Guilty Pleasure

Facebook Studies Marriage Decisions

May 18th, 2013

As a twentysomething woman, I’m always interested to see–when female friends get married–if they make the name change or keep their maiden name.

These days, that decision is usually announced by making it “Facebook official,” by simply changing the relationship status, or changing the last name along with it.

Using these data points, and women’s birth dates, Facebook analyzed what percentage of women from different age groups are taking their husbands’ last names, hyphenating their names or keeping their maiden names. The results were announced on the Facebook Data Science page this week.

Tumblr to Yahoo: Make My Day

May 17th, 2013

Is the social blogging site Tumblr about to sell out?

Ad Week’s Mike Shields has the story that Tumblr has been having negotiations about being acquired by Yahoo.

As Shields reports, a deal could make sense for both companies:

“Yahoo is in serious talks with Tumblr to acquire the social blogging site, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks. The deal is not done, but could reach as high as $1 billion, Adweek has learned. Allthingsd.com was first to report on the talks between the two companies.”

Trial By Facebook: A Dangerous Virtual Path

May 17th, 2013

I’m a criminal for being a woman, a journalist and someone with the temerity to walk into a bar.

In a fascinating study of both Facebook and freedom, Amnesty International New Zealand launched “Trial by Facebook,” which examines your profile, scours your timeline and “interrogates” yourfriends to find out what you’d be punished for posting, all around the
world. The app came out several months ago, but it’s been making waves
online this week.

Using my own Facebook page as a guinea pig, I found myself convicted 161 times, in 73 countries, for 13 crimes. Literally dodging a bullet, the
contents of my profiles weren’t tawdry enough to get me beheaded or shot dead, but I would be killed by extremists 22 times, sexually assaulted 16 times, imprisoned 58 times and beaten 73 times–and that’s just the beginning of the terror.

Google Plus Pointers, Twitter Fools

May 16th, 2013

Tatiana Aders of Social Media News has made my day. If you don’t quite get how to use Google Plus, help is here:

“Google Plus has some of the most robust posting & sharing capabilities of any social network. From rich snippets to photo editing to individual circles, there are so many features that can make your post stand out from the pack. Here are some highlights from a cheat sheet that I built to get the most out of Google Plus posts.”