Perhaps in a sign of how the plague of social media has numbed us all to the value of legitimate human connections, the New Oxford American Dictionary has picked the verb “unfriend,” or “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook,” as its 2009 Word of the Year.
by Damiano Beltrami, Blogger, The Local, New York Times
Where’s my pancakes, read Rodney Bradford’s Facebook page, in a message typed on Saturday, Oct. 17, at 11:49 a.m., from a computer in his father’s apartment in Harlem.
Earlier this week, social media sites had found that Facebook has a page dedicated to memorializing people’s profiles once they’ve croaked it (as seen on BoingBoing) or for when someone’s friends want to play a joke on someone.
by Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
When it comes to social-networking sites, women are more plugged in than men, according to data analysis by Brian Solis, president of Silicon Valley public-relations firm Future Works.
Mr. Solis used Google Ad Planner to determine the gender breakdown of users signed up for the most popular social-networking sites and found that in most cases, women outnumbered men. “The point of interest that’s worth review and discussion is that in social media, women rule,” he wrote.
A little over a week ago Facebook reached a major milestone: 300 million active users. The fastest-growth region continues to be Asia, but growth in other overseas regions such as the Americas and Africa have also been strong.
By now the arguments are familiar: Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it.
Two students partnered up to take on the latest Internet fad: the online social networks that were exploding into the mainstream. With people signing up in droves to reconnect with classmates and old crushes from high school, and even becoming online “friends” with their family members, the two wondered what the online masses were unknowingly telling the world about themselves.
Two Australian girls, lost in a storm drain, recently used their cellphones to update Facebook to alert people about their predicament rather than calling emergency services.
by Michael Learmonth, Senior Editor, Advertising Age
If you’re a Gmail user who also happens to use Twitter, it’s probably been about five minutes since you’ve seen an ad promising to boost your follower count.
by Robert Lee Hotz, Science Columnist, The Wall Street Journal
In a vault beneath the British Library here, Jeremy Leighton John grapples with a formidable challenge in digital life. Dr. John, the library’s first curator of eManuscripts, is working on ways to archive the deluge of computer data swamping scientists so that future generations can authenticate today’s discoveries and better understand the people who made them.
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