Think before you tweet

It’s so easy to make a status update on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook that many of us do it without really thinking about it. Whilst this is okay for general status updates or tweeting about that delicious sub that you had for lunch, it can be problematic when you write a badly timed joke or something that you may think is harmless fun but actually has great consequences.

This week the internet learned of a teenage girl in the Netherlands that for some reason though it would be a good idea to tweet a terrorist threat to one of America’s biggest Airlines. Whilst I’m pretty sure Sarah or (@QueenDemetriax_) as she is known on Twitter had no idea of the seriousness of her actions, she must have known that this wasn’t going to end well? Shortly after receiving the tweets American Airlines responded to her pointing out the seriousness of the threat and informed her that they would be passing her details on to the FBI.

Upon receiving the message from American Airlines it seems that Sarah quickly realised the seriousness of her actions and began to plead with the Airline to not take the matter any further stating that she was just a girl and not from Afghanistan or a member of “Al qaida”. The initial message from American Airlines claimed that they had Sarah’s IP address and that they would be passing this onto the FBI, something which isn’t actually within the power of American Airlines. A Twitter spokesman later confirmed that the Airline didn’t have access to the IP or other details of the girl and that only a law enforcement agency could request such information from Twitter.

Sarah was arrested following the incident by Police in Rotterdam and investigations are still ongoing. I sincerely hope that this incident is a warning to others about the serious implications that can happen as a result of what we say on social networks. If you're unsure if the tweet you are about to send is inappropriate or likely to cause any repercussions the safest and most sensible thing to do is not post it.

Back in February there was a video uploaded to Geekanoids titled ‘think before you tweet’ which although it talks about businesses and banks looking at your Twitter account before making a decision on offering a loan or employment, it still hammers home the importance of thinking before you tweet so I have included the video below for reference.

 

Mozilla boss quits after gay marriage storm

Mozilla - Brendan EichYou may recall that earlier this week that OkCupid the dating website started displaying a message to their users who were accessing the site via the Firefox web browser. The message brought to the attention of users the fact that Mozilla’s CEO was an opponent of Gay Marriage which OkCupid stated was something they couldn’t support as the company was dedicated to bringing people together regardless of sexual orientation. The full statement reads:

Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience. Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.

Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company.

OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.

If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.

However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid:

[Google Chrome] [Internet Exploder] [Opera] [Safari]

Thank you,

OkCupid

Mozilla responded saying that they pride themselves on being held to a different standard and appologised that they hadn’t lived up to it on this occasion. They went on to apologize for not moving forward fast enough once the controversy started.

Fast forward a couple of days and we can confirm that Brendan Eich has resigned from Mozilla with immediate effect. Mr Eich, who co-founded Mozilla and was also known for being the creator of the JavaScript scripting language, made a $1,000 (£600) donation back in 2008 in support of California's Proposition 8 anti-gay law. Although this was originally passed it was overturned by the US Supreme court in 2013.

The appointment of Mr Eich was publically announced on 24 March and was met with much criticism on Twitter and other social networks but it wasn’t until OkCupid stepped in that things started heat up.

Mozilla has been losing users to other browsers over the years particularly since the launch of Google Chrome and is having a tough time trying to hold onto it’s users so this recent blow to the company certainly won’t be doing them any favors. With all but the most loyal fans and developers choosing Google Chrome, Mozilla really needs to up it’s game and avoid PR disasters like this one.

Do you still use Firefox or have you moved over to Chrome or one of the other browsers? Personally the only time I use Firefox now is when I’m doing cross browser testing and with UserAgent switchers improving in the Chrome WebStore this may become a thing of the past too. As usual we would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

 

Yahoo! poaching YouTube content creators?

Yahoo has made a number of radical changes since Marissa Mayer took over the helm back in May 2012, Including the acquisition of Tumblr for $1.1 billion in May of last year. Since then Yahoo! Have rebranded many of their services such as Flickr and more recently their logo. In Yahoo's latest bid to stay relevant in a world where Google and other giants dominate they are turning their attentions to online video creators and in particular YouTube content creators.

