Facebook To Add Video Chat
As if we didn’t see this coming. In its most recent addition, Facebook plans to team up with the hugely popular video conferencing platform Skype to offer video chat to it’s users.
With over 600 million users, Facebook will quickly become one of the top video chat services once this feature is released widely. Both Google and Apple have tried to squeeze into the market, but I think that once Facebook integrates this feature their piece of the pie will diminish greatly.
It seems to me that Facebook can pretty much dominate any given service they want if they feel like implementing it. The biggest or toughest part for them is making it seamless with what they’ve already got in place as to not irk the users as they have in the past with updates.
The video chat is still in beta and under development. There is no exact date on when it will be released to everyone but it is expected to be rolled out in the near future.
Angry Birds To Be Flying Its Way To Facebook
The developers behind the ever popular Angry Birds, Rovio, have come to an agreement with the World’s Largerst Social Media site Facebook to bring the squacking bunch on over with the month. There is no exact laugh date as of yet but rest assured that you’ll be able to waste away a few hours in the near future.
Rovio’s CEO Mikael Hed states “Angry Birds on Facebook would give the pigs a more prominent role, with completely new aspects that haven’t been experienced on any other platform.”
I wonder what the “new aspects” will be. I also wonder how much more work time is going to wasted on Facebook now.
Jennifer Aniston Uses The Internets To Sell Water
In a new ad campaign, SmartWater is trying to leverage the celebrity of Jennifer Aniston and the internet to make their video go “viral”. Playing on the popularity of “internet stardom” with the likes of Kenan Cahill, yellow Labrador puppies, a skateboarding dog, dancing babies and Double Rainbow Guy look-a-like.
I think Jennifer does a terrific job playing into the whole internet thing. I hate to say it but they’ve done a good job of playing the “not going to do it by doing it” thing…if that makes sense. I think you get what I’m saying. Using the angle of not knowing what viral is to create a viral ad. Pretty clever SmartWater, but I guess that’s how you got your name.
Clever Girl
There has been a lot of debate about location awareness on social media sites. On one hand it’s nice to let your friends know where you are and when you’re out and about town. But on the other hand, it gives other people knowledge of that as well. It also informs people where you’re not, say when you’re not at home. Thieves and ne’er-do-wells can use this information to their advantage pretty easily. This however might be one of more serious Tweets about the subject.
How do you feel about services like FourSquare and allowing people to know your location?
What To Do In An Emergency
I thought this was pretty funny. Not only because it’s amusing but because it’s pretty accurate. Seems like you can find things quicker on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter faster than the emergency patrol can respond. How do you feel, do you think this is true?
Couple Name Their Child ‘Facebook’
It has been reported by Al-Ahram (one of Egypt’s larger newspapers) a twenty-something Egyptian man has named his first born daughter “Facebook” because of the popular social media sites role in organizing the protests in Tahrir Square recently.
Translated from the paper:
Man Names His Newborn Girl Facebook
A young man in his twenties wanted to express his gratitude about the victories the youth of 25th of January have achieved and chose to express it in the form of naming his firstborn girl “Facebook” Jamal Ibrahim (his name.) The girl’s family, friends, and neighbors in the Ibrahimya region gathered around the new born to express their continuing support for the revolution that started on Facebook. “Facebook” received many gifts from the youth who were overjoyed by her arrival and the new name. A name [Facebook] that shocked the entire world.
What’s next? Are we going to be seeing babies named after Google, Flickr, YouTube or Twitter? Who knows what’s in store. I could see maybe a D-list celebrity naming their daughter after some popular website. I’m looking at you Pauly…how about Reddit Shore.
Al Jazeera Reports on Anonymous
Most everyone has at the very least heard of Anonymous but there has been a lot of different information about them floating around on their motives and tactics. Part of the issue is that they are not a “set” group per se. They are composed of individuals who come together for various reasons.
Describing itself as “the freedom of speech, the freedom of information and the freedom of expression taken to a logical extreme,” Anon says it breaks laws, but only for the greater good.
To clear up their intentions and how they operate, a few of them “sat down” with Al Jazeera’s Scott Heidler. It’s a great report that will give you a little insight into the way they work and how they choose to go about their dealings.
Slow News Day
This might be a town I’d enjoy living in. I would feel safe not only that events like this bring caution, but also that the police respond in such a manner and even further that it makes the daily paper. Could you imagine only having things like this to report. Clearly when this is the top news story you’re living in a safe community. I guess that also means it’s extremely boring there as well…until a load of more people start ordering from Amazon (“What are all these boxes with smiley faces doing here?”)
When Marketing Goes Too Far
If you haven’t heard of The Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Arizona (about 15 minutes from Pheonix), they’re the guys behind the massive burgers and fries that created quite a buzz with their marketing techniques. They offer free food to anyone over 350 lbs, they serve heart stopping meals with no remorse, their waitresses are dressed as nurses and the owner walks around as a “Doctor” with a stethoscope hanging around his neck.
The whole thing was meant to be tongue and cheek. Sure, everyone knows that eating these meals are unhealthy and shouldn’t be part of a normal diet…right? Taking it to a new level, “Dr. Jon” got a 575-pound man, Blair River, to be the spokesperson for his restaurant.
So how did this all go wrong? Well on Tuesday, March 1st, Blair passed away at the young age of 29. At 6-foot-8 and 575 pounds he wasn’t the least bit the image of health. The cause of death hasn’t been released but friends are speculating that it was the result of his contracting pneumonia after a bout with the flu.
In previous interviews, Blair has stated that he is a regular customer at the Heart Attack Grill and that he usually eats a couple of burgers, two servings of fries and a Coke.
Personally I feel that the owner and the restaurant have gone too far in their marketing approach and took advantage of someone that they would not have otherwise exploited if it wasn’t just all a marketing tactic. My question is when does the responsibility get put on the restaurant for their shameless advertising? Sure it’s always up to an individual to decide what to put into their body but we all know that endorsements push us towards those decisions.
It’s very unfortunate that River passed at such a young age. I can just hope that good comes from this in the form of more ethical advertising as far as not offering things that are blatantly unhealthy or not well for the consumer as something “good”. Especially in a humorous or mocking matter.
Caught
With more and more of each demographic (and especially the older set) joining social media sites, the odds of something like this taking place go up. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to remain unknown or anonymous online. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it…and which side of the fence you are on.
In this case, it turned out to be a bad thing for the student and quite a hilarious find for the teacher. I know that if I were teaching a bunch of kids I would do the same thing and do a quick search online to see if any of them were up to such devious attempts to pull a “Huckleberry Finn”.
