and while so far the big guys have had little motivation to target the open-source products with lawsuits, this could quickly change. As we’ve recently seen, the open-source label didn’t save Google’s Android operating system.

Facebook will likely have to do more than just develop more patents to bolster its own portfolio. The social networking giant may have to stat signing cross-licensing deals with the bigger firms. Since Facebook doesn’t have many patents to offer itself, it could be a one-way deal where the company forks over a lot of cash in return for patent protection.

Facebook has at least one assurance that the other younger guys do not: Microsoft. Almost four years ago, Redmond invested $240 million in Palo Alto. Ever since then, the two companies have been best friends and have worked together on many different products. As such, I doubt Microsoft would file a patent lawsuit against Facebook.

On the other hand, Facebook also has a very big enemy: Google. The search giant made some of its database work public and many companies, including Facebook, used this information to build their own data-center technologies. Maybe Google will do more to Facebook than just push competitors like Google+: Mountain View could take Palo Alto to court one day.

See also:

Article source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/vmware-ceo-facebook-will-also-have-to-fight-a-patent-war-soon/3258

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September 2011: The Definitive Facebook Lockdown Guide

September 4, 2011 by admin  
Filed under Facebook News

Every single Facebook user should now have the brand new privacy settings, which have changed radically since the last update.

With brand new features and revamped settings to play with — this three-day holiday weekend is a perfect opportunity for you to take a look at your Facebook account, profile and privacy settings, and lock them down.

However, because of Facebook’s expected profile, account and privacy shift earlier this month, an awful lot has changed — as you will no doubt have noticed.

The previous Lockdown Guides have been some of the most popular content on ZDNet to date.

Each gallery guide will walk you through a crucial focus area of Facebook’s settings, and will run through every single setting, option and feature available to users, to ensure that your privacy is as protected as it can be.

Gallery guide 1: Secure your friends lists

New guide: This guide is a crucial focus to the remaining guides, showing you how to create lists of friends, such as colleagues and family, as well as a ‘limited profile’, allowing you to limit updates and uploaded content from those you do not want to share with.

Gallery guide 2: Secure your profile page

Updated: Believe it or not, your profile settings page is now where your privacy settings are. This guide will walk you through the updated user-interface, as well as the recommended settings for each section of your profile.

Gallery guide 3: Secure your account settings

Updated: Your account settings are at the heart of your Facebook, and have changed significantly. This guide reflects those major changes, and shows you how to be secure using the world’s largest social network. It also helps you manage your data, including a full section on how to manage the applications and games that are connected to your account.

Gallery guide 4: Secure your privacy settings

Updated: Everything has changed! Included in this guide are the new privacy features that Facebook rolled out earlier this month, including changes to how you are tagged, and who can share your data. You can also manage your block lists from here, and make sweeping permissions changes to your old posts.

Gallery guide 5: Secure the miscellaneous bits

Updated: This guide will show you how to download all of your data, as well as showing you how to manage your BlackBerry and iPhone settings. Also, seeing as your status update window has changed, it will show you how to set locations and tag friends in a safe way, and how to create private events that are limited to your network.

If you want more clarification on a particular feature, check out the related content links below, which cover the new Facebook settings in detail. Or, if something looks out of place (incorrect or broken), then leave a comment below.

- -

Related content:

Also see:

Article source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/september-2011-the-definitive-facebook-lockdown-guide/12641

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Twitter Watch: Cheyenne Jackson Marries Longtime Partner Monte Lapka

September 4, 2011 by admin  
Filed under Twitter News


Headline-Twitter-Watch-Cheyenne-Jackson-Marries-Longtime-Partner-Monte-Lapka-20010101

BroadwayWorld.com presents Twitter Watch, which brings you only the best and most interesting reports straight from the mouths of Broadway stars, shows and more on the hot social networking service – Twitter!

On Twitter, Cheyenne Jackson had this to say @cheyennejackson:

It’s official, after 11 years together, Zora’s no longer a bastard. Married the best man I’ve ever known. http://lockerz.com/s/135582514

Cheyenne Jackson is the star of NBC’s “30 Rock” and has appeared on Fox’s GLEE.

On and Off Broadway, he has starred in; Finian’s Rainbow (Drama Desk nomination) , Damn Yankees, Xanadu (Drama League , Drama Desk nominations) The Agony the Agony, All Shook Up (Theater World Award, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle nomination) the premiere cast of Altar Boyz, Aida, Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Cartells, On the 20th Century, and The 24 Hour Plays. Other film and television credits include; the Oscar nominated United 93, Curiosity, Hysteria, Photo Op, Family Practice, Life on Mars, Ugly Betty, and It Takes a Village.

 


Article source: http://broadwayworld.com/article/Twitter-Watch-Cheyenne-Jackson-Marries-Longtime-Partner-Monte-Lapka-20110904

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Google+ Gets Suggested User List

September 4, 2011 by admin  
Filed under Twitter News

Cribbing notes from Twitter’s playbook, Google+ has begun
offering a suggested user list and it’s already causing quite a stir in social media circles.

Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product management
for Google+, tipped his hand to the effort in a tweet on Twitter Sept. 2, noting: “We’re about to pilot a
‘suggested user’-like mechanism on Google+. If you’ve got more than 100k
followers on Twitter, DM me – let’s talk!”

And here is the link to get started cherry-picking from
the list
:

Huffington Post Senior Editor Craig Kanalley found this list of famous folks. It includes Dallas
Mavericks owner and Web pundit Mark Cuban, actor/businessman Ashton Kutcher, singer
Britney Spears and the indomitable actor/pitchman William Shatner.

When Twitter launched its list two years ago, it made
life easier for users who wanted new people to follow but didn’t know how to
find them. It also jacked up follower rates for popular people such as the
celebrities listed above.