Yahoo! Is reportedly looking to create an alternative to YouTube has reportedly began to try and lure away some of the most successful YouTube creators to join them with the promise of making more money. Yahoo hopes that offering better ad revenues, guaranteed advertisement rates and extensive marketing will lure away some of the content creators away from YouTube and the mighty Google.

Marissa has been particularly interested in video since taking over at Yahoo! and has signed some big partnership deals and releasing content through a new app called Yahoo! Screen. In today’s report by ReCode the new video competitor would have a similar focus and look to poach big YouTube stars rather than launching and open to all service. Whilst there is no solid date for a launch Yahoo! is said to be launching this new service in the coming months.

What are you thoughts on Yahoo’s venture into YouTube’s territory? As usual we would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.  

 

Will you be switching off for Earth Hour?

We take many things for granted these days from running water to electricity. Each year the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) runs a campaign called Earth Hour which takes place on Saturday 29th March this year from 8:30pm - 9:30pm. The campaign encourages us to turn of the lights for just an hour to support the environment.

As well as individuals switching off there is also many organised Earth Hour events where large cities around the world go into darkness to show their support for the cause. If you would like to find out if there is one near you simply visit the website earthhour.org for more details.

As a first this year the organisation has also set up a crowd-funding platform called Earth Hour Blue which lets you pledge your support for one of the many excellent conservation projects. These range from saving forests in Madagascar to protecting the panda’s in china.

Earth Hour has got me reflecting on my use of technology and the amount of electricity that I consume in a day. So this year I will be making a conscious effort to do a bit more and will be switching off not just the lights but all technology including my laptop, smartphone and television. I will likely take this time to either read a book by candlelight or good old fashioned socialising with family.

Will you be turning off the lights for Earth Hour this year or doing anything else in regards to the World Wildlife Fund’s campaign? As usual we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below. Have a great weekend.

 

New Image features on Twitter

Twitter announced yesterday that it was rolling out some new features for images on Twitter. The first of the new features is the ability to add multiple images to a tweet (up to a total of 4) however this is currently only available on the official Twitter app for iOS with Android coming soon. At present it doesn’t seem possible to upload multiple images via the web interface, whether this will roll out or not remains to be seen.

Another feature rolled out is Image tagging, a feature that Facebook has had for a number of years now. You can now tag up to ten friends in a photo in a move which Twitter says makes photo sharing more social. Again this feature only appears to be available on the official Twitter apps for iOS and later Android and is not available on the web version.

To tag someone in a photo simply tap ‘Who’s in this photo’ and then type the persons username. Twitter will then send notifications to those users who have been tagged. Notifications can be customized if required and it’s worth noting that Twitter automatically opts you into the ‘Allow anyone to tag me in a photo’ option, which for those with a large following or those who are victims of frequent trolling may find this problematic. It’s simple to change this however under privacy setting and only allowing those who follow you to tag you or disabling tagging altogether.

Some people in the United Kingdom have reported that they have not got this update yet so it may be that Twitter is gradually rolling out these features as they often do. Whilst these new features are only available on the official Twitter for iOS app we will be getting an Android update soon.

Both the new photo-tagging and tweets with up to four photos will display in embedded tweets, according to a post from Twitter software engineer Cesar Puerta.

 

Facebook buys Oculus VR, Early Adopters Unhappy

Yesterday Facebook announced the latest in it’s acquisition spending spree with the purchase of Oculus VR the company behind Oculus Rift. Facebook announced that it bought the company for $2billion which compared to the amount they paid for SnapChat seems like small change. Oculus started out as a kickstarter project and was initially seeking $250,000 in funding but went on to rake in nearly $2.5 million in pledges.

