HMS Ark Royal becomes first Royal Navy ship to sign up to Twitter

By Ian Drury

HMS Ark Royal has become the first Royal Navy ship to sign up to Twitter


It was a Government warning to loose-lipped members of the British public during the Second World War: 'Careless Talk Costs Lives'.

The slogan was the centrepiece of a high-profile campaign to warn people about the danger of unwittingly giving titbits of valuable information to enemy sympathizers.

But it appears Royal Navy sailors today are less likely to heed the message.

For members of the HMS Ark Royal are broadcasting their every activity using the latest social networking website.

It has become the first vessel in the fleet to sign up to Twitter - the internet phenomenon that allows members to update, or 'tweet', followers with brief messages of 140 characters or less.

Messages posted online this month include information about a chemical training exercise, complete with images of the crew in protective suits and respirators.

The crew has posted information about a disaster relief exercise as well as training for battle, fire-fighting and damage control.

On December 16, one message said: 'Just had our brief for our final training war tomorrow. We are all living up to our motto - "Zeal does not rest".'


Messages posted online includes information about a chemical training exercise, complete with images of the crew in protective suits and respirators


Other posts describe how members of the crew are relaxing with choir practice ahead of a Christmas carol concert and watching their favourite TV shows.

One 'tweet' from November 21 said: 'Storm force 10 winds at the moment. Had a good Saturday night at sea topped off with X Factor'.

But there are concerns that the crew could be giving away classified details about the 20,000-ton aircraft carrier, as well as its locations and activities - posing a potential security risk as enemies can find out about the ship's movements.

The warship has just completed an operational sea training exercise off the coast of Plymouth, Devon.

A message on November 27 reported: 'Back in Plymouth for a while. Time to catch up with some R&R and some work before getting back into the thick of operational training'.


This picture was posted on Twitter with the caption: 'A 6 hour chemical training exercise today with chemical suits and respirators. All went well'


Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin, a member of the Commons' defence select committee, said: 'I hope somebody is checking this to remind servicemen and women, and their friends and families, when they are straying too near matters that are operationally sensitive.'

The Royal Navy says that crewmen use HMS Ark Royal's Twitter page to keep friends and family posted about what they are up to during long weeks at sea.

Internet users can also message the crew back.

The vessel's commanding officer, Captain John Clink, said he was keen to keep up with the latest technology.

He said: 'For hundreds of years the Royal Navy has been at the forefront of technology - particularly communications between ship and shore.


There are concerns that the crew could be giving away classified details about the 20,000-ton aircraft carrier, as well as its locations and activities


'So it's no surprise to me that we are embracing all available media, especially the internet, to keep the public up to date with our operations.

'Twitter gives Ark Royal an immediate, up-to-the-minute link into her followers, many of whom will be friends and family.'

The launch of Twitter in Ark Royal comes a month after the navy launched its trial of giving personal games consoles to sailors for engineering and maths challenges.

The aircraft carrier took to the seas again in September after a £12million refurbishment.

The slogan 'Careless Talk Costs Lives' was born in February 1940.

The Ministry of Information distributed two and a half million posters to offices, shops, public houses and other public places urging people to be careful about what they discussed for fear Nazi spies were eavesdropping.

Tweets from the Portsmouth-based ship can be viewed at www.twitter.com/HMSArkRoyal.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: 'Social networking sites are an increasingly important way for the Armed Forces to engage with the public and keep in touch with family and friends which is precisely why our people are encouraged to talk about themselves and their work online within guidelines which protect their security, reputation and privacy.

'HMS Ark Royal's use of social media is part of our wider engagement with the public which includes regular updates from Afghanistan and other operational work.'



source: dailymail

Mother updated Twitter as her son, two, lay dying

By Paul Thompson

Shellie Ross has caused outrage for tweeting as paramedics tried to save her dying son


A mother posted messages on Twitter as rescue workers tried to save her dying son.

Shellie Ross, who is in her 30s, sent out ‘tweets’ to the social networking site just minutes after two-year-old Bryson was found floating face down in the family’s swimming pool.

As paramedics tried to revive him, Ross, who used the online name ‘Military-Mom’, posted the note: ‘Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.’

Five hours later, after he was pronounced dead from drowning, she wrote, ‘Remembering my million dollar baby’.

She then uploaded photos of Bryson to be viewed by her 5,000 followers. But her actions have provoked anger from fellow bloggers and Twitter users, and raised questions about the sharing of private information over the internet.

One user, Madison McGraw, wrote: ‘The first thing I thought when I saw the tweet was that it was very sad. I just thought, “Who would tweet that her son just drowned?” I couldn’t believe it.


Ms Ross, who used the tweet name 'Military-Mom', has defended the use of Twitter to announce her son's death


The person that I have compassion for is her son who might still be alive if Ross interacted with her son like she interacted with people on Twitter.

‘It shows the repercussions for social media gone awry.’

Yesterday, a police spokesman said Ross’s 11-year-old son, who had been cleaning out the chicken coup at the family’s home in Merritt Island, Florida, had called an ambulance after noticing his brother had fallen into the water.

Ross sent her first tweet at 10.22pm British time on Monday – just a minute before the 999 call was made.

Records show an ambulance arrived at the house at 10.38pm and Ross posted another message 34 minutes later.

Yesterday, Ross defended the use of Twitter to announce her son’s death, saying no one ‘had a right to question my actions’. ‘I didn’t tweet-by-tweet the accident,’ she said.

Trisha Haas, who founded the website Momdot.com where Ross worked, defended her friend’s actions, saying: ‘She twitters a lot and was close friends with people in the blogging community’.

Ross and her husband Steven, who is in the U.S. Air Force, have asked to be left in private so they can mourn their son.


source: dailymail

Twitter to End Its Partisan Politics

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Social-networking site Twitter plans to end a service that links prominent message posters with new users, a service that was criticized in California because of perceived unfairness toward GOP gubernatorial candidates.


Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said Monday the San Francisco-based company will overhaul its "suggested users" list, which links Twitter users with a pool of about 500 celebrities, sports figures and politicians they might want to follow.

