Category Archives: Social Media

Facebook Is Down

Millions of Facebook users worldwide tonight are all asking the same question – Is Facebook Down? And the answer is yes, Facebook has crashed.

The social network crashed this evening in spectacular fashion and is still down more than 15 minutes after the intial crash, as people take to other social networks like Twitter (ironically) to vent their frustration and spread the news - http://twitter.com/search?q=%23facebook

Facebook have not yet released any information on their own Twitter feed and there are thus far very few articles covering the story: http://twitter.com/facebook

UPDATE:

Facebook later released a statement about the outage and apologised for the interruption:

Earlier today we made a change to our DNS infrastructure and that change resulted in some people being temporarily unable to reach the site. We detected and resolved the issue quickly, and we are now back to 100 percent. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Facebook IPO – who next?

During last 10 years Online Properties took over the world’s biggest markets. Web technology and business are current world’s economy workhorses. It looks like what lost in financial markets has to be rescued by online business world. Facebook’s float will be the biggest in the history of internet related companies. It will be difficult to beat facebook’s offer and it will be difficult for next company from this sector to impress markets.
I wonder who next will float from online world to make it Stock Exchange markets slightly greener in these gloomy days of inverted growth :-)?
It must be time for Twitter now!
Go, Twitter Go!!!
Next for IPO!

Carried away? – Of course

Facebook Timeline Becoming Mandatory (How to Opt Out)

Facebook Timeline becoming compulsoryLast year we posted about the brand new Facebook profile layout “Timeline”. Back then it was an opt-in feature however, in the next few weeks it will become a mandatory update. If you don’t like it you can opt-out by sending a request to delete your Facebook profile.

As much as everyone complains about new Facebook updates and layouts I’d have to say this is one of the worst. It’s not just a small change it’s a whole new profile design and if you use it to its full potential, a new way for Facebook to gain more information about you. It also means that some unwanted or purposefully forgotten updates could reappear.

What do you think? Will you be boycotting Facebook, or have you found a real opt-out?

Let us know in the comments ( :

Nominate Your Favourite Twitter Personalities in the Shorty Awards

2012 marks the 4th anniversary for the Shorty Awards, the only awards that honour producers of short content on social media.

There are some 55 Featured categories and over 4,000 community created categories so pretty much anything on twitter can be voted for from Food Trucks to Comedians to Travel.

Voting is very easy as well and it uses, you guessed it…  Twitter!

Just tweet saying “I nominate @Username for a Shorty Award in #category because…”

You need to fill in the username, category and reason for your nomination or your vote wont count.

Shorty Award Topdeck Travel Nominations

If you vote twice in the same category only the most recent vote will count, so be careful if you re-tweet other votes!

The winners are decided after nominations close on 17 February 2012. The top 6 relevant nominees will then be short listed and a winner will be chosen by the judges in the Real-Time Academy. The most nominated user in each category will also receive a Shorty Vox Populi (popular vote) distinction.

At a short awards ceremony in New York some of the winners will be announced and winner will get to make their 140 character speeches.

 

So what are you waiting for, there’s only one month left to vote! Let the people you follow know you think they’re cool!

 

Let Facebook have your Whole Life Story with Timeline!

In the coming week Facebook will be launching a new feature “Timeline” to their 800 million user base.

It works a a visual news feed of your time on face book (and before if you want to add that).

There are 3 main parts of your Timeline; Cover, Stories and Apps.

The Cover is a big space at the top that allows you to put a big  image at the top, then all your details are below it.

Stories are pretty much the same as what would normally appear in your News Feed. This is where you can tell the world your entire life story. Including when you were born, adding baby and childhood photos, moving house, siblings born and anything else your friends probably already know about you (and don’t really care about).

If you go to your activity log which features everything you’ve ever done on Facebook EVER, you can choose what you want to feature, allow and hide on your timeline.

Apps are… apps, they appear on your timeline and show info about the app you used, eg. the Spotify app will show you top album, or song and anyone who sees your timeline can play that song in the app.

When you get timeline on your profile you have 7 days to adjust it before it’s put live, so you can hide all those embarrassing photos and Farmville updates :P

For more info about the Timeline check out Facebook’s Timeline Page.

Are you getting / have you got a timeline on your profile? Let us know about it in the comments!

New YouTube Layout

It seems like Google is giving most of it’s services a fresh new look this week.

New YouTube Layout

Click for larger Screenshot

When you log in you can see recommended videos, recent activity and subscriptions.

The list on the left shows some of your channel subscriptions if you go into see all subscriptions you can pin up to 10 channels to the top of your YouTube home page.

Another interesting feature is social network connections, if you’ve connected your Facebook, twitter, Google+ or Myspace (do people still use that) accounts you can see a feed of recent video activity and send and receive updates whenever you or your friends upload, favourite, like or comment on a video.

It all looks pretty cool, bringing a really social aspect to youtube, I now also have another way to spam all my friends with the stuff I like!

The World Waves Goodbye to Google Wave

Google Wave is DeadGoogle has now officially announced the end of Google Wave. Google has sent out emails to all users informing them that as of 31 January 2012 Google Wave will be read only and it will be turned off on 30 April 2012. If you want to continue using Wave there is an open source project called Walkaround that allows you to import all your waves from Google.

It was announced back in August 2010 that due to it’s lack of user adoption, mainly because Google tried to replace two perfectly good products that don’t need to be merged or improved, e-mail and instant messenger. While it was a useful messenger meeting tool I’m led to believe most users just played games and shared memes with it!

Now Google is preparing for the wave of the future Google+!