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Tag: "Facebook"

Is social media keeping us honest?

People praise technology because it allows us to check in with our friends, and show embarrassing pictures of them on the internet for friends and potential employers to see, but there’s a downside to it all: we can no longer lie. We’ve all been in situations like this before – you don’t want to go to someone’s party because “Bob” is going to be there, and when we last left Bob, he was left in a pool of his own fluids babbling incoherently about how the universe is really just a science project of an alien fourth grader. Bob isn’t a fun guy to be around, and so you make up a story that you have to relabel your VHS tapes of Star Trek: The Next Generation because you finally found the font that matches the main titles and it’ll all look swell when it’s finished. It’ll be a busy Friday night.

Michael Gaines | Dec, 22, 2010 | 0 comments

How to turn off Facebook Places

As a followup to this morning’s article on Facebook’s new Places feature, I decided to give a more visual instruction on how to turn Places off on Facebook.

First, go to your Privacy Settings which will give you an overview o. Click on the “Customize Settings” link, shown below in red.

Michael Gaines | Aug, 19, 2010 | 0 comments

Facebook rolls out “Places”, still doesn’t understand privacy

Last night, Facebook announced its “Places” feature which allows you to “check in” at places you’re at. If you’re hanging with friends at a club, you can tell everyone that you’re there by letting the Facebook iPhone app find your location via GPS, and then selecting the club you’re hanging at. It’s no different than Foursquare and Gowalla except that those two companies don’t have nearly the amount of users and social connectivity that Facebook does.

Michael Gaines | Aug, 19, 2010 | 0 comments

Are today’s social media tools fragmenting the conversation?

I’m an advocate of having a community for whatever it is that you’re working on, be it a blog, a podcast, a movie, what have you. I like to go to one place where everyone knows your (online) name and you can talk about whatever it is that you want to. Before this social media explosion, there was only one place to go to and that would be the site’s forums. The phpBB forum software still makes it very easy for people to set up forums for discussion. Even all these years later, I think forums are the best form of community discussion on the internet.

Michael Gaines | Aug, 2, 2010 | 0 comments