"That list will be going away," Stone said at a conference in Malaysia. "In its stead will be something that is more programmatically chosen, something that actually delivers more relevant suggestions."

Names on the suggested user list are selected by company officials. In California, Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls were placed on the list, a move that greatly boosted their number of followers. Republican candidates were left off until recently.

The difference in treatment drew outcries from good government groups and contributed to a decision by the California Fair Political Practices Commission to hold hearings next year. The commission plans to examine whether it needs to regulate how campaigns intersect with social media.

In the three weeks since an Associated Press story about the suggested user list, Twitter executives added all three of the Republican candidates seeking to replace Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is termed out of office after next year.

The switch gave each Republican a significant bump in followers, demonstrating the list's reach and influence.

Former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, who led the Republican field with 4,160 Twitter followers, jumped to nearly 61,000 followers. Former Congressman Tom Campbell went from 1,660 followers to 57,500, while state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner's nearly 2,600 followers increased to 56,500.

By comparison, Attorney General Jerry Brown, the presumed Democratic gubernatorial candidate, increased from 960,000 followers to 1 million during the same three-week period.

Twitter also added Carly Fiorina, who is seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer next year.

The list's expansion drew praise from Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit California Voter Foundation. She wants to see the site continue as an avenue for political discussion, saying it can serve as a valuable tool for voters who are just starting to get engaged in next year's campaign season.

California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring, however, urged Twitter to drop politicians from its favorites list if it doesn't end the list entirely.

"To include political candidates among suggested users is begging for some government entity to come in and regulate it," Nehring said.

Barbara O'Connor, a professor of political communication at Sacramento State University who teaches classes on social networking and its influence on politics, said politicians could disappear naturally from the list if users are allowed to choose their own favorites. Surveys show most would not gravitate to candidates as their first choice, she said.

The effect on political campaigns still is uncertain, said consultants to Brown and to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Newsom had 1.1 million followers, the most of any governor candidate. Yet it didn't translate into enough campaign funding to keep him from dropping out of the race this month, said Newsom adviser Garry South.

"They're not a magic bullet," South said of social networking sites. "You have to do all the new media stuff as well as all the old traditional campaign techniques."

The list already included a few national political figures from both parties, including former vice president Al Gore, Sen. John McCain and former House speaker Newt Gingrich.

Stone did not say what kind of service would take the place of the suggested user list but said it could be tailored to new users' interests. In an e-mail, Twitter spokeswoman Jenna Sampson said the company could provide no more details.


source: Foxnews.com

Trace Cyrus Tweets About Getting New Tattoo

In a short message on his Twitter, Trace says he will have new tattoo etched on his body but gives no detail about what kind of body painting he will have.

Trace Cyrus takes it to Twitter to let fans know that he is about to get new tattoo on his body. On Sunday, November 8, he tweeted "But listen! The day after tomorrow I'm getting tattooed for 4 days straight! I promise to chat with u all then and let you see me get tatted."

Despite the revelation, the Miley Cyrus' brother doesn't give hint on what kind of tattoo he wants to etch. He also doesn't mention on which part of his body the new body art will be inked.

Trace Cyrus is the guitarist, songwriter and vocalist of band Metro Station. He made headlines in July this year after confirming that he has split from girlfriend Demi Lovato. None of them has ever confirmed before that they ever dated though.


source: aceshowbiz.com

5 Twitter stars you've never heard of

source: Cnn.com

Social networks and kids: How young is too young?

By Doug Gross, CNN

(CNN) -- Status updates, photo tagging and FarmVille aren't just for adults or even teenagers anymore.

Researchers say a growing number of children are flouting age requirements on sites such as Facebook and MySpace, or using social-networking sites designed just for them.

Facebook and MySpace require users to be at least 13. But they have no practical way to verify ages, and many young users pretend to be older when signing up.

Some scientists worry that pre-adolescent use of the sites, which some therapists have linked to Internet addiction among adults, could be damaging to children's relationships and brains.

But many other experts say there's not any solid research to back that up and that most children seem to use social-media sites in moderation, and in positive ways.

"For the most part, although there's so much press about all the bad things they're doing, much of what they do on these sites is stuff they would be doing anyway," said Kaveri Subrahmanyam, a professor of psychology at California State University-Los Angeles.

In two surveys reported this year by Pew Internet Research -- of 700 and 935 teens, respectively -- 38 percent of respondents ages 12 to 14 said they had an online profile of some sort.

Sixty-one percent of those in the study, ages 12 to 17, said they use social-networking sites to send messages to friends, and 42 percent said they do so every day.

The data in the study was from 2006, so it's not a stretch to assume those numbers are higher this year. Research on younger children is limited, but anecdotal evidence shows that many of them are also logging on.

CNN iReport: How much do you let your kids reveal on social networking sites?

"Of course they are," said Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at Pew and one of the report's authors. "They're using them because that's where their social world is. Because there's no effective way to age-verify ... children very quickly realize, 'I just say I'm 14 years old, and they'll let me use this.' "

Marc Bigbie, a software salesman who lives near Savannah, Georgia, said he has three children -- 14, 12 and 11 -- who all have accounts on at least one social-networking site.

His oldest daughter, then 11, was the first in the family to create an account, on MySpace. And it was without her parents' permission.

"It was kind of a negative thing at first," he said. "We kind of took it away from her. But, finally, we said, 'You can have it, but we need the password so we can be on there at any time.' "

Since then, all three of the kids have gotten Facebook accounts, with their parents even agreeing to fudge their ages.

Bigbie said he makes sure his children's accounts are set to provide as little personal information as possible, and they allow their activity to be seen only by confirmed friends. He and his wife monitor the pages to make sure they know the friends that their children have added.

He said the oldest daughter is the only one who uses the account almost every day, while the younger children log on briefly every now and then.

In the past couple of years, some scientists have voiced concerns that children are spending too much on these sites and that such online socializing could have lasting negative effects as they mature.

"My fear is that these technologies are infantilizing the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment," Susan Greenfield, an Oxford University neurocientist and director of Britain's Royal Institution, told London's Daily Mail in February.

