“Networks that make engagement on the go easy—especially visual platforms like Instagram—are at a significant advantage (Instagram, in fact, already has more mobile users than Twitter).”
Eat your heart out, heart throb. Psy’s Gangnam Style has overtaken Justin Bieber’s Baby as the most-watched video on YouTube.
Image: Courtesy U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv
We spoke to the IDF about its social media policies, DDos attacks, daily conference calls for pro-Israeli bloggers, and PR in the age of Buzzfeed.
Israel’s attack on Gaza has set off a social media war.
One project this prison startup accelerator helped produce: a LinkedIn for the recently incarcerated.
When Heidi Allstop was a junior at the University of Wisconsin, she found herself struggling with the stress of college life. So Allstop called the university’s counseling center, only to be told there was a two-week wait for an appointment. “I thought, I just want to talk to peers, people who get it, who aren’t gonna sugarcoat their advice, they’re just gonna understand me and hear me out and tell me what they think I should do,” she remembers, and sitting outside the library, watching her fellow students walk by—heads down, earbuds in—she was struck with an epiphany: “So many of these people are going through the same thing as I am, but we have no way to connect,” she says. “What if there was a place online?”
Spill, her anonymous peer-support network, was born in that moment. Users “spill” their problem at StudentSpill.com; their message is screened by a team trained in crisis prevention, then sent to student responders who post a reply (also screened) within 24 hours.
As of this writing, “Four more years” has been re-tweeted almost 900,000 times and favorited by almost 300,000 people. Here’s what the tweet reveals about social branding:
If you’re a smartphone user, you probably like to send texts, take photos, and perhaps shoot a few videos. And you probably have a different app for each of those things, which you might then share to any one of dozens of social networks. It’s a lot to keep track of, and can quickly clutter up your phone’s real estate.
Pheed, a new social network that launches a web version today with an iPhone app on the way, is attempting to bring all of that piecemeal content creation into one simple platform. On Pheed, you create your own “channel” from which you can share text, photos, videos, voice-notes and audio clips, and live broadcasts. You can get updates from the channels you follow either as-it-happens, like on Facebook’s News Feed, or based on what kind of content it is, such as just photos, or just audio clips.
Melissa Chow’s Like-a-Hug—a vest that gives you a squeeze when a friend likes something of yours on Facebook—sits somewhere between harmless smartphone vibration and creepy gadget caress on the haptic spectrum.
The Rock didn’t want to do the social media thing. Then he met Amy Jo Martin. Now he has 7.2 million friends and 3.4 million followers—here’s how to follow his lead.
(Above: Hipstamatic CEO Lucas Buick and CTO Ryan Dorshorst)
Fast Company’s Austin Carr brings us the first installment of a three-part series: “Hipstamatic was one of the first startups to crack the photo formula in the mobile space—then it watched similar services gain ground and eventually blaze by. The company’s experience proves that no startup can rest on its laurels in the age of the iPhone, when the time between innovation and disruption is ever shortening, and when IPOs and fast exits are valued over establishing long-term viable businesses. And perhaps most significantly, Hipstamatic proves that no modern startup can ignore the siren call of social, even if at its own peril.”
Social-Media Insights Inspired By America’s First Truly Social President
No politician in history has leveraged social media to the extent of President Obama. Here’s how his administration stays ahead of the curve—and what you can learn about effective social brand-building from the Tweep-in-Chief.
“Blogs were one of the earliest forms of social networking where people were writing 1,000 words. When we moved to status updates on Facebook, our posts became shorter. Then micro-blogs like Twitter came along and shortened our updates to 140 characters. Now we are even skipping words altogether and moving towards more visual communication with social-sharing sites like Pinterest.”
Can Mindy Kaling’s 1.8 Million Twitter Followers Make Her New Sitcom A Hit?
Fox is betting her online popularity will translate to viewership for The Mindy Project. Here, Mindy takes us through a day of social media.