Many of the early supporters have hit out at the acquisition with one former supporter, Michael Cooper taking to the Kickstarter page and writing:

"What in hell was the point of Kickstarter if you sell out to a giant company like Facebook, This is very disappointing. I will no longer be supporting the Oculus Rift in anyway."

This is just one of a wave of comments that flooded the Kickstarter page soon after the deal was announced yesterday and every comment at the time of writing this is negative. Oculus Rift was was one of the most successful Kickstarter projects to ever be funded but it seems Facebook and Oculus have a lot of work on their hands to convince people that this was a good move.

It will be hard for Oculus to convince people especially when big companies such as Mojang, the creators of Minecraft have severed all ties with Oculus VR over this deal citing that Facebook creeps them out, according to owner Markus Persson

Sadly for disgruntled Kickstarter backers there is no such thing as a refund or money back guarantee so I guess you’ll have to just deal with the fact that your hard earned dollars helped pave the way for multi billion dollar payday.

 

Facebook video ads coming soon

Facebook have again been playing with the ‘News Feed’ again, no it’s not another layout or tweak to the user interface this time it’s Video advertising. Facebook first announced they were testing video advertisements late last year and rolled out a beta version of their video ad platform to advertisers in December of last year.

Before anybody gets worried about noisy adverts playing in their news feeds there is a silver lining in that video adverts will auto-play however there will not be any sound unless the user actually clicks on the advertisement.

Advertisements will be sold much in the same way that television adverts are sold and will be based on Targeted Gross Rating Points aimed to target a specific audience over a short period of time. Similarly the adverts will also be priced much like a television advert would be with prices ranging from $1 million to $2.5 million initially on launch. Judging from that we can assume that these video ads will be targeted at large corporations rather than small to medium businesses.

Facebook will be using Nielson and Ace Metrix to track and measure the video ads and work with advertisers to review the quality and proposed engagement level of each ad before it becomes available on Facebook.

So when will these adverts start to appear in your news feed? Facebook announced in a blog post that we should be seeing these video advertisements in the next few months. If you feel you really don’t want these adverts or they are too obtrusive it’s likely that popular adblockers will be updated in order to hide these from your news feed.

How do you feel about video ads in your news feed? Do you think they will be obtrusive? or will we just learn to ignore them like we have with other adverts. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

 

Flappy Bird to return?

It's now been a month since developer Dong Nguyen took the decision to remove flappy bird from both the App Store and Google Play Store. The move was met with a wave of speculation about the reasons behind the decision ranging from things such as a lawsuit threat from Nintendo and death threats from angry gamers. However the developer continued to stick to his original story about his reasons and stated that it was due to people overusing the game and the amount of criticism and attention he had received as a result of creating flappy bird. Dong was hounded by the media after creating flappy bird and was apparently overwhelmed with the amount of requests from press organizations.

Not long after flappy bird was taken down a plethora of copycat apps flooded the App Store and Google Play with developers trying to cash in on the success of flappy bird including myself, though mine was more for fun and I didn’t try to monetize it either. Apple and Google have since taken action and are removing some of these apps that are either too similar or use the word ‘flappy’ in the title, that being said there are still a large number of these available to download in each store.

Just as we were all beginning to move on and forget about flappy bird and the news coverage had all but died a death, Flappy Bird is again back in the limelight after the magazine Rolling Stone managed to bag an interview with the 28 year old Vietnam developer. The interview is very interesting and talks about the reasons for creating flappy bird and the inspirations behind the app as well as revealing that Dong is considering re-releasing the app again but this time it would include a warning about safety and not over playing the game and the importance of taking regular breaks (sounds more like long distance driving advice) whether or not this comes to fruition remains to be seen and we have to question whether anybody really cares whether or not the app makes a return. The world of technology and apps moves very quickly and what is hot one week may not necessarily be hot the next. Personally I think flappy bird has flown the nest and that’s where it should be left, if Dong Nguyen decided to release a new game though that would be a different matter.