"I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier [online] screen dialogues," she said.

Other scientists criticized Greenfield's comments, calling them speculation, not science.

Subrahmaynam said a study of high school students showed that in most cases, the people they interact with most often online are people they also socialize with in person.

Children today have spent their whole lives on computers, and their brains are better adapted than those of adults to integrate online activities with their offline lives, she said.

"You'll always have the small minority of kids who are not using it appropriately," she said. "I do think you're going to have a few people that are doing things that kids probably couldn't do with telephones a generation ago.

"But we don't want to get swept away by the general fear. It's here, and it's pretty harmless."

Many parents also worry that younger users of social sites could be targets for online predators. While there are some concerns that kids aren't mature enough to make good decisions about their privacy, Subrahmaynam and Lenhart said most are savvy enough by their early teens to know what, and who, to avoid. Younger children, they say, need more parental supervision.

Alternately, a growing number of networking sites are geared specifically toward younger users. Sites such as Disney's Club Penguin -- mainly a game site, but with limited social functions -- WebKinz and Whyville feature more restricted and supervised networking.

Such kids-oriented sites are "sort of a training ground" for future use of mainstream social networks, Lenhart said.

Children as young as 5 have accounts at KidSwirl, a kids' social-networking site patterned loosely on Facebook, said creator Toby Clark.

Clark said the average user spends about five minutes on the site per visit -- far less than Facebook's average of more than 20 minutes.

He said he limits the amount of time his two children, 9 and 6, spend on the site, but that any parent who bans their children from such sites isn't facing the facts.

"The reality is that we're a technology-driven generation," said Clark, who launched the site in February and said it has about 10,000 users. "That's not going to change."

So what long-term effect will social networking have on children? Scientists say it may be hard to know for sure.

"We've lost the control group," Subrahmanyam said. "How do you find a group of kids that are not using the computer?"

source: cnn.com

Twitter lists and real-time journalism

By Pete Cashmore, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He is writing a weekly column about social networking and tech for CNN.com.

London, England (CNN) -- The Twitter community is abuzz this week about the site's new "Lists" feature, which allows users to create collections of interesting people to follow on the micro-messaging service.

From lists of sports stars to comedians to political pundits, Twitter has provided its members with the tools required to splice a torrent of updates into a series of relevant, topic-based streams.

In doing so, the social networking startup may have hit upon the long-overdue cure to information overload and birthed a new breed of editor: the real-time Web curator.

Drowning in data

Approximately 25 million Tweets are posted every day; more than 5 billion have been created since Twitter's launch.

Facebook users are even more prolific in aggregate: Forty-five million updates are posted there daily. In May, the last date for which we have data, YouTube announced that 20 hours of video is uploaded to its servers every minute. That's more than three years of content being uploaded to YouTube daily.

As the barriers to media production fall -- cameras in virtually every cell phone, video cameras in iPods, text messaging as a publishing platform -- this content tsunami is growing ever taller.

The friend filter

An obvious antidote: use your friends as a filter.

Google's new Social Search allows users to add their social networking profiles to a Google account and see search results filtered and prioritized based on their circle of friends.

Through integration with Facebook, meanwhile, Web sites are allowing users to create personalized experiences. Connect your Facebook account with social news site Digg.com, for instance, and your existing friends become a filter for the most interesting web links.

From personal to professional

Much like blogging, however, link-sharing on the Web has evolved beyond the personal. While most Twitter users stick to the standard "What Are You Doing?" fare, a growing number spend much of their time collating links and pointing their followers to relevant, timely, topic-based information.

Tracking the pulse of PR in the digital age? You'll probably want to follow Edelman Digital's Steve Rubel, who scours the Web for topical links and shares his findings on Twitter and FriendFeed.

Seeking insights into the mainstream media's transition to the Web? Follow Jeff Jarvis, journalism professor, podcaster and media pundit.

Want to know what venture capitalists are reading these days? Try Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson, who shares links and insights daily with his 35,000 Twitter followers.

See a list of CNN's anchors on Twitter

Next up: collate dozens of these experts into a topic-based list, and -- voila! -- your hand-picked editorial team extracts the signal from a wall of noise.

Most of these link gatherers have "real" jobs, you'll notice; I see no reason why that should remain the case. In the attention economy, wherein the scarce resource is time and the abundant one is content, those who effectively allocate our attention create value.

Where value is created, it follows that money can be made. The inevitable outcome: Web curators are not just real-time but full-time.

The rise of real-time journalism

Possibly we don't need a new breed, however, just an adaptation.

Journalists, it would seem, are well-placed to capitalize on the trend, since directing an audience's attention via links is not materially different to editing a newspaper or magazine.

Perhaps media companies already see this emergent future: The New York Times has created a Twitter list of all its staff, and the Los Angeles Times has set about categorizing Twitter celebrities.

See CNN International's Twitter list

The Web-centric Huffington Post has gone a step further by embedding Twitter Lists on its Web site to create hubs of real-time updates.

For those cast adrift in a sea of content, good news: A "curation" economy is beginning to take shape, tweet by tweet, list by list.


source: cnn.com

Facebook, Twitter crooks just a click away

By Stephanie Chen, CNN

(CNN) -- (CNN) -- If you're on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site, you could be the next victim.

Experts say cybercrooks are lurking just a mouse click away on popular social networking sites.

That's because more cyberthieves are targeting increasingly popular social networking sites that provide a gold mine of personal information, according to the FBI. Since 2006, nearly 3,200 account hijacking cases have been reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

It starts with a friend updating his or her status or sending you a message with an innocent link or video. Maybe your friend is in distress abroad and needs some help.

All you have to do is click.

When the message or link is opened, social network users are lured to fake Web sites that trick them into divulging personal details and passwords. The process, known as a phishing attack or malware, can infiltrate users' accounts without their consent.

Once the account is compromised, the thieves can infiltrate the list of friends or contacts and repeat the attack on subsequent victims. Social networking sites show there is ample opportunity to find more victims; the average Facebook user has 120 friends on the site.

"Security is a constant arms race," said Simon Axten, an associate for privacy and public policy at Facebook. "Malicious actors are constantly attacking the site, and what you see is actually a very small percentage of what's attempted."

