The acting President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro is the front runner going into today’s election followed the death of Hugo Chávez last month. His campaign suffered a minor blow as several Twitter accounts associated with the campaign her hacked a group calling themselves Lulz Security Peru. The primary, verified account has over 700k followers and has been very active over the weeks leading up to the election. For the last two hours since 3:22 pm Pacific time, the accounts has been under hacker control. This was their first Tweet from the account: Since then, the Tweets have been more boastful…

In 60 seconds, Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, and their friendly carjacking cohorts can boost a high-dollar ride for sale to their fictional employer/nemesis. This is nothing compared to the things that happen on the web in any given 60 second period. The folks over at ixtract put together a visualization that demonstrates some of the millions of activities that happen on the internet every minute. They include: 12 websites hacked 14 Spotify songs uploaded 20 victims of identity theft 50 blogs created 70 domains registered 100 LinkedIn accounts created 320 Twitter accounts created 411 Facebook…

“I think I’m sort of insecure. What if you tweet and nobody tweets back? There’s nothing worse than a friendless tweeter, right?” It’s every microblogger’s worst fear: to be publicly hung out to dry in the social media world. It seems like a rational concern if you’re one of the millions of Tweeters twittering ferociously in order to garner attention – but it’s patently ridiculous if you’re, say, former president Bill Clinton. The ex-president recently made his social media debut, thanks to Steven Colbert’s tweet on Clinton’s behalf. Just spent amazing time with Colbert!Is…

How desperate are you for your favorite celebrity to read your letter? The Guardian reports the introduction of a new initiative by Facebook that allows users to send a celebrity a message, but at a price. How do they calculate the fee? In this test run in the UK, a Facebook message to a celebrity can run anywhere from 71p to £11, depending on an algorithm that determines the celebrity’s online presence and fan base. Facebook’s new initiative is only in a test phase, running for a small percentage of users. Previous tests in the US included a $1 to contact non-friends and $100 to send a message to…

Oh, Google and Facebook. Thanks to the two giants of search and social, you can’t really hide very easily anymore. If you have things in your past that you don’t want known, businesses considering hiring you don’t have to hire an investigator to go beyond the standard background check. They simply need to find you online. Your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest – they’re all available. Sure, you can go private or choose not to participate in social media in the first place, but there are challenges with that as well. Since everyone is on social media (at least from certain peoples’…

President Barack Obama’s team is very active on social media. The Facebook page that carries his name has new posts twice a day on average with a mix of hopeful messages, political statements, and personalized views into life at the White House. On Twitter, they post several times a day with links, pictures, and quotes from the President. Google+ is a different story. It was only mildly active during the election campaign. After a peak of 19 posts in August, 2012, it started falling off quickly. In September, there were 11 posts followed by 5 in October. November, the month of the election, saw two…

In the digital age, there are plenty of challenges popping up for parents. The ever-connected world opens doors to risks that parents have never had to cope with in the past. The need for digital manners is just one of the major negatives associated with raising children today. Thankfully, it’s not all bad. Opening up lines of communication and bringing together resources across the internet (and thus the scope of human understanding) is a big benefit that many parents can use. Below is a sampling of a thread from Facebook that points to some of the benefits of social media for parents. It wasn’t…

Let’s start with the bottom line first. Both sides of the argument have valid points. With that said, let’s get to the facts on the matter… The full story can be found on Buzzfeed, but here’s the short version: A woman heard an inappropriate joke told behind her at a conference. She tweeted the incident including a picture of the perpetrators. Conference officials pulled her our, identified the perpetrators, then removed them. One of the perpetrators was fired from their job after the incident started going viral. The woman reporting the incident was fired from her job because of the backlash…

The social media world and offices across America were joined in laughter last week when a video by Pepsi featuring race car driver Jeff Gordon exploded all over Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The video showed an unsuspecting salesperson getting put through a harrowing experience during a test drive while being recorded by hidden camera. The only problem was that it was completely fake. In reality, that wasn’t a problem at all. It’s approaching 30 million YouTube views and has been shared over 2 million times on Facebook. The ad worked even if it was completely staged, even if the car salesperson…

There was a time in 2008 when Twitter really started taking off. Celebrities were starting to use it. Kevin Rose, former geek leader and entrepreneur, dissed his own startup, Pownce, by saying that he preferred Twitter. The company was on a good trajectory. That was on the surface. Behind the scenes, it was far from cozy. They were having coding issues. They couldn’t stay up for an entire day without presenting a fail whale for an extended period of time. They were, in essence, a tech company that was getting too popular for their own good and couldn’t figure out how to bring everything together. Then,…