Consider the social media editor: Her background and ambitions are journalistic, but because she possesses the very basic people skills required to navigate social networks, she awakens one morning to discover she’s become a so-called “Twitter monkey.” Read More
Time magazine named “The Protester” the person of the year, in recognition of the global rise of populist movements. It was quite a blow to the Apple devouts expecting to wake up to Steve Jobs‘s face this morning. (Raising the existential question, can one “snub” the dead?) Read More
Poor Salman Rushdie: there seems to be a social networking fatwa against his digital presence. First there was that incident where he tried to claim his Twitter handle, only to find out there was someone already squatting on @salmanrushdie. Humiliated, the Satanic Verses author was forced to claim @salmanrushdie1 until he gained enough support to push out the faker and reign over his rightful tweets.
To add insult to injury, Facebook deactivated his account yesterday, thinking he was an imposter. Then they refused to let him back under the name “Salman Rushdie.” Read More
The riots in London seem finally to have subsided, but strange things are afoot stateside this week, so much so that we’re starting to wonder if Mercury, which went retrograde Aug. 3, is currently doing to the entire planet what it once did so publicly to Jeremy Piven. (Also, when does the statute of limitations Read More
Earlier today, we reported on a conversation a tipster saw on Facebook: a new Facebook app called Chill—where you watch videos together with your friends, basically—had inserted an automated message into former Facebook staffer Dave Morin’s newsfeed after he installed it. The message read: “I just got into Chill and it’s awesome” and telling all of Dave Morin’s friends to join him. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg saw it, and was not chill over it, noting of the automated message: That’s lame. Well, after hearing what Facebook’s founder had to say about it through the Observer, the people behind Chill decided they agreed, and scrapped the automated feature. Read More
Downside of having a technology company once completely beloved but now that everyone’s more than ready to delete their account from? Watching it grow large enough to actually find yourself surprisingly irritated with some of its components at times. Welcome to Mark Zuckerberg’s life, or at least fifteen minutes of it. Read More
It would almost seem that the stars had finally aligned. After weeks of stalled talks and contentious meetings between House Republicans and Democrats that escalated into a public spat between Speaker John Boehner and President Obama, a bill finally made it through the House and into the Senate, where it was speedily approved Tuesday morning Read More
Last weekend in the Bronx, Derek Jeter made Yankee history by becoming the first player in the franchise to reach 3,000 hits. His dramatic homer deep into left field in the third inning of Saturday’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays thrilled fans—especially Christian Lopez, who caught Read More
The fireworks have died down (hope you enjoyed the show, Jersey … better luck next year, Brooklyn and Queens) and all that’s left of this year’s patriotic festivities are the tiny flags littering the West Side Highway, the distended abdomens of the contestants in Nathan’s annual hot dog-eating contest and the sobering knowledge that, according to Read More
“I don’t touch Facebook,” declared Michael Romanowicz, 29, a freelance web designer who nixed his profile and more than 300 friends on the social network last year after he decided it was making him unproductive. (Worse, it was showing him too many pictures of his ex-girlfriend.) “I’m a digital professional and I fundamentally disagree with the philosophy of how Facebook has structured their product.”
It’s not that he and the social network didn’t have some great times. “What was really cool was that one of my friends was one of the first few hundred Facebook users, and for some reason he had a super admin access,” he said. They used the account to snoop through strangers’ photos.
But Facebook became “annoying” and “inundating” as it grew, and at some point, it stopped being fun. Read More
