Facebook unveiled its new, updated search tool today, TechCrunch and a massive number of other news outlets reported. Its name "Graph" is from CEO Mark Zuckerberg's term "social graph," which means it's Facebook's version of social-network search – search personalized by algorithms to users' own social circles. Yes, it competes with Google's personalized search results that appear on the top of … [Read more...] about A parent’s-eye-view of Facebook’s new ‘Graph Search’
Teens’ Top 5 social media picks: DIY survey
Nothing formal and scientific, but a quick up-to-the-minute snapshot: To get a handle on current social media use by teens and young adults, Silicon Valley investor Gary Tan blogged, he conducted a little survey with DIY market research startup Survata. He wrote that he asked just under 546 13-to-18-year-olds and 492 19-to-25-year-olds what social media services they use regularly. What he found … [Read more...] about Teens’ Top 5 social media picks: DIY survey
Perishable pix: First Snapchat, now Poke
Snapchat, the little app that came out of nowhere – well, Stanford University, but launched with no media fanfare by a couple of students whose service now supports 50 million snaps a day – has been joined by a similar "ephemeral messaging" app by Facebook: Poke. But now that perishable photo-sharing (the photos disappear in 10 seconds or less) is a trend, let's look at what's really interesting, … [Read more...] about Perishable pix: First Snapchat, now Poke
Instagram’s user-terms update
If Instagram's as popular among high school students in your community as it is at ours, you'll probably be interested in the implications of its latest privacy updates. When it announced that it was updating its Terms of Use and the New York Times noticed the update included the addition of advertising, a lot of users (and reporters) apparently got the idea that Instagram would be using users' … [Read more...] about Instagram’s user-terms update
Facebook’s latest privacy changes are fixes
Facebook's announcement about its latest privacy tweaks this week was a bit of a non-story. The site has been steadily improving users' experience with privacy controls, making settings less complex and more on-the-spot, or as-you-post over several iterations. This week's was just another such iteration. For example, a helpful little "privacy shortcut" that will shortly be in the top-right corner … [Read more...] about Facebook’s latest privacy changes are fixes