It’s no secret that many of us who work in an office with a computer spend a good portion of our time doing things that are “less than productive.” Twitter, Zynga, online Fantasy Football – there are so many things polluting our work experience that we not available to us less than a decade ago. SocialCast explores the relationships between how we waste our time in the office when it tries to answer the question of whether the 8-hour workday is productive or pointless. It’s a good questi0n that seems to become more relevant as time goes on. With many experts recommending against blocking sites like…

Twitter has been known to push the envelope on social communication and interaction. Twitter is even credited for heavily influencing things like the Iranian elections. But all of the amazing things Twitter has accomplished could be for nothing if the company loses sight of what is truly important. And although Twitter has avoided the Fail Whale for quite awhile, it might not only creep back into the spotlight, but it could also become a permanent figure of Twitter’s being. Unfortunately, the reality is that Twitter is changing at a hot clip these days, and while many of the changes have been for…

If you haven’t heard, Facebook is a pretty prominent site. In this latest update to the World Map of Social Networks, Vincenzo Cosenza from Vincos.it displays what most who use social media likely already knew: Facebook is taking over the world. They are surpassing local and country-specific social networks to tie the world into one global web unlike anything since the invention of, well, The Web. Mixi and Hyves are the only other sites that are more popular than Facebook in multiple countries, while 8 other social networks still reign in their home countries. For now. At least Google’s Orkut…

Coming down the pipe from XKCD is this utterly brilliant map of the state of social networking today. Click the link for the giant one. “Communities rise and fall, and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community’s current size and health,” explains the map. A talking map. “This updated map uses size to represent total social activity in a community – that is, how much talking, playing, sharing, or other socializing happens there.” Honestly, there’s nothing to say that the map can’t say for itself. “[the map] involved a great deal of guesswork, statistical inference, random…

If you’re at all a social network enthusiast, you’re probably interested in – or at least peripherally familiar with – Diaspora, the would-be Facebook killer that’s been the belle of the social networking debutante ball since its Kickstarter account went nuclear. Last evening, Diaspora’s source code was released to developers (well, everyone, but I for one am a little coding-dumb), and the public at large was finally given a glimpse of the (possible) future of social networking. For the moment, it looks a hell of a lot like Facebook. Honestly, that’s not a bad thing. Facebook’s got the right…

Facebook is, as we speak, rolling out a remote logout feature that will aid those who have absent-mindedly forgotten to sign out after a high-octane creeping session. The feature allows you to see a list of devices from which you’re currently signed in – your phone, your computer, the school’s computer, the library’s computer, the local display iPad, etc, and axe the session from any to all of those devices. It also logs the length of the session, and software used. Pretty zazzy. Honestly, in terms of privacy – which historically, of course, is not Facebook’s forte – this is a totally great new addition….

This is entirely a new one. A new German law, penned by Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, will potentially disallow employers from peeking at potential candidates on Facebook and other non-career based social networks. However, googling (and LinkedIn-ing) a candidate is still okay, provided – get this – the employer disregards information that is old, or ‘outside of a candidate’s control’. The idea is to provide greater privacy for employees. But, okay, let’s think about this for a second. First of all, for the Facebook thing to work, I’d have to accept a friend request from a stranger…

As internet folk, we probably all have at least one friend who’s incurably addicted to Foursquare. I definitely do. Steve, this one’s for you. Y’know those people in your social networks, who you’re only kind of friends with, and you wouldn’t really hang out with those people, but it would be awkward to delete them, so you keep them around hoping they’ll go away, but they just so happen to be the ones who stalk you and comment on everything you say and do online? Y’know, those people? Don’t lie, you’ve got some of those people. Enter Avoidr. Assuming you use Foursquare (and are friends with those people…