Social Media Crimes

As some social networking sites experience monstrous growth, they are becoming a new -- and extremely lucrative -- frontier for cybercrime. Facebook says it has 300 million users, nearly the size of the U.S. population, and it continues to attract users outside the college student niche. From February 2008 to February 2009, Twitter, a micro-blogging site where users post 140-character messages known as tweets, grew 1,382 percent to more than 7 million users.

"They [cybercriminals] are very adept to using social engineering," said Donald DeBold, director of threat research for CA, an Internet security company. "Your friend is in trouble traveling in another country, 'I lost my wallet. I need help.' They exploit the curiosity aspect out of human nature."

A few decades ago, malicious software and viruses were usually the result of a prank, but Internet security experts say today's attacks are profit-driven. A study from the Indiana University in 2005 discovered that phishing attacks on social networks operated with a 70 percent success rate. These users had fallen for the scam, opened the foreign link and released personal information.

Cybercriminals are employing phishing and malware attacks for a number of reasons, including trying to redirect users to sites where profit is fueled by the number of visitors. They also try to elicit private information like passwords and bank account numbers to perform scams.

Early this year,Twitter experienced several phishing attacks in which a Web page that looked identical to the widely recognized light blue Twitter page was a hoax. The company warned users to double-check the URL to ensure they were visiting the correct site.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 72,000 complaints about Internet fraud in 2008 that were referred to law enforcement agencies for further investigation. These cases involved financial losses amounting to $264.6 million, an increase from 2007. Each person lost an average of $931.

"Most of us would want to help a friend in need, but if it's an online friend, and they want you to wire money, you should double-check," FBI spokesman Jason Pack said.

Security experts said it makes sense that cybercriminals are turning to social networking sites. Personal information is abundant on sites like Facebook and MySpace. Each time users give out valuable information like birth dates or addresses, they could be providing hints about their password, security experts say.

The American Civil Liberties Union has expressed concern about the information visible through Facebook quizzes and applications.

"They'll have access to all that information, so they can sell it, they can share it, they can do an awful lot with it," Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for privacy-related issues with the ACLU, told CNN.com in September.

Many Internet security experts consider the first virus attack on the PC to have occurred in 1986. By the early 1990s, viruses transmitted on floppy disks became ubiquitous. When the World Wide Web became widely available that same decade, viruses, worms and malware became problems in e-mail accounts, frustrating users who clicked on messages thought to be legitimate.

In the new millennium, the most common form of malware attack has become known as drive-by downloads. While surfing on Google or Yahoo, spyware or a computer virus is automatically and invisibly downloaded on a computer, requiring no user interaction for the computer to be infected.

"We are on the verge from shifting from the Web being the No. 1 victim of infecting to social network," said Mikko H. Hypponen, chief of research technology at F-Secure Corp. His company sells anti-virus software and malware protection programs. "It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better."

Social networks are fighting the aggressive attacks from cybercriminals. Most sites have information pages dedicated to educating users about the risks of Internet scams. Users can become a fan of "Facebook Security" and receive updates on how to protect their accounts. One of the most common pieces of advice given by security experts is to change passwords frequently.

Facebook has also developed complex automated systems that detect compromised accounts. They spot and freeze accounts that are sending an unusually high number of messages to their friends. Company security officials said Facebook is a closed system, which can be helpful in erasing phony messages from all accounts.

At News Corporation's MySpace.com, the company creates blacklists of phony accounts to prevent people from clicking on a faulty link. Hemanshu Nigam, first chief security officer for MySpace, said the firm warns about suspicious links and educates users about the harm phishing and malware attacks can bring. "We are prepared for them," he said.


source: CNN.com

Defriending can bruise your 'digital ego'

By Breeanna Hare, CNN

(CNN) -- If you harbor a bit of angst over Facebook friend requests gone unanswered, a surprise "defriending" or being deserted by your Twitter followers, you're not alone.

Elaine Fogel has amassed more than 500 connections on LinkedIn, a professional networking Web site, by extending invites to those who appear to fit her wide array of career interests.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time, people just say yes," she said.

But then came "this one woman" who Fogel encountered on one of the 40-plus discussion groups she belongs to on LinkedIn. The woman offered interesting opinions, so Fogel sent her an invitation to join her network.

"She sent an e-mail saying, 'I only connect with people I know, and hopefully our paths will cross one day,' " said Fogel, of Phoenix, Arizona, her voice still carrying notes of disbelief. "I read that, and I said, 'Oh, my God, I've been rejected.' "

Fogel echoes other users who have felt the twinge of hurt and surprise from social media rejection. Some may think hers is an overreaction -- it happened online, with a woman she didn't know -- but recent research shows that our "digital egos" can bruise as easily as we do in person. In fact, rejection online may have the potential to sting even more.

"People tend to think that these relationships are trivial and not very deep, but this is what we're moving towards, having a lot of our communications play out over the Internet," Purdue University social psychologist Kip Williams said. "That's the way it's becoming; this is how we interpret our worth. People care how many [online] friends they have."

Or, increasingly, how many Twitter followers they have. This year, a third-party service launched Qwitter, which allows Twitter users to determine who's stopped following them and which tweet may have turned them off.

Experts say rejection on social networks can hurt worse than an in-person snub because people are usually more polite face-to-face than they are online.

"I think the thing that is often clearly worse online is when it's relatively anonymous, and people use that as a cover and are more cruel than they would be otherwise," said Jean Twenge, a San Diego State psychologist who has studied the way social networking affects personality development.

Online rejection also doesn't lessen the physical reaction we have to emotional pain.

"Pain is divided into two components," said Baldwin Way, a UCLA researcher who studies the way human brains respond to social rejection.

"If you put a red-hot poker on your arm, one part of your brain says, 'This pain is on your arm,' and the other part says, 'Ow, that hurts' and is less concerned with where it is and more concerned about the emotional meaning of it," he said. "That [second] part also seems to be activated when someone's left out or excluded and rejected."

