“Damn you, Facebook. I don’t like you but everyone I know is on it. If I want to see pictures of little Timmy sliding into third base or hear what’s happening with my ex-, I’ll have to keep playing your game.” Similar thoughts run through the minds of millions of people all the time. People complain. They say that Facebook is bad. Then, they go right back to it to see the latest gossip, pictures, or cat videos. The social network has reached a tipping point that keeps us coming back. In a recent study by WebPageFX, 61% of respondents said that they do not trust Facebook at all versus only 2% who said they trust…

The opinions that we express in the real world are often not congruent with what we post on Twitter according to a report from Pew Research. Just because something is loved or hated on Twitter doesn’t mean that the real world feels the same way. Sometimes, the Twitter reality is opposite of real world reality. In politics, social media is left leaning, but both sides come out strong when there are complaints to be Tweeted. According to Pew: At times the Twitter conversation is more liberal than survey responses, while at other times it is more conservative. Often it is the overall negativity that…

They say you learn something new every day. I learned something about Pinterest the other day that blew my mind a little. Users like links. This might seem like a no-brainer to some, but it goes against what I’ve learned in my years on the various social networks. On most networks, there are images and there are links. Images normally perform the best across the board. Links, on the other hand, do not. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ all prefer images over links. It isn’t just the algorithms on Facebook and Google+, it’s also the overall community sentiment on all three, including Twitter. Pinterest…

Twitter is still the most used social network by businesses. This surprises some, but the latest statistics showed that 77% of businesses were on Twitter versus 74% on Facebook. It’s not a big difference, but it’s still at least a little surprising to many who view Facebook as the big social network and Twitter as the other guy in the field. Twitter is easier. It requires less time. It’s more about communication than popularity and there are no algorithms that can make your efforts meaningless like they can on Twitter. I’m not suggesting that businesses should be on Twitter and not Facebook. On the…

There’s a strange change that has been happening since the dawn of social media and that continues to accelerate every day. Teens are talking less to their parents and engaging more with their peers through social networks and mobile devices. The first shift, not talking to parents, has been happening for a long time but social media has made it even more prevalent. Engaging with their peers – it seems many communicate more with their fingers than their mouths nowadays. As a natural result of this shift, the art of parenting has shifted from watching where their kids are going to monitoring their…

If it’s possible to be a true filmmaker using only the 6-seconds allowed on Twitter’s Vine app, actor Adam Goldberg would be the director, star, producer, writer, and mastermind behind the project. I have a lot to say about the combination of genius, randomness, and mystery that goes into his videos, but it’s best for you to see if for yourself. Check out his page and click through to all of his Vines or just check out a selection from the ones below. If you don’t watch everything he posts, you won’t understand any of it. Then again, you can watch everything he posts and still not understand any of it, but…

No harm, no foul, lesson learned, you’re data is safe. That’s the message that Facebook gave its users with a recent blog post titled “Protecting People On Facebook”. Things ended well. Laptops of employees were attacked when they visited an app developer site with malicious code on it which triggered a zero-day java exploit. Forensic investigation showed that nothing crucial fell into the wrong hands and no user data was compromised. It was the best possible ending for a hacking, particularly of a company that is so entrusted with private user information. The social network requires real…

Anyone who has been on Twitter as long as I have (6 years I believe) knows that the site has gone through major transformations in the past. Lately, Vine might be the only major change in a while but there was a time when it seemed like proper Twitter etiquette changed week by week. When I first started, links were magical and very few people posted them. Today, many accounts post nothing but links. This is a big mistake. If you post only links, you’re really not posting anything at all. Why? Because people aren’t really following you if that’s the case. Run some tests. Use bitly or goo.gl or other click…

It’s hard to believe that Facebook is nearly a decade old. I can remember when it was just a social media toddler spreading across colleges. Oh, how it has grown. The last five years have been tumultuous but successful for the most popular website in the world. It was in 2008 that Microsoft gave the ultimate bid of credibility to the site by investing in it, something that the software giant rarely did for up-and-comers like a social network. It can be argued that it was at that point that the attention of the world really turned to Mark Zuckerberg’s baby and the site has stayed in the forefront of media…

We are vane creatures. LinkedIn has been on a roll, lately. They seem to have come to grips with their status as a resume- and professional-connection-distributing social network (even though they still look too much like Facebook). They are beating The Street’s profits and revenue expectations and they haven’t had any major scandals lately. 2012 was a good year for them and they’re starting off 2013 with a bang by getting many of its most active members to promote the service by promoting themselves. In a perfectly designed email, LinkedIn informed their top members last week that they were…