Computer Support Blog

Do you remember when you could go on Facebook and connect with your friends and illustrate a sense of community over shared interests?  That function is still present on Facebook, but it is increasingly harder to find it with the sheer volume of advertisements on the once simple and cool social network.  With the revelation that five individuals suing Facebook for how “social advertising” was used without their consent or a way to opt out resulted in a $10,000,000 charity donation as settlement the reason you can now opt out of social advertising is pretty clear!  If every person who did not want their “likes” used to advertise products to their friends cost Facebook $2,000,000, Facebook would rapidly become unprofitable. Read more »

In the course of a company’s stock, there is a natural movement; no goes constantly up.  It is perfectly natural for stock values to rise and fall based on any number of a multitude of factors.  Yet, within the last twenty years, there has been an unrealistic expectation that tech sector stocks will go homogenously upward, even though there is ample evidence to prove that the stock market, especially as it pertains to the tech sector, is far more volatile.  Perhaps no tech sector company offered stock with more expectations and more difficulty in recent memory than Facebook. Read more »

Today, we have a disturbing experiment for you to try, assuming you are not using any form of advertisement blocking software and cookies are enabled in your web browser (they usually are if you have your computer set to automatically enter your login information when you visit your most frequented websites).  Open a search engine and initiate a search for something you have never looked for before and shares no commonality with any website you already frequent.  For example, search for “computer glasses” or, even more specifically, “Superfocus.”  Once the search results come up, visit every page on the first page of search results.  Tomorrow when you go online, if not sooner, consciously look at the advertisements on the websites you usually frequent.  The odds are better than even that whatever topic you searched in depth yesterday will appear heavily saturated on the sites you visit today.  In fact, because of Web Targeting, the odds are significantly biased toward advertisements you see being related to that random search topic. Read more »

Virtually every business journal has weighed in on the decline in Facebook’s stock.  After years of playing coy about it, Facebook had its initial public offering in May at $38 per share.  When the stock fell below $30 on May 29, every pundit in the business world weighed in on the decline.  The prevailing wisdom was that Facebook’s stock was overvalued and investors did not have a good-faith belief in the long-term profitability of the company.  That makes perfect sense from a business perspective.  The problem, however, with that view, is that it completely neglects the consumer perspective and there is an excellent chance that the consumer perspective is what is affecting Facebook’s stock. Read more »

One of the big stories in the technology sector at the end of 2011 was the initial public offering of stock for Zynga.  Zynga, the creator of some of Facebook’s most popular games, was all set to leap into the business of making money off its popularity and the IPO sought to raise billions of dollars for the company.  Amid news reports of other video game companies experiencing financial hardships, the Zynga IPO was viewed by many as catastrophic, with the stock losing value its first few days.  While this might have made a lesser CEO cringe and get out of the game, it was nothing to Mark Pincus. Read more »

Facebook loves to make changes. Facebook is always updating, rearranging, and adding new features to the site, but sometimes the changes come a little too rapidly. People are only just starting to use their Timelines, and now Facebook has another new feature – verified accounts.

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At one time, not that long ago, Internet users looking for a social media experience went immediately to MySpace. There, they could update their profile, post messages, and talk to their friends. The site was mainly a hit with teenagers, but featured a great space for independent musicians to get their music featured because of the large media section on the site.

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As if the public needed another reminder to be careful what they publicly share on social networking sites, the FBI is currently working on a new project that will monitor Twitter, Facebook, and other popular sites for keywords related to terrorism and other criminal activity. The FBI is asking companies to create a means of sifting through all the tweets, posts, and pictures in order to identify present and future threats.

The main purpose of the software, once developed and put into place, will be to allow the FBI to identify terrorists and criminals by highlighting social networking posts that include certain keywords. Some of these keywords will include “small pox”, “leak”, “gangs”, and “2600” (the name of a popular hacking magazine).

In order to sort through the data, the FBI wants to have the flagged posts appear on a map. Ideally, the data would be color-coded according to threat level to make it easier to identify possible incidents of criminal activity.

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Google Plus has finally opened its virtual doors to the teenagers. Anyone ages 13 and up can now create a Google+ account, although for teenagers, Google has added more safety precautions. It was not that Google did not want teenagers to be able to use the site previously – there was no “mature content” – but simply that Google wanted to get things ironed out and ready before letting in the teens.

Since teenagers and young adults are the more avid social networking users, and the most avid Internet users, it makes sense for Google to allow teenagers to join its social networking site. According to Bradley Horowitz, the Vice President of Google, “We want to help teens build meaningful connections online. We also want to provide features that foster safety alongside self-expression.”

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Facebook versus Google Plus – which side are you on? It is the battle for the future of social networking and the outcome will decide the direction the Internet takes in the coming years. Google+ is still a relatively new social networking site, having only been launched last year, but it shows promise.

Some of the most basic features of Google+ were applauded by the public when first introduced. Facebook did its best to integrate similar features within its own site, but the features on Google+ are far more seamlessly incorporated. These features include the circles, hangouts, and making Google+ part of all other Google websites.

Google+ allows you to easily group your friends the way we do in real life with the circles feature. The best thing about this feature is that no one else knows in which group you have put him or her. The hangouts are the video chat feature for Google+ and this feature allows people to chat with everyone in one of their circles all at the same time.

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