To Way's surprise, that neurological reaction holds true even when the rejection comes in a digital form, lacking the real-world body language, vocal intonations and other aspects that can influence the way rejection is perceived and felt.

"If you'd asked me a few years ago if you'd get the same effect online as you would in person, I'd say no way," Way said. "I thought doing something in person would have stronger effects than doing something online, but interesting data has come out in the last few years that show mental representations are just as powerful as the real thing."

These data include Williams' "cyberball" studies, which ask a participant to play a virtual ball-tossing game with two other icons. In one study group, the participant plays the game for the entire six minutes, but in the second group, he or she is included for only a fraction of that time and then ignored. The second group reports feelings of anger and lower levels of self-esteem.

Whether participants believe they're playing with humans doesn't appear to affect their feelings of rejection.

"Even when people get rejected by the computer, they feel bad," Twenge said.

Kenneth Loflin, a student who participated in Williams' study, got so frustrated by his fellow players that he gave the computer screen an offensive gesture.

"I'm a people person, and I like people to like me," he said.

The study also affected the way Loflin interacts online. Out of the 1,200 friends he has on Facebook, 400 of them he doesn't really know, many of them being friends of friends.

"I thought about defriending them, but I didn't want them to feel how I felt" during the "cyberball" game, Loflin said.

By contrast, Bruce Hammond doesn't have a problem giving the rejection slip to Facebook hangers-on.

"For the most part, the people that I'm defriending are the people that I don't have a relationship with: the people I haven't talked to in 15 years," said Hammond, 30, of Chicago, Illinois. "I don't let someone know if I'm going to defriend them. I just do it."

Similarly, Hammond doesn't expect any of his Facebook contacts to let him know before giving him the ax. If someone rejected him in real life, he would ask why the person felt that way, but when the relationship is online, his thinking changes.

"If I come on [Facebook] tomorrow and see I have 425 friends instead of 426, I'm not going to go through my list and see who did it and be upset with them," he said.

Cecilia Sepp, a Washington, D.C.-area consultant, said she avoids the issue entirely by limiting her online network to about 100 friends.

"I don't have a problem with defriending because I don't accumulate [enough] to have a high number," Sepp said.

"When I first heard that defriending was beginning on social networks, it was through a blog post by someone who was shocked that this person had defriended them because they didn't understand why," she said. "The person wanted to know had they done something, had they said something, should they ask, 'What did [I] do?' "

Sepp believes that online "defrienders" should extend the courtesy that Fogel's LinkedIn rejecter gave her: an e-mail explanation.

"You have no facial expression online; you have no tone of voice online; it's very easy to misinterpret phrasing in an e-mail. You have to be very careful about your wording and be more explicit with people when you're making or removing connections," Sepp said. "That's why it's so important to connect with people that you actually know."


source: CNN.com

Making the most of Twitter

An American student is arrested in Egypt, and manages to send a brief text with a single word - "ARRESTED" - which is picked up around the world, and leads quickly to his release, helped by a lawyer hired by his university back in the US. In Britain, the prime minister's office decides people should be able to find out what their premier is doing; as of today, more than 2,000 people do. During an interview at the SXSW festival in March, audience dissatisfaction with Sarah Lacy's interviewing style with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spills over into silent but powerful discourse among the audience: one calls it a "train wreck". People fleeing from fires in California say where they are; that proves more useful and timely than official goverment information.

The common factor? Twitter, the free (at present) service which lets you send a 140-character message, or "tweet", to a site where anyone can read it, though it will only be sent directly to those who have chosen to "follow" you (though if you want, you can pick and choose who you allow to follow you). Twitter's first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly that August. It has only been a company since May 2007, but its growth has been explosive - so much so that it constantly struggles to keep running as a growing number of people sign on, sending more and more tweets.

One of the first questions people ask is "what is Twitter for?" As with any social network, the answer is the same: whatever you make of it. Some think that its immediacy makes it ideal for spreading news. Others find it useful to ask questions of their peers; still others, for following what people or topics they're interested in. The BBC and the Guardian, for example, already offer Twitter services for breaking news (check out the Guardian Technology Twitter feed). It will be surprising if IBM does not offer a Twitter service with results from the All-England Tennis Club Championships in July.

Hitwise, the web measurement company, notes that traffic to Twitter has risen eightfold in the past year, more than doubled in the past three months and up 60% in the past month. By Hitwise's measure, it's only ranked 439th in social networks - outside the mainstream - but Heather Hopkins, senior Hitwise analyst, adds quickly that: "Twitter's size is notoriously difficult to measure as there are so many access points (mobile phones in particular)."

That is a key point. Measurement companies like Hitwise tend to rely on browser-based metrics to see where samples of people are going. But whereas Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Habbo Hotel are only usable through a web browser, Twitter has broken free of the web; its text message-length "tweets" can be received on a mobile phone or other device. You don't have to visit the web page to use Twitter; in fact, doing so may be one of the slowest ways of using the service. And many of the systems that are built around Twitter use web pages to interface directly to its database (via a published API). Twitter didn't respond to a request asking how many active users and how many tweets are sent each day; but it's a safe guess that both are in the millions. TwitDir, a Twitter directory, suggests there are now 1.05 million Twitter users - up from 518,000 in October.

With Twitter thus poised to enter the mainstream, we offer here our list of the best tools presently available on, and built on, Twitter. As ever, this is a moving target: within months we expect there will be even better ones. And we will watch our Twitter feeds for your responses and suggestions

First steps

Twitter.com obviously. You don't need to sign up; you can watch the flow of messages from a particular user at their username (eg Guardian Technology's, which is at twitter.com/guardiantech). However, Twitter only becomes useful once you can sift through the huge volume of posts. Signing up is free and you're not obliged to follow anyone, or post anything, or let anyone follow you.

Next steps
You can follow Twitter at the website, but that's inefficient. Smartest moves: get a program for your PC, Mac or Linux box to watch the flow.