The result was that it made Twitter noisier, and left
others wanting more followers at a disadvantage. Suggested user lists, after
all, don’t contribute to a level playing field.

Already the skepticism is rolling in on Google+. Kanalley
noted:

“I don’t think this is a good idea. It’s going to alienate people
and lead to an inevitable followers war that can hurt the health of the social
network and inflate people’s egos. As the famous get more followers, the
non-featured fall farther behind, and a giant gap is created between the two.
This is what happened on Twitter.”

The Blog Report Executive Producer Zennie 62, who is black, complained the list is “overwhelmingly white.”:

“The Google Suggested User List reads like the typical San Francisco Bay Area tech firm’s view of the World: most of the “interesting and famous people” are white, and if they’re black, they’re male rappers or athletes. Hello, Snoop Dog, Chamillionaire, 50 Cent, Dwight Howard, and Floyd Mayweather!”

Zennir 62 further wondered whether Google didn’t believe black women were noteworthy enough to put on its suggested user list.

Horowitz posted this list of suggestions for leveraging the suggested user list on Google+, noting
that users need to be interesting if they want to get followed.

He didn’t address Zennie 62′s complaints of racist actions by Google, but did addressed Kanalley’s concern of favoritism, which is shared by many in the social media sector:

“Today’s list isn’t yet personalized. At first personalization will be “lite” – users in different regions and languages will get different recommendations. But per above, we intend to allow people to deeply personalize and connect with like-minded people that create great content around almost any topic they care about.

He added that popular people must retain their position on the list by creating compelling content. 

The bigger story is how Google+ is becoming more official
leaning. In addition to suggested user list, there are verified accounts and serious consequences for users who don’t use their real names on the social
network.

 

 

 

 

Article source: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engines/Google-Gets-Suggested-User-List-682606/

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Victor Ortiz Not a Fan of Internet Gangsters

September 4, 2011 by admin  
Filed under Twitter News

Victor Ortiz is getting ready for his September 17th fight in Las Vegas against Floyd Mayweather Jr. Though Ortiz is preparing for the most difficult fight of his life, he’s still maintaining an online presence in the social media world.

Ortiz has over 21,000 followers on Twitter and explained during a media event this week that he prefers Twitter to Facebook. Matter of fact, Ortiz says he no longer maintains his own Facebook page but instead allows a friend to run it. His reason is simple.

“There are too many internet gangsters,” Ortiz told some children from the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization. “And if it’s not the internet gangsters, it’s the stalkers,” Ortiz said of the users who can make the social media experience uncomfortable.

Ortiz isn’t the first person to drop an “internet gangster” reference here at LBS. You may recall that Keith Bulluck said the same thing of LeSean McCoy who spent his summer chiding Osi Umenyiora over Twitter.

An internet gangster, per the unimpeachable Urban Dictionary, is “One who uses the internet as a front for acting like a tough guy gang member, usually because they are hoping to gain the respect that they lack in their real life.”

You can just imagine how pathetic souls may try to act tough towards a boxer who would crush them in a real fight. No surprise Ortiz wouldn’t want to bother with that, especially given how nice he is. What’s unusual is that he kept his Twitter account but gave up his Facebook; usually it’s the other way around. We’ve shared examples of three different athletes who have given up their Twitter accounts because of all the negativity. Darn you internet gangsters acting hard, you’re ruining the online experience for all of us!


***Get the Full LBS Experience on our twitter page***

Article source: http://larrybrownsports.com/boxing/victor-ortiz-not-a-fan-of-internet-gangsters/85325

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Cable TV missed Hurricane Irene by ignoring Twitter, Facebook

September 4, 2011 by admin  
Filed under Facebook News

By now, the TV image has become a cliche: a Weather Channel
reporter leans into a lashing gust of wind and rain — and does it
four times an hour for hours on end.

The first time it’s fascinating. But more often than not, the
storm dies out but the Weather Channel doesn’t know when to
quit.

Or worse, the reporter is sent to the wrong spot, broadcasting
calm weather while the real damage takes place hundreds of miles
away.

That describes much of the cable TV coverage of Hurricane Irene
– an exercise in “predictable and numbing repetition, alarmism and
idiocy,” according to media critic Jeff Jarvis. (And not a single
Weather Channel reporter made it to hard-hit Vermont until the
storm had passed.)

Jarvis labeled the TV coverage of Irene “stormporn,” for which
he was soundly castigated by those who pointed out that Irene has
been blamed for 43 deaths and $14 billion in damages.

But Jarvis made a number of helpful suggestions for improving
storm coverage that we at the Daily Sun could adopt, too.

His main advice is for journalists to tap the power of
eyewitnesses and local emergency workers through social media like
Twitter and Facebook. Aggregate it and curate it, then get it back
out to a wider audience immediately. Use the information to develop
maps showing flooded streets and power outages.

In other words, inform, don’t alarm. And when the storm is over,
dig deeply into how government responded and what still needs to be
done. That’s journalism. What we’re getting now on cable TV is
standup comedy.

NO MORE MONDAY COFFEE KLATCHES

Summer has ended unofficially with the onset of Labor Day and
so, too, have the weekly coffee klatches that I host with readers
each Monday morning. Daily Sun readers interested in continuing the
conversation should consider applying to join the citizen editorial
board. Information is below.

Randy Wilson is editor of the Arizona Daily Sun. You can
reach him at rwilson@azdailysun.com or 556-2254.

Article source: http://azdailysun.com/news/opinion/editors-column/cable-tv-missed-hurricane-irene-by-ignoring-twitter-facebook/article_2d276485-0cfb-53ea-a0ed-9d282fb636f9.html

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