Windows
Madtwitter; Twitteroo; Twitterlicious

Mac OS X
Twitteriffic

Linux
Deskbar; Twitux

Mobile phones
Twittter for iPhone; Twitterberry (for BlackBerries); hahlo.com (iPhone and others)

Firefox
Tweetbar

Finding people
Whoshouldifollow.com answers that simple question. Given your username, it will look for other users with some overlap with the people you follow, and suggest them as people for you to follow. Add some of the names there and then repeat the process, and you'll quickly build up a large network.

Twitdir.com, a directory. Find people, and quickly see the top 100 most-followed and busiest twitterers.

Twitterholic.com, the top users and accounts: choose, then repeat as above.

Searching and organising
Summize.com, search for a word or phrase across the entire Twitter feed. Interested in Scotland? Explosions? Burma? Plug the search in and view the results; or take an RSS feed, which will automatically update when new tweets match your search.

Quotably.com creates threads of discussions between people.

Terraminds.com, another search engine, for users or phrases.

Tweetscan.com, search by user and time.

Twitterlocal.net finds twitterers near you.

Sharing
Twitthis.com, lets people looking at your site or blog share the URL via Twitter.

Twitturly.com, what's being most linked-to and talked about?

Tweetmeme.com, what sort of topics are being discussed?

Visualise
Twittervision.com, real-time Google Maps mashup showing where the latest tweets are being posted.

Twitterverse, tag clouds based on the messages flowing through twitter.

Twistori.com, love, hate, think, believe, feel, wish: what people are saying where the tweets use those words.

Twittearth.com, processor-heavy, but fascinating, visualisation of tweets, put onto a spiralling globe.

Tweetwheel.com, which of your friends are already following each other?

Miscellaneous
Tweetspeech, Yahoo Pipes module that converts (incoming) tweets to speech, playable via RSS.

Tweeterboard, a "leaderboard" of who the busiest, most popular, most chatty users are.

Twitter fan wiki, lots more Twitter information and applications.

Twittersnooze.com, hit the "snooze button", briefly, on verbose friends.

Twitter balloon, your tweets superimposed on an image of your choosing.

Latest Scores, latest football scores, as tweets.

twerpscan.com, avoid followers who befriend everyone: may be spammers.


source: guardian.co.uk

Carrie Underwood Is No Fan of Twitter

The "American Idol" alum is not a fan of Twitter because she is afraid that by joining the social networking site her privacy would be invaded.

Twittering might have become something common and daily consumption for many Hollywood celebs, but not for Carrie Underwood. The songstress is not a fan of the popular micro-blogging site, telling country music website The Boot that the social networking service could endanger her personal life.

"As far as Twitter, I'll be in a restaurant and I'll get home and somebody tweeted and they talked about what I ordered and what I was wearing," she explains her point of view. "In some cases, that could be dangerous, because you don't want everybody to know where you are every second of every day. It's a wee bit of an invasion of privacy."

"It just sounds like organized stalking to me. I talk to my fan club members and I blog, and they know what's going on," she goes on stating. "I would really like to, of course, keep the super-private stuff super-private but kind of let people into my world."

As an evidence she then shares a bit about her upcoming album "Play On", which is set for November 3 release date. "The new album has done that a little more, and I'm going to keep working on it myself because I would like people to know about me as a person," says the winner of "American Idol" 4th season.


source: aceshowbiz.com

Twitter

Twitter, which was created by a 10-person startup in San Francisco called Obvious, is a heady mixture of messaging, social networking, “microblogging” and something called “presence,” shorthand for the idea that people should enjoy an “always on” virtual omnipresence.

Twitter's rapid growth made it the object of intense interest and a fair amount of ridicule, as it was derided as high-tech trivia or the latest in time-wasting devices. But its use in Iran in the wake of the disputed presidential election of June 2009 to organize protests and disseminate information in the face of a news media crackdown brought it new respect.

“Twitterers” or "tweeters" send and receive short messages, called “tweets,” on Twitter’s Web site, with instant messaging software, or with mobile phones.

When a user is logged in through the Web or a cellphone, it asks one simple question, “What are you doing?” Users answer in 140 characters or fewer. While some of these tweets have the profundity of haiku, most are mundane, like “Sure is pretty out tonight” or “My eyes itch. I am very aggravated.”

Unlike most text messages, tweets are routed among networks of friends. Strangers, called “followers,” can also choose to receive the tweets of people they find interesting.

Read More...

The company has no discernible revenue and, as of mid-2009, about 60 employees. Biz Stone, a Twitter founder, said at the time that the company had no plans to begin widely running ads until 2010, although it was experimenting with running advertisements on its Web site. In September 2009, the company was set to raise about $100 million of new funding that would value the company at around $1 billion.

In its short history, Twitter has become an important marketing tool for celebrities, politicians and businesses, promising a level of intimacy never before approached online, as well as giving the public the ability to speak directly to people and institutions once comfortably on a pedestal.

But someone has to do all that writing, even if each entry is barely a sentence long. In many cases, celebrities and their handlers have turned to outside writers — ghost Twitterers, who keep fans updated on the latest twists and turns, often in the star’s own voice.

It is not only celebrities who are forced to look to a team to produce real-time commentary on daily activities, but also politicians like Ron Paul, who have assigned staff members to create Twitter posts and Facebook personas. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign used Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

In 2009, people in Iran and Moldova created their own searchable tags on Twitter to organize protests against their governments and share information with each other and the world. In April, Moldovans used the network to rally more than 10,000 young people against their country's Communist leadership. And in June, Iranian opposition supporters angry over presidential election results used Twitter and other forms of new media to share news on rallies, police crackdowns on protesters, and analysis.

With the authorities blocking text-messaging on cellphones, Twitter has become a handy alternative for information-hungry Iranians. While Iran has also tried to block Twitter posts, Iranians are skilled at using proxy sites or other methods to circumvent the official barriers.

On June 15, a State Department official e-mailed Twitter to request a delay in scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran.

Twitter complied with the request and briefly postponed its upgrade. The episode demonstrates the extent to which the Obama administration views social networking as a new diplomatic tool. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks regularly about the power of e-diplomacy, particularly in places where the mass media are repressed.

Twitter was also in the news in July, when a hacker made internal company documents public after breaking into an employee's e-mail account. And in August, it was shut down for much of a day by a two-pronged cyberattack that security experts said was aimed at a blogger from the Republic of Georgia; it was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia.


Source: nytimes.com

Emma Roberts Threatens to Delete Her Twitter Because of Hackers

Unlike Miley Cyrus who deletes her Twitter for the sake of privacy, Emma is forced to exit the network after her account is hacked.

Ever since Miley Cyrus deleted her Twitter account earlier this month, more and more Hollywood celebrities follow in her footsteps. The latest star who quits the social networking site is actress Emma Roberts, who is well known as the niece of actress Julia Roberts.

"i will be deleting my twitter today because EVERYDAY someone tries to hack on reset my password. Sorry to everyone who doesnt do that," read one of her tweets over the weekend. She then wrote another post, "Okay everyone making me feel really guilty so I'm not gonna delete my twitter ... for now. But please whoever it is STOP trying to get on!"

At the time of writing, Emma's Twitter account is no longer available. Though so, the 18-year-old actress herself has not yet issued a single word to explain her absence from the network.


source: aceshowbiz.com

Compete: Facebook Added 2.4 Million US Uniques in September

While monthly visitor numbers don’t tell the whole story about the health of a social network, in this case it was more of the same for top social networks Facebook and MySpace, and microblogging service Twitter in the US, according to Compete.



Facebook grew relatively slowly in September according to Compete, by 1.93% to 125 million. MySpace, however, fell 9.66 percent to 50.1 million. Twitter, stayed at around 23.5%. None of the sites have seen any serious growth for the last few months according to these numbers, although Facebook and Twitter both grew quickly earlier this year. MySpace had actually been growing through June, when it reached 61.0 million.

Compete’s numbers tend to run on the high side compared to other analytics companies, although similar directional trends are usually visible across multiple results. You can see the same trend for September in Hitwise’s market share results from yesterday. The internal data that Facebook makes publicly available showed an 8.6% increase in September to 88.3 million monthly actives. Neither comScore nor Quantcast have released their September data yet.

10 MORE Must Have Twitter Tools

Due to the extreme popularity of TwiTip’s “10 Twitter Tools that Help You Work Smarter” post, we’re proud to present 10 MORE must have Twitter tools to help you get more done with less! This post is by guest author Sherice Jacob (follow her @sherice), a web designer, copywriter and author of Get Niche Quick!

If you loved our 10 Twitter Tips that Help You Work Smarter, you’ll find our newest list of even more “must have” Twitter services and plugins even better! Special thanks to fellow TwiTip readers whose suggestions were invaluable in helping us create the latest list. It was difficult to narrow it down to just ten, but here they are!

1. HootSuite – Streamlined Twitter account management from one clean, user-friendly interface is yours when you use HootSuite. In addition to being able to manage multiple Twitter accounts and profile from one application, you can also schedule tweets, track clicks to your links (using HootSuite’s ow.ly URL shortening service) and get an entire overview of each Twitter account with easy tab-based navigation.

2. TweetChannel – Confused by #hashtags in Twitter? You shouldn’t be after reading this tutorial but if you’d like an easier way to send your tweets to a specific audience, you’ll want to check out Tweet Channel, a simplified, user-friendly interface to working with hashtags. See the most popular channels as well as the newest created channels directly from the Tweet Channel website.

3. Tweet2Tweet – What ARE they talking about? With Tweet2Tweet, you can see the @replies between any two people in just minutes. Keep up on any conversation instantly. Just enter both screen names on Tweet2Tweet to see the results in reverse chronological order (most recent entries first).

4. TwitterSnooze – TwitterSnooze provides a very valuable (and free) service. If you follow someone who’s rather…”talkative” you can temporarily “snooze” them and their tweets without unfollowing them permanently. Choose a timeframe anywhere from a day to a month. Perfect for your more “verbose” tweeters.

5. TweetCube – Want to share audio, video or images on Twitter? TweetCube is a free file sharing service that lets you tweet larger files to your followers. Just a couple of clicks is all it takes to start sharing files through your TweetCube account.

6. Twitterless – Thanks to a vigilant TwiTip user, we learned that a previous resource in our Top 10, Qwitter, is no longer sending out unfollow notices (even though their site is still up as of this article writing). Fortunately, Twitterless offers the same unfollowed notification service at Qwitter – just follow @tless to sign up.

7. CoTweet – CoTweet lets multiple people at the same company manage their business Twitter accounts together while keeping tabs on their brand name and how it’s being used. CoTweet can also be used to assign tasks to different departments and follow up on results and feedback.

8. OutTwit – Microsoft Outlook is an indispensible part of the day for many individuals, businesses and organizations. OutTwit’s feature list is too numerous to list here, but suffice it to say that if you use Outlook, you can manage and post to your Twitter account directly from your Outlook interface. You can also track keywords and have the details sent to your email, even if you’re not following the original tweeter.

9. TweeTake – TweeTake lets you backup your entire Twitter account into a .CSV file (commonly opened with Microsoft Excel). Back up your tweets, followers and people you’re following in just a few minutes. Since many people have lost followers in the past due to Twitter downtime, or you may want to refer to an older Tweet (Twitter doesn’t currently let you keep older tweets), TweeTake is a must-have tool for keeping a copy of your Twitter account should the inevitable happen!

10. Twitt(url)y – Twitt(url)y lets you instantly see what people are tweeting about and linking to. Track the hot trends instantly. A great source for possible blog entries and new followers since you can see who tweeted or re-tweeted the link as well as the URLs they used. You can also see how often the link was tweeted in a certain timeframe.

Post Tweets Directly from Facebook with Social Twitter

Social Revitalizer is the latest company to offer a tool to bring together Facebook and Twitter — Social Twitter, a Facebook application that lets users of both social networks to post Tweets directly from their Facebook page.

Using Social Twitter to update your Twitter feed from your Facebook page is pretty straightforward. You need to add the app, then give it your Twitter handle and password. In the app, there’s a 140-character counter and tabs to post or clear your entry. You can also create a profile box on your wall or Boxes tab which shows your Twitter avatar, name and latest Tweet on your home page.

Social Twitter offers users a way to selectively post their Facebook status updates to their Twitter feeds, sort of like Facebook’s new in-house app for posting from pages to Twitter. Facebook, however, doesn’t currently let you selectively post status updates from your personal profile to Twitter (something MySpace has notably recently turned on). Most of Twitter-Facebook applications already available, including Twitter’s own Facebook app, third-party apps like TweetFace, Selective Twitter Status and desktop app Tweetdeck, are built around Twitter, then let you selectively post tweets into Facebook.

Social Twitter is also a little different in that it also allows users to create a Twitter tab on their Facebook pages where they can access their Twitter account and track all of their own Tweets.

Social Revitalizer offers a range of other Facebook applications and services for individuals and businesses, and it seems that it has done a good job of addressing some of the concerns that arose with similar programs. The convenience of posting directly to Twitter while seeing your feed from Facebook is a nice touch, but it could be even better if there was the ability to view the feed of those your following, or at least those that are also using Facebook or the service. This is still a rather new application, so it will be interesting to see how it develops as more people beginning using and commenting on the app.

Microbloggers, Meet the Microvideo

There are just some things in life that are better with a visual accompaniment, like business presentations, cooking classes and a film theory seminar.

According to Rey Flemings, chief executive of Particle, status updates posted to Twitter and Facebook should be included on that list. His San Francisco company created a service called Robo.to that allows users to publish 4-second videos that act as visual status updates.

“We already know what I’m doing, but what does that look like?” he said.
The idea behind the platform is simple: In addition to the microvideos, which can be uploaded from a webcam or a mobile phone camera and pushed out via Facebook and Twitter with a few short lines of text, Robo.to is meant to be a digital calling card online or a hub that houses information about an individual’s identity on the Web. That’s what helps separate the service from other microvideo services like 12seconds.

Though the idea is more likely to resonate with Web-savvy users who broadcast every detail of their lives online than say, your mom, the service has won a modest following since it came out of private beta in August, attracting more than 100,000 new members. It doesn’t hurt that pop singer Justin Timberlake, one of the lead investors in the company, is also active on the site, posting multiple video updates daily.

But as Mr. Flemings puts it, “We aren’t trying to create the next big destination on the Web.”

Rather, the idea is to supplement the deluge of messages flowing through social networks, adding context and additional information which can occasionally get lost in the flood, he said.

For example, after the Kanye West outburst at the MTV Video Music Awards, responses flooded both Twitter and Facebook. But what did those responses look like?

To answer that type of question, the company is unveiling a new feature Monday called “TV Mode” that will allow users to watch all the videos associated with a particular keyword or hashtag. Mr. Flemings described it as a Twitter search, or Twitter’s trending topics, but with microvideos. He hopes that it will help users “watch the conversation unfold in a new way.”

Previously, users could only tune into the short video updates posted by a single user or by the entire community, dubbed the Statusphere, and not hone in on one particular topic.

Although currently the service is available for free, eventually, Mr. Flemings says, the company will consider rolling out paid premium accounts or partnering with companies and marketers who want to host branded contests.

“It’s still very early for us as a service,” he said. “But we’re hoping to introduce a whole new method of short-form video communication.”


source: bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Facebook in challenge to Google

Facebook has turned up the heat on Google by purchasing content-sharing service FriendFeed, say industry watchers.

Many expected Google or even Twitter to buy the company, which has been praised for its "real-time" search engine.

This type of search is valuable because it lets you know what is happening right now on any given subject.

"Google look out, Facebook knows the real money is in real-time search," said respected blogger Robert Scoble.

"Google is the king of regular search. FriendFeed is the king of real-time search. This makes the coming battle over this issue much more interesting," Mr Scoble told the BBC.

Back in May, Google founder Larry Page admitted that the search giant had fallen behind other services like that of Twitter.

"People really want to do stuff real time and I think they (Twitter) have done a great job.

"We've done a relatively poor job of doing things that work on a per second basis," Mr Page said at the time.

'Warning shot'

Many in Silicon Valley agree that this deal has changed the game.

"Facebook was unable to acquire Twitter so this is the next best option," said Ben Parr, associate editor of Mashable, a news blog covering social media.

"FriendFeed is well known for having some powerful and intelligent technology that allows users to aggregate everything they do online and do it all in real time.

"With this acquisition, Facebook is gunning directly not only at Twitter, but at Google. This is a warning shot to those two companies," Mr Parr told BBC News.

Mr Scoble noted that FriendFeed's real-time search could stretch back 18 months compared to a few days for Twitter.

Silicon Valley commentators have long regarded FriendFeed as an inspiration for many of Facebook's features.

These include the ability for users to import activities from third parties services like YouTube and Flickr to letting users comment or say they "like" something in another user's feed.

"FriendFeed has in effect been the R&D (research & development) department for Facebook for some time now," said Mr Scoble, who is one of the service's most popular users with nearly 46,000 subscribers.

"They have the best community technology out there and Facebook should continue to use them to try out new features and test them out before transferring them over to Facebook."

The deal

The purchase caught many in Silicon Valley by surprise, even though the two companies had been talking on and off for the past two years.

"This is an 11th hour deal," admitted FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor.

Industry commentators had expected Google to make a bid for the company, especially given the fact that its founders all used to work there.

"FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request" is how Mr Taylor described the buyout, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to how Facebook users ask one another to become part of their friend network.

He continued in a similar vein in his blog post.

"As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle.

"Our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we've developed at FriendFeed to Facebook's 250 million users around the world."

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was equally complimentary.

"Since I first tried FriendFeed, I've admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information.

"As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use."

As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and the company's four founders will be given senior roles on the social networking site's engineering and product teams.

FriendFeed will continue as it is for the moment independently.

"Eventually, one way or another, it's hard to see FriendFeed as it stands now, continuing on," said MG Siegler of Silicon Valley news site Tech Crunch.

"Facebook will begin to take up too much of the FriendFeeders' time, and it will languish. It's sad, but that's the web. Not every service can flourish. There simply aren't enough users with enough time to use all of them."


Source : BBC News